THOUSANDS of pages of government documents from the Spanish colonial administration of the Mariana islands are now available for use by researchers in the commonwealth thanks to a recently completed project by the NMI Council for the Humanities, a media release stated.
The project, administered by the NMI Museum of History and Culture and funded by a council grant, involved locating and photocopying Marianas-related documents held in the Philippine National Archives in Manila.
Spanish officials in the Philippines assumed administrative control of the Marianas from Mexico in the early 1800s, and, as a result, the bulk of the Marianas documents in the Philippine National Archives date to late 18th and 19th centuries.
The painstaking work of sorting through dozens of bundles of fragile documents and preparing photocopies of pertinent materials was completed under the direction of Dr. Augusto de Viana director of the research, publication and heraldry office of the Philippine National Historical Institute.
The resulting documents, numbering more than 30,000 pages, are contained in 45 hard bound volumes. Museum staff members are currently scanning these documents with the aim of having a digital version of the collection available online.
Once scanning work is completed, the bound volumes will be turned over to the NMI Archives where they will be available for public use.
The impetus for the project came from council board chairman Herman T. Guerrero who routinely uses Spanish historical documents for his genealogical research.
Although copies of some of these documents are available at the Micronesian Area Research Center on Guam, they are difficult and costly to access. Guerrero’s suggestion to initiate a documents acquisition project was subsequently adopted by the council’s board in 2003 with copying work commencing soon after.
The council is planning a follow up project to locate and copy additional pertinent Marianas documents that were missed during the initial work.
The Spanish documents project is one of several supported by the council intended to make accessible primary source materials critical to the serious study of local history.