999, Mexico: Relaciones Exteriores 
II. Departamento Comercial (Commercial Department). 
Commerce and its protection abroad, navigation, opinions concerning com- 
mercial and postal conventions, correspondence with foreign agents concern- 
ing commerce and colonization, reception and transmission of commissions 
of, issue of exequaturs to, and retirement of foreign consular and commercial 
agents, similar functions relative to Mexican commercial agents abroad, 
preparation of statistics of commerce, and the consideration of such matters 
concerning canals, railroads, telegraphs, and telephones as may come before 
the secretariat. 
III. Departamento de Cancilleria (Chancellery Department). 
a. Chancellery Section. Issuance of credentials and instructions to agents 
abroad, promulgation of decrees, preservation of autograph copies of laws, 
decrees, treaties, and conventions, all matters relative to the great seal and the 
national coat of arms, ceremonial of the Palace, registration of Mexicans 
abroad, of foreigners in Mexico, and of real estate acquired by foreigners in 
Mexico, passports, naturalization, expulsion of objectionable foreigners, and 
the Archivo General y Publico. 
b. Section of the Archives and the Library. The business of this section is 
to receive and care for documents sent from the other sections and to form 
and care for a library of a specified kind, to which, among other things, shall 
belong the “ geographical maps, plans, and documents relative to boundaries 
of the Republic”. 
Each department has its special archive where papers in active use are kept, 
and from which papers no longer in active use (expedientes concluidos) are 
periodically sent to the Archivo General. The following description concerns 
only the latter archive. 
ARRANGEMENT OF THE ARCHIVO GENERAL. 
The above paragraphs will serve to indicate the general classes of materials 
which one may expect to find in the archive of this secretariat. It is to be 
noted, however, that the arrangement of the materials in the archive, except- 
ing the more recent ones (since 1882), bears very little relation to the organi- 
zation of the secretariat. The reasons for this are partly historical and partly 
the attempt to reclassify documents on a subject basis. 
The papers of the archive are kept in boxes (cajas), each one capable of 
holding perhaps a thousand sheets of paper. These cajas are grouped into 
legajos (not mere bundles, but divisions), which, in turn, are grouped into 
three alphabetically arranged ‘series, distinguished, it is stated, according to 
the closeness of the relation of the contents of the series to the present busi- 
ness of the secretariat. Within the cajas the expedientes are filed in carpetas, 
which are sometimes numbered, and which generally indicate the subject of 
the expedientes and the section of the department from which they came. 
However, among the older papers there is a good deal of confusion, and the 
designations and dates on the carpetas are often misleading. 
A partial reorganization of the archive is being effected, which may result 
in a transfer of some documents to other cajas than those cited in this Guide. 
In such cases the date and the description of a given document will furnish a 
clue to its new location. (See Limites, p. 244.) 
*Reglamento para el Régimen Interior de la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, 
Feb. 11, 1883. Printed by the department in 1905. 
