Estado de el “Old Spanish Archive” en 1918
Report of the Executive Secretary. Report of the Governor of Porto Rico. 1918. p. 82-3.
Old Spanish archives
The classification and indexing of the documents of these archives is slowly progressing, on account of lack of personnel. Only to employees are devoted to such work, and they very often have to be used for the prompt dispatch of other matters claiming immediate attention and which cannot be taken up by any other employee due to the conjunction congestion of work always existing in this office since the entrance of the United states into the war period during the fiscal year a total number of 4,479 expedientes were examined, an 11 files were formed with 709 classified expedientes, the balance of 3,770 expedientes having been set apart as without importance and useless forTny purpose. The total number of the new files now reaches 335, with 26,969 expedientes.
Two new rooms on the lower floor of the executive mansion were secured bv the undersigned for the purpose of placing there, in better conditions of ventilation and cleaning, the files containing the classified expedientes, and after said rooms were duly prepared and painted, those files were transferred to them and placed in proper shelves. But the remaining 8,000 unclassified files still are in the awful condition described in my last annual report.
Three hundred and ninety-two certified copies of the declarations made by Spaniards bom in the Spanish Peninsula to preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain were issued by this office in 1917-18, and the search for the original documents and the information given in other cases, verbally or by mail, to persons interested in said declarations, took a great part of the time of the archivist and his assistant. These certified copies were requested for the purpose of presenting them to the local boards in charge of the execution of the selective-service law, in support of claims of exemption from military service, generally made by the sons of the declarants, on the ground of foreign nationality.
The moths and the comejen are continuing rapidly their destructive work on the papers of the old régime. Notwithstanding the historical value of many of them, and the urgent appeals made by this office for a number of years to have said papers kept in a more suitable place than the one heretofore used for such a purpose, nothing has been done in that direction, and the complete loss of most of these valuable records will promptly be an accomplished fact, if some steps are not taken to avow it without any delay.
Year by year this office has requested:
(1) That these old records be removed to another government building where they may be kept and preserved in good condition; (2) that they be placed under the custody of the board of trustees of the Carnegie Library, where they properly belong; and (3) that a sufficient appropriation be made for such removal, keeping, and prservation, and fo rbrigingn to an end in the shortest time possible, the work of classification and indexing of the documents so that they may be available for future use.
From time to time statements have been given to the press as to important historical events mentioned in some of the documents examined, with a view of awakening public opinion and create some demand on the part of the people for a better prservation of these original sources of their history, but I have painfully to confess that this effort has not found the general support I was looking for.
I again strongly recommend that the above-mentioned measures be adopted so as to avoid the just criticism of the future historians of this island who will be prevented from using this excellent material when they try to reconstruct the events that happened in Porto Rico during the last centuries of the Spanish domination.
Original: On “The Old Spanish Archives”, Informe Gobernador 1918