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ENGLISH by Oona Thommes Paredes Oona Paredes is completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Arizona State University page
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Applying for the TNI will be your first face-to-face contact with the state archives. While there is no need to dress formally, do dress presentably enough to demonstrate that you are a responsible person who will respect their archival treasures. With your TNI, you will be legally bound to follow all their rules, which were designed to preserve their collection for future generations. For example, under no circumstances are you allowed to wield anything containing ink inside the sala (try a mechanical pencil instead). Inside the sala of the AGI, there are armed guards who will not hesitate to remind you of this. A final practical matter is that each state archive has its own modus operandi and its own peculiarities. General information about the state archives (hours, services, directions, special advisories, etc.) is available through the section on Archivos on the website of Spain’s Ministry of Culture, at |
http://www.mcu.es/archivos/index.jsp. Take careful note not only of their opening hours, but also the schedule for ordering documents, the maximum number of documents you can order at a time, and the normal schedule for photoduplication services. There may be busy days when you find yourself on the waiting list, but never despair because there is always some turnover of work stations during the day. For example, the AGI is most crowded in the weeks immediately before and after Sevilla’s world-famous observance of Semana Santa (Holy Week), but the longest I ever had to wait during that period was one hour. For a relatively thorough orientation to the kinds of primary Philippine materials that can be found in Spanish repositories, I highly recommend the compilation below. Like a travel guide, it is by no means exhaustive, and provides only general information on the collections. It is nonetheless the only source I know that provides all this information in one place, and in my case it was invaluable for determining where to focus my research.
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Patricio Hidalgo has other publications relevant to Philippine studies, though they are mostly bibliographic compilations, including a companion guide that lists repositories of primary sources located outside Spain. (I have not seen this particular guide, but it is no doubt useful.) The Guía de Fuentes is available in Spanish (and soon in English) through Digibis (Madrid) at http://www.digibis.com/catalogo.htm. The Digibis catalog also carries several CD-Roms – part of the Clásicos Tavera project – that compile many classic publications from the Spanish colonial period; it is therefore an important resource for anyone with an interest in Philippine history. For those with concerns about ordering online from Spain, my experience with two separate credit-card orders was uneventful, and I received my orders (in the U.S.) within a few days. In both cases international shipping was already factored into the cost of each item. Archivos Españoles en Red The Ministry of Culture in Spain is engaged in a long-term project to digitize and make available online their wealth of archival records. To this end, they have established the Archivos Españoles en Red (Spanish archive network) or AER, located at http://www.aer.es. Access is free of charge; you need only sign up for an account (click on Alta de Usuario), upon which you will be issued a TNI number exclusively for online use. Please note that this number has no relevance offline
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– you will still need to apply for a “real” TNI to use in the physical archives. Once you are logged on, you should explore this website as much as possible. Under Enlaces de Interés you will find some very informative links on archival research in general, and there is a bulletin board called the Foro de Investigadores through which you can ask all and sundry questions of other AER users. Under Búsquedas you can run systematic searches of the AER database, and the search results can be saved for future reference in your very own Agenda del Investigador. Try using the search engine or browsing through the catalog section by section. The escalator-like symbol next to a title indicates that there are subfolders, and the camera symbol indicates some digitized content in one or more subfolders. No special software is required to view the documents, and for ease of viewing you are allowed to manipulate the images to a certain extent (contrast, zoom, tone, etc.). All told, the AER is a tremendous resource, but no system is perfect. Bear in mind that, as with anything computer-related, there will be occasional glitches in the system, and at times the browser will unexpectedly freeze and shut down. The
most relevant section will be the Documentos e Imágenes Digitalizadas,
through which you will find a partial catalog of documents drawn from
various archives and digitized images of many of the these documents.
If a document has been digitized, you will |
normally be unable to touch the original document due to preservation concerns. However, the quality of the AER’s digitized images is equal to what you would see at the actual archive. It will take time to get used to reading such documents on a computer screen (online or at the archives), but the resolution almost always exceeds anything that you may get as a printed image. Although they are all part of the same system of Archivos Estatales and therefore follow more or less the same cataloging system, specific style will differ slightly from archive to archive (including the AER, which is also accessible at the various archives). By browsing through the AER, you will learn how each archive is conceptually organized, and eventually you will learn which sections are most relevant to your work. Click on the Archivo General de Indias, for example, and you will learn that there are different Secciones containing very different sorts of documents; those pertaining to the Philippines are not limited to a single Audiencia de Filipinas. Other archives directly relevant to Philippinists are the Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN) and the Archivo General de Simancas (AGS). With regard to differing citation styles, i.e., to find the same document in the physical archive, take note of the catalog information that is provided in the full AER listing.
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As an example, let us consider a document from 1632 in which the Procurador General of the Recoletos, fray Pedro de San Nicolás, informs Bishop Arce of Cebu of “various crimes committed in the province of Caraga [eastern Mindanao] by some of its natives.” This document refers to the Caraga Revolt of 1631, which is indexed as La sublevación de Caraga. Below is the information that appears on the AER catalog listing for this document. Archivo
Histórico Nacional |
Fuentes de Información: Pescador del Hoyo, M.C. 'Documentos de
Indias...' This part of the website is under constant development, and each month brings new additions. At the time of writing, the Philippine images are relatively limited, and the AER contains only a small percentage of all documents that have already been digitized. Moreover, only a very small percentage of all Philippine and other documents have been digitized. But what is already available through the AER is of unquestionable value to researchers, as well as those preparing to undertake archival research. |
A Few Words about Sevilla Before we move on to the AGI, a few words about its geographical location. The city and province of Sevilla, in the Autonomous Community of Andalucía, is where the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) was established in 1503 to regulate commerce, navigation, and many other matters related to the colonies. Nearly everyone and everything (including Magellan) went here first. The main colonial archive, into which the records of the Casa de Contratación were eventually incorporated, was established here two centuries later. Sevilla is a beautiful, magical city that will inspire you to formulate more historical research projects just as an excuse to return. Of course, you will then have to do the actual research, but that’s life. Andalucía is also the home of the peculiar Andaluz speech pattern, which can only be described as Spanish at warp speed, so fast that whole consonants get thrown by the wayside. For example, the question Cómo estás, Tomás? (How are you, Thomas?) will end up sounding like Cometá Tomá? Oddly, they also add consonants where there are none, e.g., the word edad (age) becomes hedad, with a hard h. If your name is Jesús you will be called Jesú. If you want two or three of |
something, be prepared for do and tre. And sometimes you will not know if you are being addressed in familiar or formal terms (quiere and quieres will sound exactly the same). At the AGI in Sevilla, many of the staff will speak this way. So will almost every food service worker in every eating establishment in the area. Just get used to it. If you are staying in Sevilla for several weeks or months, there are many affordable apartments or rooms available for rent, except during Semana Santa. Many of these are advertised online, and almost anywhere within the Centro of Sevilla is walking distance to the AGI. To gauge distances on a map, the distance between the AGI and the Plaza de Cuba (in barrio Triana, across the Guadalquivir River using the closest bridge, San Telmo) is roughly ten minutes at a leisurely pace. Almost any point within the barrios of Santa Cruz and Arenal is only five minutes away by foot, while those of San Vicente and Macarena may be ten. With all the walking you will do, I should also warn you against eating the oranges off those pretty trees that line the streets: the fruit is so bitter, even animals will not eat it. An option for researchers to consider is the Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos (EEHA). It houses a respectable research library (though with only a handful of Philippine books) and has a Residencia |