Digital

Collections: Digital Peru

Oxford Research Encyclopedia (ORE)
José Ragas
Instituto de Historia - Catholic University of Chile

Summary and Keywords
This essay offers a comprehensive introduction to the digital collections available on the
internet related to Peruvian historical sources. Over the last two decades or so, scholars and
enthusiasts have found several ways to preserve historical documents, taking advantage of the
evolution of the internet and an expansive audience interested in such material. The
digitization of primary sources, however, has been far from being a passive process or a
technique confined to archivists, librarians, and historians. As I discuss in this essay, the digital
format has brought a revolution itself that has blurred the distance between experts and
amateurs and posed new challenges for the preservation and access to historical collections. In
order to reflect that complexity, this annotated catalogue comprises various types of sources,
like images, photographs, paintings, interviews, testimonies, TV commercials, etc. that have
been digitized and stored in multiple online platforms, such as various different social media,
Youtube, and SoundCloud among others.

Introduction: The Digital Disruption
Since the advent of the internet to Peru in the mid-1990s, cyber-users have explored
numerous ways to create and share historical sources and information once restrained to
physical spaces in archives and libraries (or that seemed irremediably unreachable in private
collections). As internet became more affordable and moved from basic websites to social
media and larger servers, both scholars and non-scholars have found new platforms to improve
the way they rescue and disseminate primary sources to an expansive audience. It would be a
fair assessment to say that the internet has changed the way we interact with primary sources,
therefore altering the way we write history. Furthermore, non-scholars, who are as fascinated
as historians with the possibilities offered by the cyberspace, constitute an energetic group that
is contributing to redefine the nature of sources with personal or family collections. By
providing a space to share written documents, images, photographs, and audio files, the
internet has actively contributed to blur the barriers between historians, archivists and
amateurs, paving the way for further cooperation and mutual learning.
“Digital Peru” offers a comprehensive and introductory map to navigate through the
numerous digital collections of historical sources on Peru that are available mostly in open
access. I do acknowledge the variety and complexity of these sources, from the digital
platforms that host them to the multiple backgrounds of those who organize, digitize, upload,
consume, and delete that material. Both Peruvians and Peruvianists have embraced every
innovation of the digital system in order to preserve and spread historical sources; from early
floppy disks to CD-Roms, they have learned how to expand the capacity to store data as well as
to increase the quality of the files. In a milieu characterized by the financial and logisitic
precariousness of archives and libraries, the internet offers an alternative to reinvent platforms
in order to organize and share documents, whether by individuals or libraries themselves.
 The transition from analog to digital platforms should be –and must be– celebrated but
also we need to address the new challenges posed for those involved in the preservation,
analysis, and dissemination of historical sources: How fragile are these platforms? How to cite
the documents encountered on the website? Would this effort reduce the illegal traffic of
documents? How could other institutions be motivated to digitize their collections and make
them available? Such analyses exceed the scope of this essay, because its goal is more modest:
to present a commentated list of the most important digital collections on Peruvian historical
sources (written, printed, visual, or sonic).
The essay has been divided into 4 sections, each according to the nature of the source
rather than to the type of platform where it is hosted (website, social media). A section on
general works is followed by sections covering documents, visual, and sonic sources as
independent formats. This is followed by a closing section where I suggest some directions to
keep pushing forward the digitization of documents (and attempt to provide some answers to
the previous questions). It will go against the very nature of the internet to say that this is a
closed list. On the contrary, I would really appreciate any insight and recommendation to
correct, improve, and update this catalogue periodically.

General Works
For those interested in a preliminary exploration of Peruvian digital sources, there are
three main repositories that can be consulted: Internet Archive, Hathi Trust, and Google Books.
The three of them complement each other, with materials from local libraries, content without
copyright issues, and aggregate items from other platforms. Although not all documents are
fully available, these servers enable internal searches and, if properly used, can guide initial
searches of primary and secondary material onto actual libraries and archives or other digital
platforms. Researchers may find some archive and library guides very helpful to navigate the
intricate universe of Peruvian primary documents.
Three key resources serve as a compass in this task. First, the “Guía del Investigador
Americanista en Lima,” prepared in 2012 by Gonzalo Zavala Córdova and Laura Amador Yarz for
Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos stands as a comprehensive map of the archives and libraries in
the capital city with short descriptions of their collections. Secondly, “Bibliotecas, Archivos e
Investigación Histórica,” a detailed account of the trajectory of Peruvian collections by Pedro
Guibovich, and published in 2002. Finally, the website Red de Archivos y Bibliotecas del Perú
offers news and alerts on national documents.
With half a million pages digitized annually, the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú is the
leading entity in this process since it was implemented in 2007. Its collections, which dates back
to the nascent Peruvian republic in the 1820s comprise a vast variety of formats, now available
through an improved website, from manuscripts to audios, photographs, song sheets and even
early nitrate films. This work has been possible due to the sophisticated equipment installed
inside the library: a laboratory with professional cameras, planetary scanners, and operated by
trained personnel. Only between March and December 2017 nearly sixty thousand visitors
consulted the online collections. any of whom were from Peru, but also from the United States
and other countries in Latin America and the Philippines.
Both the national government and university presses are slowly embracing Open Access
content for books and publications. Government websites are not exactly the most friendly to
navigate and the content is not always easy to get access. Nonetheless, there has been some
interesting initiatives from areas like the Ministry of Environment with the publication of an
environmental history of Peru in 2016, and the Ministry of Development (MIDIS) with a
collection of oral traditions gathered from senior citizens nationwide. The National Jury of
Elections published two volumes of an ambitious history of elections in Peru between 1931 and
2011. The Central Bank has joined these efforts with its five-volume survey of Peruvian
economic history that runs from the Pre-Columbian era to the 1960s. The Ministry of Culture is
currently centralizing digital collections that belonged to former government branches in
charge of the patrimony prior to its creation in 2010. Public universities like the UNI (acronym
for the National University of Engineering) has continued digitizing the books that
commissioned on the history of science and technology in the 1990s, and collecting new
material concerning to the past of that institution. The impressive inter-disciplinary catalogue
of the Instituto Seminario de Historia Rural Andina can be used by scholars from their
computers.
From the private sector are some good projects to make the transition to open digital
platforms. Fundación BBVA, a long time sponsor of the Fine Arts, has uploaded its extensive
catalogue of annotated printed sources, edited volumes, and coffee table books devoted to the
Peruvian culture (i.e. the works of laureate poet César Vallejo). Some research institutions
already have been uploading their catalogue of both sold out publications or shortly after the
print versions appeared. The Universidad del Pacífico (UP) has liberated some of its publications
while the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP), founded in 1964, has the largest catalogue of
books on social sciences in open access, with nearly 500 publications. Instituto Francés de
Estudios Andinos also hosts some publications in this format. Instituto Riva-Agüero has
introduced a helpful chronology of the Peruvian Independence prepared by students and
directed by Dr. Margarita Guerra as well as an edited volume on the history of medicine, which
was received with a remarkable reception. The Universidad Católica press took advantage of
the political juncture to release two important books on memory and human rights: Claudia
Rosas Lauro’s El odio y el perdón en el Perú, siglos XVI al XXI, and María Eugenia Ulfe’s Cajones
de la memoria. La historia reciente del Perú a través de los retablos andinos. Universidad de
Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) is sponsoring the digitization of several volumes of documents
originally published in the early 1970s and now under a digital format in anticipation of the
Bicentennial of the Independence in 2021. Scholars have also ventured themselves into the e-
book format, reaching a broader audience, like Aldo Panfichi with his family history of
immigration from Italy to Peru.
Periodicals have gone through a similar treatment, and some of them are available
through digital platforms or alternative spaces. Whereas the books and monographs often
constitute single volumes, in the case of periodicals, it is difficult to have the full collection;
even in hard copies or in one single location. Two emblematic magazines edited by left
intellectuals can be consulted online. One of them is Amauta (1926-1930), directed by José
Carlos Mariátegui and one of the most important publications in Latin America. The other is El
Zorro de Abajo. Revista de Política y Cultura (1985-1987), that articulated the left intelligentsia
amid the economic and political crisis of the 1980s. Other magazines that are being rescued
from oblivion and are waiting for their digital conversion, are those published in the second half
of the 20th century by organizations affiliated to the Confederación Campesina del Perú.
 A non-exhaustive list of scholarly journals uploaded to the web are: Apuntes, a bilingual
journal of social sciences published since 1977; Elecciones, the journal of the National
Organization of Electoral Processes (ONPE in Spanish) with a section devoted to the history of
elections in the country and Latin America; Histórica, since 1977; Revista Andina, the leading
regional journal published since 1983 by the Centro Regional Bartolomé de las Casas (the issues
are available online until 2007); Revista del Instituto Riva-Agüero, the renewed digital
publication of the Instituto Riva-Agüero; and Revista del Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales
(since 1995) and Revista del Instituto del Seminario de Historia Rural Andina (2017), both edited
by the National University of San Marcos.

Documents
There are some major collections, many of them from public institutions, that have built
digital platforms with primary documents. The Archivo Digital de la Legislación Peruana, hosted
by the Congress, is one of them. Originally distributed in a CD-Rom setbox in the early 2000s,
the archive facilitates the search and the subsequent PDF file of any law emanated from the
Congress since 1820. The Archivo General de la Nación has an interface for searches in
important sections during the Viceroyalty, especially the notary’s protocols. Other special
collections, like Superior Gobierno, Cabildo de Lima and the Raimondi Collection, have been
already digitized and will be uploaded soon. The Archivo Histórico Domingo Angulo, the
institutional repository of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, has begun to share
some of its jewels on a Facebook fan page. A recent catalogue of the documents gathered by
Rubén and Vargas Ugarte, a father and son historian duo, can be consulted in an online guide.
Three important documents for the colonial period are available in national and international
websites. Two of them are chronicles, the Historia General del Perú by Martín de Murúa and
the Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno by Guaman Poma de Ayala, an extensive letter addressed
to the King of Spain denouncing the abuses committed by local authorities, can be found in a
facsimilar version, thanks to the Royal Danish Library. Finally, the Libros de Cabildo (1534-
1627), whose originals are in the Archive of the Municipality of Lima, have been digitized by
such institution.
There is a special group of books and manuscripts that illustrate the relevance of digital
dissemination. Those are the books and documents sacked from Peruvian libraries and archives
during the conflict with Chile and the occupation of Lima (1879-1884). The major archives and
collections were decimated and their collections shipped to Santiago de Chile, in a number that
some conservative estimations put in numbers as high as the ten thousands. Only as recently as
the last decade have both countries made attempts to return those pieces. In January 2018, I
was invited to see the collections held in the vault of the National Library, and I could see nearly
4,500 books that had been located in Chilean institutions and sent them back to the National
Library in San Borja, Lima. These “veterans of paper” have ameliorated the relationship
between both countries, a relationship that has tense since the war. The symbolic repatriation
of the books in 2002 and 2017, and its subsequent digitization is an example on how open
collections can create an emotional bond between society and patrimony.
The most notorious absence in the corpus of documents are newspapers. Peru had a
robust number of newspapers since the late 18th century, when Mercurio Peruano appeared as
an iconic version of the local Enlightenment. This number grew exponentially over the years not
only in the capital but nationwide. They are spread out in a myriad of locations, under different
conditions. A project led by Natalia Sobrevilla in 1999 and sponsored by the British Library
helped local and regional archives to catalogue and preserve their own issues. With an
incomplete and unreliable collection of major newspapers, these remain as one of the less
digitized printed sources. World Newspaper Archive, which counts with digital copies of the two
most important and long-standing papers, El Comercio (since 1839) and El Peruano (since 1821),
is behind a paywall. John Carter Brown and Instituto Riva-Agüero offer some alternatives to
this. John Carter Brown’s newspapers include issues of El Diario de Lima (1790-1793), Gaceta
del Gobierno Independiente (1821-1826), Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima independiente (1821-
1826), La Patria en duelo (1829-1833) and El Peruano (1811-1812). Instituto Riva-Agüero, on
the other hand, has digitized twenty newspapers published between 1811 and 1921. El Deber, a
conservative Catholic paper published in Arequipa between 1890 and 1962, can be accessed in
its entirety from the web.
The recent online publication of the “Augusto B. Leguía Collection” by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs triggered the curiosity for other presidential archives, digital or not. Unlike the
United States, or Chile, in Peru personal and official papers of Presidents do not exist. The
Augusto B. Leguía Collection is exceptional: it covers his three tenures (1908-1912, 1919-1924,
1924-1929) with correspondence, speeches, memos, pamphlets about his government, and the
role of his opponents in 1930. The documents remained in the Palace of Government during
the turbulent years of the Great Depression and then they were transferred to Cancillería.
The photographic archive of President Fernando Belaunde Terry (1963-1968, 1980-
1985) is available from the website of San Ignacio de Loyola University. A photographer who
worked for the House of Government has shared his visual archive of the late 1990s, when
Alberto Fujimori (1990-1995, 1995-2000, 2000-2001) was in the government. Other collections,
like the one of José Luis Bustamante y Rivero, has been donated to the Universidad Católica San
Pablo along with his personal library, and it is likely that they be digitized in the following years.
Moreover, the BNP has announced that personal papers and manuscripts from Manuel Pardo y
Lavalle, Mariano Ignacio Prado, Andrés Avelino Cáceres, Nicolás de Piérola, José Luis Pardo y
Barreda, Augusto B. Leguía, Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro, and Bustamante y Rivero will soon join
its digital collection.
For a country with such a vibrant political activity, it is unfortunate that political parties
and organizations do not count with their own archives, physical or digital. Scholars have
reconstructed the trajectories and participation of such entities and their members digging into
several archives and interviewing their leaders and cadres. For instance, APRA (American
Popular Revolutionary Alliance), the oldest political organization in the country, does not count
with an archive of its own. Other parties like PPC (Popular Christian Party), AP (Popular Action)
have shown little interest in gathering documents or information about their past. With
historical leaders passing away in the last years without giving a testimony or transferring their
papers to an archive, this part of the past seems to be lost right in front of our eyes.
The left has been a little more concerned in generating a digital memory on the web,
especially on Facebook. The renowned intelectual José Carlos Mariátegui has a digital archive,
which contains material pertaining to his own vital trajectory as well as to the early phase of
socialism in Peru and Latin America. Patria Roja, one of the many organizations split from the
original Communist Party of Peru, has been sharing varied material via Facebook. Participants
of these movements, like Gustavo Espinoza, have uploaded memoirs of particular episodes. The
most ambitious effort corresponds to “La izquierda peruana (archivo documental),” where their
administrators have uploaded magazines, pamphlets, news clips, and photographs from private
collections. Working class organizations, like the Federación de Obreros Panaderos – Estrella
del Perú, one of the oldest anarchist cells in the country, have digitized its archive, making
available its own minute books as well as an important number of newspapers through its
website, i.e., La voz del panadero (1921), El Panificador (1947, 1974), El Hambriento (1905-
1910), Los Parias (1904-1910), and Simiente Roja (1904) among many others.
Foreign institutions have been also active participants in the preservation and online
dissemination of collections pertaining to Peru, whether digitizing their own collections or
providing funding to Peruvian scholars and entities. Some of these are located in the United
Kingdom and include papers from the years after the Peruvian Independence. But some of the
most important records belong to the tumultuous 1980s with detailed reports about the 1990
electoral campaign where an unknown Alberto Fujimori defeated the laureate novelist Mario
Vargas Llosa. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), American agencies have been
releasing documents that were once considered reserved and secret. One of these entities is
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had an active role in protecting the interests of the
United States and participating in disruptive foreign policies. The papers on Peru reflect this
particular interest over several decades, but this is particularly evident during the Cold War.
Wikileaks also contains documents on the U.S. and its influence in Peru that go back to the
1970s. Besides diplomatic documents, the Cornell Vicos Project, one of the most important
examples of applied anthropology in the Andes, has uploaded its impressive photographic
collection (the papers, though, need to be consulted on site at Cornell University).
Endangered Archives Program deserves a special mention. It has been one of the most
important and consistent digital initiatives for the last decade and a half, with at least a dozen
of fellowships in Peru to rescue, organize, and digitize manuscripts, newspapers, images,
correspondence, and other variety of documents in the capital city and other regions. The EAP
provided the necessary funding and logistic resources to explore and scan such materials,
exposing scholars and archivists to new techniques and audiences. Not all the projects resulted
in the digitization of the historical records but they provided a significant step in this direction:
its organization and cataloguing, which can lead to make them available online in further
projects. One of the most ambitious projects is related to the Historical Archive of the San
Marcos National University (EAP507), which converted into digital format nearly twenty-six
thousand pages of theses (bachelor and doctoral) defended in the School of Medicine between
1857 and 1920. Another, awarded in 2017 (EAP1049), seeks to digitize the formidable colonial
and early republican records held at the Welfare Society, which consists in documents ranging
from “hospitals, religious brotherhoods, and the Cemetery General.”

Images
Both public and private institutions have built digital platforms based on their own art
and photographic collections. Among the public entities, the Congress of the Republic has
digitized its impressive photographic archive with thousands of images that illustrate the
political life of the country. The images have been arranged to be searched according to the
name of the congressman or congresswoman, his or her congressional term, as well as other
figures that visited the Congress. Until August 2016, the Twitter account “Dr. Otorongo Pics”
selected aleatory photos from this archive and shared them with its followers. Unfortunately,
the Municipality of Lima has not shown significant efforts to make its rich collection of paintings
and photographs available to users. Of the three thousand historical images, videos and
microfilms that the Municipality houses, only 21 images are available through its website.
Instead, a book with paintings from its art gallery has been uploaded but the images are low-
quality and hard to appreciate. The Presidency of the Council of Ministers has a Flickr account
with portraits of its presidents since the early nineteenth-century to 2016. Centro de la Imagen
has shared a small yet representative sample of its 14 collections of historical photographs, that
depict Lima and regions (i.e. Puno and Marañón), Japanese immigrants, and everyday life.
The most ambitious digital gallery corresponds to Archivo Digital de Arte Peruano –an
initiative of the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), the Peruvian photographer Daniel Giannoni, and
the Ministry of Culture (MinCul) – with images covering a chronological arc from pre-Columbian
times to the present, and with a vast thematic variety. Similar in scope is the photographic
archive of El Comercio, the leading newspaper founded in 1839. Over the last four years, the
paper has digitized 15 thousand images so far; the 1% of its archive between 1955 and 1995.
Photographs and ads are distilled on a daily basis through its Facebook fanpage, accompanying
the images with captions and comments, especially to mark anniversaries. Communication
companies like Telefonica and its patronage to Peruvian arts through Fundación Telefónica
have a visual database of twelve thousand photographs taken between 1924 and the early
1930s, with material to reconstruct the history of the telephone in Peru. More photographs and
visual documents like postcards can be also accessed from the virtual collection of the Instituto
Riva-Agüero, with special images referred to the 1950 Cuzco earthquake, the Amazon, or the
rural estates in the Northern coast. Colonial religious murals are also digitally preserved, thanks
to projects like “Painting Beyond the Frame,” a project promoted by Cornell Art History scholar
Ananda Cohen Suarez. A similar project, coordinated by professor Almerindo Ojeda (UC Davis),
the Project on the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art (PESSCA), also focuses on colonial
art, and plans to incorporate Artifical Intelligence in the next stages. Particular works like the
watercolors commissioned in the late 18th century by Bishop Baltazar Jaime Martínez de
Compañón in Trujillo are available online. Social media provides an alternative way to upload
and share visual material with people. Arkiv Peru is a project that started in the early 2000s and
that obtains images and videos from various sources, mainly magazines, newspapers and
Youtube, organized in blog posts around specific topics.
Visual representations of the Peruvian territory, either as a colony or as a Republic, may
be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, with maps from the 18th to the early 20th
century. Other maps are also available at the John Carter Brown Library and the Perry-
Castañeda Library at the University of Texas, Austin. One of the most complete collections of
regional maps is Juan Günther’s Planos de Lima, 1613-1983 with thirty maps and only available
in printed version until a few years ago. Other maps are more specific and have been unearthed
just recently, like the one designed to build a subway in Lima in 1928, which never happened,
but rescued from the archive of the Ministry of Labor in 2009. While not exactly a historical
source, “Domains: The Colonial Spanish American Digital Jurisdiction Project” is extremely
helpful for teaching. It is
 a digital project developed by historians of the Florida International University in
conjunction with its GIS Center, Maps & Imagery User Services.
From a regional perspective, Lima Antigua, a Facebook fan-page with nearly 150,000
followers, shares daily historical images of the city for didactic purposes (its administrator,
Vladimir Velasquez, who also works in the Ministry of Culture, and organizes guide tours for
school children to teach them about urban patrimony). Since early 2016, the members of the
“Antiguas haciendas de Lima” Facebook group, share varied information, mostly photographs
and maps, of the several haciendas that existed in Lima before its rapid urbanization. El Callao,
Lima’s main port, has been also attractive enough to deserve autonomous projects with
photographs that portray its intense commercial activity (i.e. the Facebook fanpage
“Publicaciones comerciales en el antiguo Callao”, its heterogeneous population and its vibrant
social life (i.e. “Antiguas ‘crónicas’ del Callao”). Some regional initiatives in social media are
helping to curb this gap between Lima and the other regions. Archivo Histórico de Lambayeque
shares visual documents from the past of the region through a Facebook fan-page from
magazines, private collections, like the pictures taken by the German ethnologist Hans Heinrich
Brünning. “Antiguas Fotos de Chiclayo” pursues a similar purpose for Chiclayo, the capital of
Lambayeque. “Tingo María, Ayer y Siempre” gathers material for this region located in the
Amazon.
It is also possible to find visual documents focused on social groups in an effort to
preserve their memory utilizing public archives and family collections. Since the mid-nineteenth
century, many immigrant communities established in the country in various waves, being the
Chinese immigrants the largest one. Precisely, the Facebook fanpage “Familias de la
Inmigración China en Perú”, portrays –as it is suggested by its title– family pictures from the
community along with information about their members. “Jiritsu” is the equivalent for the
Japanese community in Peru, especially for those who arrived from Okinawa. Along with
pictures –obtained from magazines–, the fanpage informs abut social activities or traditions of
their members. Another important community, the Italians, have also their own fanpage
(“Fototeca de la Inmigración Italiana”), with portraits and social pictures in regions like Huacho.
Not exactly a collection per se but some images of the 3,500 items from the “Archivo de Dibujos
y Pintura Campesina” can be found [here]. These drawings were originally designed between
1984 and 1996 by the NGO Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER) in ten events, where participants
were asked to draw their “experiences, customs, knowledges, and expectations.” Last not but
least, the “Archivo Digital de la Memoria Yanesha” aims to gather any material referred to the
collective history of the Yanesha, a group in the central Amazon.
The early history of photography in Peru was concentrated in photo studies, first located
in the capital city and then nationwide. One of the most important promoters of photography
in the country was Eugenio Courret. He arrived in the 1860s from France and opened a photo
studio which became very popular among Limeños until 1935. The Biblioteca National custodies
more than fifty thousand glass-plate negatives, which were distributed among Courret’s
employees after the closure of the studio (according to Keith McElroy, other 10,000 plaques
belong to a private collection). Two other important photographers, who operated in Cusco and
Ayacucho respectively, were Martín Chambi and Baldomero Alejos. Both archives are managed
by their families and heirs, with support of private and public institutions. While Chambi offers
a powerful visual history of the Inca capital in the first half of the twentieth century, Alejos’s
pictures –which were recovered not a long time ago– invites us to rethink the slow
transformation of Ayacucho before the political violence engulfed the region.
Universities have become key recipients of these collections, like the one of Carlos
‘Chino’ Domínguez, a photographer based in Lima, and responsible for some of the most iconic
political pictures of the last century. For sixty years, his camera captured the essence of the
Peruvians. Before he passed away in 2011, he organized his own archive of one million
negatives and solds it to Universidad Alas Peruanas. The TAFOS (Taller de Fotografía Social)
Project was an original initiative to approach photography with society. Founded by Thomas
and Helga Müller in 1986, the project sought to distribute photographic cameras and
equipment to local dwellers so they can document their daily life. The initial setting was El
Agustino, a poor Lima district and in the next twelve years, it expanded to other regions,
organizing more than twenty workshops. Roberto Huarcaya, a Peruvian photographer, has
called TAFOS a “project of visual inclusión” and its [Instagram account] holds more than three
hundred images, all of them properly captioned. The photographs are in custody in the
Universidad Católica del Perú.
A less explored sources are those produced by TV broadcasting company news agency
information. For its 60th anniversary, TV Peru, the official TV broadcasting station, has launched
a mini-website with some information about the history of the company and the television in
the country accompanied with clips from past programs. The site showcases the variety of
programs, both nationals and imported, that were broadcasted over the last sixty years (i.e.
cartoons, news, sports, interviews, comedies) and its transition from black & white to digital
today. This effort, nonetheless, has not been followed by other private broadcasting
companies, whose archives can date back to the late 1950s. Fortunately, other initiatives are
rescuing a particular visual source: TV commercials. The YouTube channel created by Graficar
Studios started gathering TV commercials but most recently has expanded to reportajes and
specials, with more than 1,300 videos in total. The bulk of the TV commercials cover a range
between the early 80s and the late 1990s (with a few of them in black & white from the 1960s),
a period signaled by the return to democracy, political violence, economic crisis, and structural
financial adjustments in Peru.

Audio
The Peruvian sonic landscape has not received, unfortunately, the same attention paid
to both their visual and printed counterparts. Several factors can explain this: the
predominance of print and visual sources, the long-term preference of scholars and population
for such formats, and the late arrival to record and digitize them. It does not mean that there
have not been important initiatives (both private and public) in this field. Radio Nacional del
Perú, the oldest broadcasting station in the country, has embraced this mission since the
historical memory of the radio in Peru has to be “updated and preserved, [and] communicated
with determination and perseverance.” Its initial collection includes a varied body of images
and audio records produced in the station over these decades as well as others related to the
history of radio broadcasting in the country, including vanished genres like radio commercials
and radionovelas.
Youtube, as well as other open digital platforms (i.e. SoundCloud), have enabled
enthusiasts and collectors to upload their own music files to the web due to its free and easy to
manage formats. Chalena Vásquez, a researcher of Peruvian music, created her own Youtube
channels with audios from past and most recent vernacular songs. A sub-set of these videos
come from the Arguedas Collection, with audios from different parts of the country recorded in
the 1960s. The impressive work of José María Arguedas (1911-1969) in promoting the national
folklore and rescuing this material, which he recorded originally in three vinyls, can be fully
appreciated here. Other platforms that shared digitized material of música criolla, a music style
played in the central and northern coast in the last century, belongs to Pepe Ladd and Archivo
Fonográfico Peruano. Both the National Library (BNP) and the Biblioteca Patrimonial Recoleta
Dominica in Chile house a particular source for the history of music in Peru: the music sheets
written by Bernardo Alcedo, the composer of the National Anthem, who lived in both countries.
The collection comprises popular songs (“La chicha”) and other religious compositions.
The voices of prominent and ordinary Peruvians have also been rescued and preserved
in several platforms. In Radio Nacional we can find some recordings from presidents (Juan
Velasco Alvarado, Fernando Belaunde Terry, Manuel A. Odría), politicians (Víctor Raúl Haya de
la Torre), and artists (Nicomedes Santa Cruz). Other examples of intellectuals readings their
work (i.e. Sebastián Salazar Bondy, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Martín Adán) can be found in the
Library of Congress. “Archivo de Memoria Oral” is a new projects that incorporates less known
voices, like those from professors and students from San Marcos National University (UNMSM)
–especially between 1945 and 1960, when a new influx of students from lower classes changed
the social profile of the public University in the country. The Tarapaqueños, a group of
Peruvians with a tragic history of disarray, diaspora, and subsequent oblivion, can be heard in
the short documentary: “Los tarapaqueños peruanos: testimonios de su historia.”

Discussion of Related Research Tools and Future Directions
As internet continues evolving and developing new spaces and ways to interact with the
cyberspace, as do scholars and others interested in the past. Although public libraries, archives
and cultural institutions lack the funding they deserve, some of them have made important
achievements in developing and maintaining digital platforms and making them accessible to
users in the country and abroad. Some publishers have found an open access a way to combat
piracy (a very extended practice in the country) and release parts or the full content of their
publications soon after they are published in paper. Senior scholars, not necessarily familiar
with the new digital system, have experienced a broader audience that otherwise had confined
their works to libraries and bookstores. Along with this optimism, digital platforms pose new
opportunities but also new challenges.
For instance, the temporary disapparition of the massive Truth and Reconciliation
Commission Final Report (originally published in 2003) in February 2018 from the cyberspace
illustrates the paradox involving digital collections in Peru. One of the most important online
documents of the history of the country, whose maintenance depends on the Peruvian
government, can disappear without any further explanation. (A few years ago the government
also refused to reprint its abbreviated version, Hatun Willakuy despite it promised to respect
the document and the recommendations given by the Commission). Likewise libraries and
archives, digital collections are also exposed to risks like deletion or disappearance, sometimes
by their own administrators or by other parties. (Political motivations are sometimes behind
these attacks.) In other cases, lack of funding or a sudden change of membership policies can
turn these collections difficult to find or even to recover by their owners. Scribd, once the
preferred platform to share digital content, has established a paywall, leaving users without
and affordable option to access the documents stored there.
The events associated with authoritarian regimes or political violence, like the one
experienced in Peru between 1980 and 2000 is another reason to promote digital history and
the free access of historical sources related to this period. Along with the Final Report of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission we can also find important material hosted in the website
of the Lugar de la Memoria, that includes some of the original testimonies given by the victims
of such violencia as well as newspaper clips, TV reports, a graphic novel by artist Jesús Cossio,
and documentary films. Confidencias de un senderista (1982) is one of the first visual
documents of the political violence, commissioned by the Peruvian Army to disseminate a
narrative about the Shining Path. Some other initiatives include “Hurgar en la Memoria,” a
Twitter account that provides context to primary sources of those years. Likewise, Ojo Público,
an investigative website, has a special section on memory with data and information designed
for a broader audience. The case of forced sterilizations that took place in the 1990s has its own
digital archive in the Archivo de “Programa Nacional de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación
Familiar (PNSRPF)” given the absence of official documentation.
Digitization of documents has turned into an unstoppable force among scholars,
librarian, archivists, and enthusiasts. Nonetheless, in order to optimize what collections should
be digitized, they need to be done well while respecting property rights. Scholars and experts in
digital documents should encourage enthusiastic citizens to preserve their family collections
and digitize them; maybe via occasional workshops or tutorials. Digitization can also be an
instrument to connect scholars to a broader audience and teach them the relevance of
historical documents. They can do so being respectful of personal and family collections and
stressing their relevance for the national memory. Funding remains a key and sensitive aspect
in this process, and it is also important that institutions gain access and learn how to apply
external funding, like the one offered by the Endangered Archives Program and other entities.

Acknowledgements: I want to thank to Stephanie Wood for inviting me to submit this piece.
Julio Abanto, Laura Martínez Silva, Patricia Palma, Fred Rohner, Bárbara Silva, and Javier Torres
Seoane provided important relevant information and feedback to improve earlier versions of
this essay. I also want to thank Kenia Murguia for revising a previous draft and provide great
feedback.

Links to Digital Resources

General Works
Guía del Investigador Americanista en Lima (2012)
[Link]

Pedro Guibovich. “Bibliotecas, Archivos e Investigación Histórica” (2002).
[Link]

Red de Archivos y Bibliotecas del Perú
[Link]

Historia Ambiental del Perú, siglos XVIII y XIX (2016)
[Link]
[Link]

Tradiciones orales de los adultos mayores del Perú
[Link]
mayores-del-peru-abierto-3

80 años de elecciones presidenciales en Perú. 2 vol. (2013)
[Link]
[Link]

Banco Central de Reserva del Perú – Compendio de Historia Económica del Perú. 5 vol.
[Link]

Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería – Centro de Historia UNI
[Link]

Seminario de Historia Rural Andina – Digital Library
[Link]

Fundación BBVA
[Link]

Universidad del Pacífico – Fondo Editorial
[Link]
editorial/catalogo?k=%20PortalFETipoPublicacion:%22Descarga%20gratuita%22

Instituto de Estudios Peruanos - Repositorio
[Link]

Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos (IFEA)
[Link]

Margarita Guerra M. Cronología de la Independencia del Perú (Lima: Instituto Riva-Agüero,
2016).
[Link]
[Link]

Claudia Rosas, ed. El odio y el perdón en el Perú, siglos XVI al XXI
[Link]
[Link]

María Eugenia Ulfe’s Cajones de la memoria. La historia reciente del Perú a través de los
retablos andinos
[Link]
[Link]

La rebelión de Tupac Amaru – Nueva Colección Documental de la Independencia del Perú
[Link]
t%26Atilde%[Link]

Aldo Panfichi & David Castillo Roque. La familia Panfichi. La Guerra del Pacífico y Tarapacá, la
“provincia cautiva”. Perú: 1907-1927
[Link]

Amauta. Lima, 1926-1930
[Link]

El Zorro de Abajo. Revista de Política y Cultura. Lima, 1985-1987
[Link]

Archivo y revistas de la Confederación Campesina del Perú
[Link]
[Link]

Apuntes. Revista de Ciencias Sociales (1977-)
[Link]

Elecciones
[Link]

Histórica
[Link]

Revista Andina
[Link]

Revista del Instituto Riva-Agüero
[Link]

Revista del Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales
[Link]

Revista del Instituto del Seminario de Historia Rural Andina
[Link]

Documents
Archivo Digital de la Legislación Peruana
[Link]

Archivo General de la Nación
[Link]
[Link]

Archivo Histórico Domingo Angulo – UNMSM
[Link]

Colección Rubén Vargas Ugarte – Catálogo de los manuscritos
[Link]
vargas-ugarte#.WvoXu9MvxE4

Guaman Poma de Ayla. El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno
[Link]

Libros de Cabildo
[Link]

José Ragas. “Veteranos de papel retornan a casa: Los libros devueltos por Chile al Perú”.
[Link]
nacional-del-peru

World Newspaper Archive
[Link]

John Carter Brown – Peruvian newspapers
[Link]
Peruvian+newspapers

Instituto Riva-Agüero - Newspapers
[Link]

El Deber (Arequipa)
[Link]

Archivo Particular del Presidente Augusto B. Leguía
[Link]

Archivo fotográfico Fernando Belaunde Terry – USIL
[Link]

Fujimori Photo Family Archive. (From: Ana Núñez. “Los Fujimori: fotos íntimas del archivo
familiar,” Somos. Revista de El Comercio (2017).
[Link]

Archivo José Carlos Mariátegui
[Link]

Archivos para la historia de Patria Roja
[Link]

Gustavo Espinoza Montesinos. Una heroica lucha. En el 50 aniversario de los episodios del año
60. Lima: Arteidea, 2010.
[Link]

La izquierda peruana (archivo documental)
[Link]

Archivo Federación Obrera
[Link]

British Library
[Link]

United Kingdom National Archives
[Link]
&paymentAmount=0&paymentCurrency=GBP&paymentStatus=0&mac=0

CIA – Documents on Peru liberated by the Agencia FOIA in early 2017
[Link]

Wikileaks
[Link]

Vicos Project – Cornell University
[Link]

Endangered Archives Program
[Link]

Images

Congreso de la República – Photos
[Link]

Municipalidad de Lima
[Link]
icipal/archivo%[Link]

Pinacoteca Municipal Ignacio Merino
[Link]

Galería Histórica Fotográfica de Presidentes de Consejo de Ministros desde su creación
[Link]

Centro de la Imagen
[Link]

Archivo Digital de Arte Peruano
[Link]

El Comercio Archive
[Link]
477042?foto=7

Fundación Telefónica
[Link]

Instituto Riva-Aguero – Colecciones
[Link]

Religious Murals of Colonial Peru
[Link]
colonial-peru

PESSCA – Project on the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art
[Link]

Arkiv Peru
[Link]

Bibliothèque Nationale de France – Gallica – Maps of Peru
[Link]
=%28gallica%20all%20%22map%20peru%22%29&lang=en&suggest=0

Juan Günther. Planos de Lima, 1613-1983. Lima: Industrial Gráfica S.A., 1983. 30 maps.
[Link]
60458951

Mizael Huamaní Coello. “Proyecto para el Subterráneo de Lima (1928): Presentación de
documento inédito,” Grupo de Trabajo Historia del siglo XX. Lima:
[Link]
[Link]?m=1

The Colonial Spanish American Digital Jurisdiction Project
[Link]
197b9bb95

Lima Antigua
[Link]

Antiguas haciendas de Lima
[Link]

Antiguas “crónicas” del Callao
[Link]
_b7BAdby1CUntW1osjMjwBfOafKX0s

Publicaciones comerciales en el antiguo Callao
[Link]
rVIdhNfm5CZs2hnJpKn2xxSEkXWtdKPmEi1Ysln_RSDGh4s&fref=nf

Archivo Histórico de Lambayeque
[Link]

Antiguas Fotos de Chiclayo
[Link]

Tingo María, Ayer y Siempre
[Link]

Familias de la inmigración China en Perú
[Link]

Jiritsu
[Link]

Fototeca de la Inmigración Italiana
[Link]
517713051590195/

Archivo de Dibujos y Pintura Campesina, 1984-1996
[Link]
de-nuestra-tierra-en-la-biblioteca-espana-de-las-artes-del-centro-cultural-de-san-marcos/

Archivo Digital de la Memoria Yanesha
[Link]

Courret Archive
[Link]
Per%C3%BA-
188309544572577/?hc_ref=ART3XPvkY49tkfkEoF2RsVXdOVx552_Rj55GvfgRASuGJw2BGTJXuIT
biVkIUUAcHdE

Martín Chambi
[Link]

Baldomero Alejos. Archivo fotográfico, Ayacucho 1924-1976
[Link]
Facebook [Link]

Carlos ‘Chino’ Domínguez
[Link]
search?filterquery=%22Chino%22+Dominguez%2C+Carlos&filtername=author&filtertype=equal
s

TAFOS/PERU
[Link]

TV Peru
[Link]

TV Commercials (since 1989)
[Link]

Audio

Radio Nacional del Perú
[Link]

“Waylarsh. Imágenes de archivo (1960s)”. Colección José María Arguedas, Centro Documental
de la Escuela Nacional Superior de Folklore.
[Link]
[Link]

Archivo fonográfico peruano
[Link]
[Link]

Bernarzo Alzedo Music sheets collection
[Link]
[Link]

Library of Congress – Audio Recordings - Peru
[Link]

Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos - Archivo de Memoria Oral
[Link]

Los tarapaqueños peruanos – Testimonio de su historia
[Link]

Memory and Political Violence

Hurgar en la Memoria (Twitter)
@hurgarmemoriaPE

Lugar de la Memoria (LUM) – Centro de Documentación e Investigación
[Link]

Confidencias de un senderista. Lima, 1982
[Link]
1982?irgwc=1&content=27795&campaign=VigLink&ad_group=1772060&keyword=ft500noi&so
urce=impactradius&medium=affiliate

Ojo Público – Memoria
[Link]

Archivo de “Programa Nacional de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (PNSRPF)”, 1996-
2000
[Link]