The José Ingenieros Popular Library, founded 1st July, 1935, is one of the three historic establishments of the anarchist movement in the city of Buenos Aires. It offers a large quantity of archive and library material on the anarchist and the workers’ movements. Until recently, maintenance work on the building and the construction of additional space were being carried out in order to improve the conservation and the availability of this source of documents to militants and researchers who visit us from around the world. At the moment, this work is at a halt due to the lack of funds.
Our History
The José Ingenieros Popular Library was born in July of 1935. This fruit of a brief liaison between anarchist and socialist militants, nonetheless, upon its first move to a building in Santander Street, experienced the withdrawal of the socialists from the Library, thus leaving it in the hands of the libertarians, the majority of whom belongs to the Shoe Workers’ Federation adhering to the Argentinean Regional Workers´ Federation (FORA).
Many and varied have been the activities carried out in the Library; those of philodramatic groups, student groups, the editorial group of “La Protesta”, the Association of Free Education (ADEL), the Jaen Cinema Club, the commission of aid to those imprisoned and pursued during the most recent military dictatorship as well as offering a meeting place for union members, feminists, antimilitarists, antifascists and anarchists in general.
Many and varied have also been the people who have participated in its cycles of conferences and talk-debates; the first conferences were presented by Rodolfo Gonzales Pacheco and Alicia Moreau de Justo, and Eduardo Colombo, Noam Chomsky, Rene Loureau, Jorge Solomonoff, Guillermo Savloff (the driving force behind ADEL, murdered by the Argentinean Anticommunist Alliance), H.I.J.O.S. (sons and daughters of the disappeared during the most recent military dictatorship), Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Christian Ferrer, Oswaldo Bayer, Angel Capelletti and Alberto Bianchi are some who have left their impressions in the Library.
History of the Archive
For around the last fifteen years a group of various people have been putting together the Archive of the José Ingenieros Popular Library. With a lot of effort, it has been given shape, partly thanks to the material that has been accumulated in the Library during its almost 70 years of life, and in large part thanks to the donations of militants, family members, researchers and/or friends, who have generously given up a part of their story in order to allow many others to reconstruct a large amount of history. Today, we have at disposal more than 1,000 catalogued collections of newspapers, magazines and bulletins from 1880 to the present. We estimate that this represents 50% of all the material of the archive. Also books, pamphlets, booklets, hundreds of photographs, flyers, letters, internal memoranda of organisations, posters, circulars and minutes-books etc. are to be found.
A large part of the material of our archive comes from two sources; one being that which Hernán Vela, an old militant no longer physically with us, collected during his life and has since been delivered to us by his family, and the other being originally from the personal archive of Juan Vera, which himself, a man of considerable culture, donated to us. We believe it important to mention and thank them as well as all the others who momentarily escaped our memories.
During these years we have also digitalised different collections, among others the Certamen Internacional de la Protesta (in collaboration with the Centre for Documentation and Research of the Culture of the Left in Argentina – CeDINCI, edited on CD-ROM), the Suplemento de la Protesta (1908-1909) and the Suplemento Quincenal de la Protesta (1927-1930), which are to be edited on CD-ROM. We have projected the digitalisation of La Antorcha (1923-1932) and the completion of the cataloguing of the materials we have for within the next few months.
The Project: Additional Space for the Archive and Maintenance Work on the Building
At the beginning of October of 2005, after years of not having had sufficient space for realising the activities of an archive, we started the construction of additional archive space. From having a room of 22 m2 (234 ft2) and 52 m3 (1872 ft3) that served as reading and work space as well as storage room for our collections, we now have reading and meeting room (projected to be used as a multimedia space with internet connection and facilities for film projection) of 26 m2 (280 ft2) and an independent, semi-hermetic storage room of 22 m2 (238 ft2) and 66 m3 (2342 ft3) in order to be able to keep the material more adequately. Therefore the storage room now rests on a concrete slab capable of sustaining 650 kg / m2 (140 lb / ft2). Construction costs were Argentinean pesos 30,000 ($ 10,000). However, at the moment, this work is at a halt due to the lack of funds; the electricity plant has yet to be installed, and shelving and the basic elements to make a multimedia space function must still be acquired. Furthermore, the main room of the library has a serious leak in its terrace roof, which puts its collection of books at risk and therefore must be repaired.
For this reason, we are appealing to the solidarity of the compañeras and compañeros of the whole world to be able to continue developing our activities of propagating our ideology and sustaining our cultural struggle.
e-mail: biblioteca_pji@yahoo.com.ar
Webpage: www.nodo50.net/bpji
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Having carried out the works of construction to create a larger space for the archive’s storage room and a separate reading and multimedia space at the cost of Argentinean pesos 30,000, the following work and items are outstanding:
in the archive:
paint: pesos 660 / $220
electricity plant: pesos 5,500 / $1830
computer:
PC: pesos 2,750 / $915
scanner: (A3)
digital camera: pesos 550 / $185
shelving: pesos 2,200 / $735
in the library proper:
paint (terrace roof impermeabilisation) pesos 330 / $110
electricity plant: pesos 2.200 / $ 735
audiovisual:
DVD: pesos 330 / $ 110
sound: pesos 2000 / $ 665
TOTAL: pesos 16,520 / $ 5505
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Buenos Aires, June 2006
The commission for the Alfredo Seoane Archive
The administrating commission for the José Ingenieros Popular Library