ARCHIVES OUTSIDE THE CITY OF MEXICO. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
During and subsequent to the Spanish régime there has been contact of 
various kinds and degrees between territory now within the United States and 
numerous places in Mexico outside the capital city. In the earliest days what 
is now our Southwest was embraced in the extensive provinces of Nueva 
Galicia, Nueva Viscaya, and Nuevo Leén. Later, Sonora, Coahuila, and 
Nuevo Santander, set off on the north, each extended far across the present 
boundary between the United States and Mexico. The commandancy-gen- 
eral of the Interior Provinces, or the two commandancies of the East and the 
West, into which this was divided, embraced the whole northern tier of 
Spanish provinces. On the fiscal side, these provinces were for a long time 
within the jurisdiction of the intendancies at Arispe, Durango, and San Luis 
Potosi. On the ecclesiastical side, the whole of the north was at first within 
the jurisdiction of the diocese of Guadalajara, till it was parcelled out among 
the dioceses of Guadiana (Durango), Linares (Nuevo Leén), and Sonora, 
while much of the missionary work in our Southwest was conducted from 
provincial centres, such as the great Franciscan missionary college of Santa 
Cruz, at Querétaro, that of Guadalupe, at Zacatecas, and the Franciscan prov- 
ince of Jalisco, with its capital at Guadalajara. 
This general and incomplete statement of the various kinds of provincial 
jurisdiction which at different times was exercised over northern New Spain, 
is enough to make it evident that important materials for the history of the 
United States should be looked for in the archives of the various places which 
have been the seats of these jurisdictions, notably Guadalajara, Durango, 
Zacatecas, Querétaro, Chihuahua, Arispe, Monterrey, Monclova, and Saltillo. 
Another form of interrelation has resulted from mere contiguity, and some 
light on the long contact between territory on opposite sides of what is now 
the border is to be found, as a result of that contiguity, in the archives of the 
places nearest the northern frontier of Mexico. 
A few generalizations with respect to archives outside the City of Mexico 
may be made with profit. In the first place, all public archives, as those of 
state governments, of ayuntamientos and of jefaturas politicas, are subject 
to the authority of the governors of the states, and access to them can best be 
gained through these officials. Admission to the parish churches or other 
ecclesiastical archives is best gained through the supervising bishops. Of the 
archives of the states, the principal one is usually the Archivo General de 
Gobierno or the archive of the Secretaria de Gobierno. In each municipality 
there is an archive of the ayuntamiento, which is likely to contain the oldest 
civil and military records of the jurisdiction. The jefaturas politicas are of 
relatively modern origin, but their archives may contain old documents. Old 
legal instruments can usually be found in the protocol books of the notarias 
publicas (notary public offices) and in the juzgados. 
In the investigation which was made in the local archives, the emphasis put 
upon a given repository was determined largely by circumstances. The result 
is that in one place one archive and elsewhere a different one received the 
most attention. 
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