Historical Archive of the National Police of Guatemala

The discovery of the National Police Historical Archive in 2005 opened an extensive and timely resource for the study of Guatemalan history and human rights in the region, spanning a broad array of topics from Guatemala’s armed conflict between 1960 and 1996 to the sexually transmitted disease experiments performed at the behest of the United States government in the 1940s.

This digital archive, which currently includes over 10 million scanned images of documents from the National Police Historical Archive, mirrors and extends the physical archive that remains preserved in Guatemala as an important historical patrimony of the Guatemalan people.

The AHPN Digital Archive is a collaborative project of the University of Texas’ Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, and Benson Latin American Collection, with the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala.

The digital archive was unveiled at a 2011 conference, Politics of Memory: Guatemala’s National Police Archive.

We hope this resource will serve to promote a better understanding of the social and political history of Guatemala and will facilitate the search for truth and respect for human rights in the region.