Disclaimer and Usage Statement

This website contains faithful reproductions of the documents digitized by the Historic Archive of the National Police of Guatemala (the AHPN), as those materials were provided to the University of Texas. We received the records in response to a request formally made under Guatemala’s freedom of information law (Ley de Accesso a la Información Pública Guatemala, Decreto Número 57-2008, which took effect in 2009). The materials the AHPN prioritized for digitization, and therefore the ones included here, are primarily those that correspond to the periods of peak repression in Guatemala – roughly from 1975 to 1985.

The digitized documents are also publically accessible at the AHPN in Guatemala City. They were made public under the Ley de Acceso, including its article 24, which makes special provision for the unrestricted disclosure of public records in connection with human rights investigations. In the spirit of that law, we have made every effort to make these records, which are deeply pertinent to Guatemala’s recent human rights history, as accessible as possible.

The materials consist primarily of records originally generated by the National Police and may, of course, contain information or statements that are inaccurate, distorted or untrue. We have not made an effort to verify the content of the documents. As with all government records – especially those produced by repressive regimes – they may well contain material misstatements and distortions about the persons or events they purport to describe. We urge users of the site not to assume that the statements contained in the documents are accurate, although we do, as noted, warrant that the images contained herein are faithful reproductions of the images received from the AHPN.

Our goal, consistent with the missions of UT Libraries, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, is to make available through this site as accurate and accessible a copy as possible of this documentary record. We hope that investigators, researchers and other interested parties will use the record to draw their own conclusions and contribute to more fully informed conversations about the recent history of Guatemala.

If you have concerns or comments, please contact UT Libraries via the "Feedback" link on this site.