Guatemala National Police Archives Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN)

History and Founding

The Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional (AHPN), or Guatemala National Police Archives, was discovered on 5 July 2005 when employees of Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman office (Procuraduría de Derechos Humanos, PDH) entered an abandoned munitions depot on a police base in downtown Guatemala City to investigate improperly stored explosives. Inside five deteriorating buildings, they found nearly 8,000 linear meters of police records—approximately 80 million pages of documents belonging to the defunct National Police, covering more than a century of its activities from the late 19th century until its dissolution in 1997. The Guatemalan government and police had long denied the existence of these records, including before UN-backed and Catholic Church truth commissions in the 1990s. In September 2005, Gustavo Meoño Brenner assumed coordination of the rescue and organization effort. In December 2009, the AHPN was transferred to the Ministry of Culture and Sport and placed under the direction of the Archivo General de Centroamérica (AGCA), Guatemala's national archive. In July 2015, the AHPN celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Collections and Holdings

The AHPN constitutes one of the largest single repositories of police records in Latin America, holding approximately 80 million pages of documentation from 1882 to 1997. The collection is central to understanding the role of Guatemala's security forces in the country's 36-year internal armed conflict (1960–1996), including political assassinations, kidnappings, torture, and forced disappearances. By end of 2013, more than 15 million pages had been digitized. The AHPN opened a public reading room in 2009 and published fourteen research volumes between 2010 and 2018. In December 2011, in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin, over 10 million digitized pages were made publicly available online at ahpn.lib.utexas.edu, representing the most intensive period of conflict, 1975–1985.

Notable Materials Related to Journalism and Media

The archive contains detailed surveillance files on journalists, human rights advocates, and civil society figures compiled by the National Police. It has served as a source for investigative journalism, academic research, and criminal prosecutions related to war crimes committed during the armed conflict.

Access and Usage

Physical access to the archive is available at the Avenida La Pedrera site in Zone 6 of Guatemala City by appointment. The digital collection is freely accessible online at ahpn.lib.utexas.edu. Researchers may also contact the Archivo General de Centroamérica (AGCA) for assistance.