Under the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, the Puerto Rico General Archive was established by the Number 5 Act of December 8, 1955, amended, known as the Ley de Administración de Documentos Públicos de Puerto Rico. It holds more than 90,000 cubic feet of records including: text, visual (plans, maps, drawings), prints (newspapers, magazines), photographs, movies, and recordings in a variety of formats. Its mission is focused on gathering, overseeing, preserving, and making available part of the historical and patrimonial records of Puerto Rico. The record groups of permanent value that reside in their repositories are part of the cultural heritage of the country.
The records that conform the Puerto Rico General Archive’s repository come from government agencies, public corporations, the municipalities, as well as private and individual collections, from the XVIII Century to the present. As the official repository of all public records, the Archive assesses and accessions the public records of close to 130 government agencies and 73 municipalities. Ponce, San Germán, Mayagüez, Caguas, and Carolina are excluded because, due to agreements with the municipal authorities, they retain and manage their own records. The General Archive may evaluate and consider as well, any private collection which falls under the criteria for patrimonial or historical documental heritage.
The collections from the General Archives of Puerto Rico that initially gets incorporated into the PRAHA reside in the Photographic Archives. This is the repository for the images that register historical events, either individually or collectively, the daily activities, in politics, literature, and the arts. This archive is responsible for 150,000 holdings of visual material in different photographic mediums, negatives, slides, and a special post card collection.
The Puerto Rico General Archive is located at the Dr. Ricardo Alegría Building, #500 Avenida de la Constitución, in front of the Luis Muñoz Rivera Park in Puerta de Tierra
Contact Information:
Hilda Teresa Ayala
General Archivist
787-725-1060 ext. 2100
María Isabel Rodríguez
Archivist for the Photographic Archive
787-725-1060 ext. 2000
archivogeneral@icp.pr.gov
