This project is the manifestation of a collaboration between Guatemala's longest-standing human rights-based NGO, Grupo de apoyo mutuo (GAM), and Haverford College Libraries. GAM was founded in 1984 during the internal armed conflict by a group of family members in search of their disappeared loved ones. This relationship began with a Haverford professor who partnered with GAM when performing research in Guatemala. Both parties identified a need towards preserving GAM’s archive, and the collaboration was subsequently established. The main goal of this project is to create a digital platform for GAM's physical archive of the Disappeared before it begins to seriously detiorate, as well as to promote historical memory. Following a post-custodial archival model, this aspect of our project entered a new stage during Summer 2018 with a group of Guatemala-based staff and student researchers.
The project has continued to grow and evolve over the past couple of years. In addition to hiring three new compañeros, Haverford has continued to support the GAM project by providing funding for students to continue their work on the project from the academic year during the summer. These projects have taken on a variety of forms, including research on nonviolent resistance efforts taken by the GAM, the voices of women and mothers in the archive, and a process of demographic analysis to depict who is in the archive, among others.
