¹ The author researched his Ph.D. dissertation and on occasion assisted in the organization work of the Fondo Gobernación from January to December of 1980.

² It was originally called the Secretaría de Estado y del Despacho de Relaciones Exteriores y Interiores. For a brief history of the Secretaría de Gobernación until 1913 see Bolton, Herbert E., Guide to Meteríais for the History of the United States in the Principal Archives of Mexico. (Washington, D.C., 1913): 316.Google Scholar

³ On occasion historians received special permission to enter the Casa Amarilla storehouse when a custodian was present, but the documents were piled up in such a way that it was all but impossible to consult many of them. Few historians tried. See Hutchinson, C. Alan “Research Collections on the Early Republic” Research in Mexican History: Topics, Methodology, Sources, and a Practical Guide to Field Research, ed. Greenleaf, Richard E. and Meyer, Michael C. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973).Google Scholar

⁴ This estimate is taken from Paul Vanderwood and Bryan, Anthony T. in “Research Materials for the Porfiriato” ibid., p. 161.Google Scholar

⁵ Herbert E. Bolton listed the composition of the major sections for 1913 in his Guide to Materials, pp. 347–348, and various Memorias published by the Secretaría de Gobernación did the same for other years, but these are not completely accurate guides to the holdings of the archive because other sections sometimes accepted part of the official section's workload, as mentioned above.

⁶ It is probable that a few more boxes will be added to each of the sections in the coming months because a small number of Secretaría de Gobernación documents may still be discovered in a temporary storage room at the Lecumberi ex-penitentiary.