Archivo Nacional de Chile

Overview

The Archivo Nacional de Chile is the country's national archival authority, based in central Santiago beside the National Library. It holds a normative and supervisory role over archival processes across Chile's state administration and leads the National Archives System (SINAR), which unites the National Archive with the country's growing network of regional archives.

History

Chile's first proposal for a national archive dates to a presidential message of July 9, 1844. The Oficina de Estadística, created in 1847 under President Manuel Bulnes, first took on physical and intellectual control of public documentation. The Archivo General de Gobierno was formally organized in 1887 under the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction, later merging with the manuscript section of the National Library and judicial archive records to form the Archivo Nacional de Chile. In 1925 the archive became an independent institution as the National Library relocated to its current site. The archive later operated under the Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos (DIBAM), succeeded by the Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural. In 2017, Law 21.045 establishing the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage also created the National Archives System (SINAR), and regional archives have since opened in Araucanía, Tarapacá, and, in 2021, Atacama.

Collections, Holdings, and Publications

The Archivo Nacional Histórico safeguards more than 100,000 boxes and volumes of colonial and nineteenth-century records, including documentation of the Real Audiencia, colonial notaries, and the Cabildo de Santiago's founding records dating to 1541, alongside personal collections of figures such as Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna. The Archivo Nacional de la Administración holds more than 480,000 boxes and volumes of twentieth- and twenty-first century government records, including collections from multiple Chilean presidencies and state enterprises. In 2024 the archive launched an online SINAR catalogue unifying search across the National Archive and its regional counterparts.

Access and Usage

The National Archive provides archival guidance, training, and document-transfer procedures to Chilean public institutions, and its historical holdings, including the Human Rights collections documenting the 1973-1990 dictatorship, are accessible to researchers and the public, largely through digitized and catalogued materials.