In the Archives: History and Politics

In 2002, the Mexican government declassified a massive collection of intelligence reports. A new transparency law, the Ley Federal de Transparencia y Acceso a la Información Pública Gubernamental, released millions of pages of secret documents into the public domain. Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior gathered these spy reports throughout most of the twentieth century. The transparency law constituted a central part of Mexico’s political opening, as the approximately 71-year rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) gave way to a system of procedural democracy. Just as a culture of secrecy was essential to the PRI’s decades-long rule, the ‘principle of disclosure’ of the transparency law was one strategy by which the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) legitimated itself as a national party that led Mexico’s ‘transition to democracy’. The law transformed the politics of information in Mexico and was an important step towards the implementation of the Federal Archive Law in 2012, which streamlined guidelines for archival creation and consultation. With the transparency law, citizens, non-governmental organisations and branches of the state apparatus itself gained access to a wealth of information about post-revolutionary history. The impact was far-reaching. The secret police reports have been used in federal court to document past crimes; they have shaped debate about Mexico’s recent past in the public sphere; and they are now being used by scholars to reconstruct the history of the PRI’s long rule. Mexico’s modern intelligence system dates back to 1918 when President Venustiano Carranza (1917–1920) created the Servicios Confidenciales (Confidential Services), an office consisting of two-dozen people meant to gather information on the activities of his allies and enemies. This agency operated under the authority of the Secretarı́a de Gobernación (Ministry of the Interior); although we do not yet know the exact date when this agency came under the purview of Gobernación, documents indicate that it was the case since the 1920s. Initially led by military officers, the agency evolved throughout the 1920s and 1930s, changing names in 1924 to Departamento Confidencial (Confidential Department) and again in 1938 to the Oficina de Investigaciones Polı́ticas y Sociales (Office of Political and Social Investigation). The latter name change reflected the civilian oversight it acquired as its staff began to include local police officers, individual informants, and federal agents. During World War II, with greater need—and funds—for intelligence gathering, the agency was broadened and professionalised. In part because of Mexico’s increasingly closer ties with the United States, fascism and communism became two of the agency’s primary preoccupations. Maintaining the status quo was the other main priority and agents kept close tabs on social protest and political opposition. By the 1940s, as Aaron Navarro shows in his study of Mexico’s intelligence agencies, the services