Hi Friends,
As some of you may know from reading last week’s roundup, I was accepted into this summer’s Guerrilla Archiving Program in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic!
I wanted to take a moment to share a little more about the program, why this opportunity means so much to me, and why I’m asking for your support. I also put together this short video, where you’ll hear directly from Profe Sophia Monegro, founder of Black Hispaniola and the Guerrilla Archiving Program, about the work we’ll be doing this summer.
Thank you, as always, for reading, sharing, and supporting my work! It truly means the world to me <3
In Community Always,
Queer Archivist
Black Hispaniola Mission
Black Hispaniola llc preserves archives & disseminates digital stories about African descendants across the Dominican Republic. We collaborate with community and cultural memory workers to preserve, maintain, & digitize documents. We specialize in preserving endangered archival collections in remote regions of the Caribbean, creating digital archives, curating transnational educational exhibitions, & engaging in digital storytelling.
Black Hispaniola’s Guerrilla Archiving Program (BHGAP)
The Guerrilla Archiving Program helps rural communities preserve and digitize endangered documents while providing broader digital access. Following post-custodial archiving methods, we recover endangered archives by establishing trust with the sage community and bringing together students, librarians, and archivists from the U.S. and universities across the Caribbean to learn archival protocols for repairing, digitizing, and categorizing documents in the field, without removing materials from the community. Our conservation initiative is dedicated to preserving and digitizing endangered archival materials and cultural artifacts while providing an experiential learning space and a skill-sharing platform for memory workers, library scientists, students, activists, organizers, and educators.
Last year’s cohort partnered with the library to repair, scan, and catalog its primary source material, creating a lasting inventory and digital record of the collection. While these materials remain under the stewardship of the library, a selection of digitized items were also contributed to the Black Diaspora Archive at the University of Texas at Austin, increasing access to Caribbean histories for researchers and communities across the diaspora!
Biblioteca Renovación in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
The Biblioteca began as a social organization and played an essential role in nineteenth-century struggles against Spanish colonialism and abolition, and in networking amongst intellectuals, such as the Caribbean freemasons, an erudite social group. The Caribbean Freemasons’ extensive archive in Puerto Plata is currently deteriorating at the Biblioteca. This archive includes minutes from lodge meetings, the founding articles of a school for girls, certificates, letters, and correspondence from the War of Restoration against Spain. Historically, the cultural and intellectual production of the Caribbean shook the world. In 1804, the first successful revolt of enslaved people in the hemisphere was achieved by people of African descent in what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic--Ayiti, the island’s Indigenous name. The Ayitian revolution shaped politics, ethics, and philosophy across the Americas. The intellectual production of African descendants — their strategizing, humanist convictions, and systematic resistance — circulated globally, impacting emancipation campaigns and fueling enslaved African descendants’ freedom dreams across four continents. The world’s connection to Ayiti’s knowledge profoundly shaped how we conceptualize freedom today; this knowledge production is what Guerrilla Archiving seeks to revive.
Why is Guerrilla Archiving Different?
Rarely do initiatives prioritize preservation work outside the global west. The British Library has an “Endangered Archives Programme,” but the initiative hosts preserved artifacts on their library servers. The Guerrilla Archive Program differs in its dedication to enabling local communities to shepherd their own materials by strengthening existing collections in the Global South and teaching youth and local partners how to maintain them digitally.
The Guerilla Archiving Program will preserve and digitize all the primary sources and rare books at Biblioteca Renovación (about 5,000 unique archival objects) and make them available on the library's website. We will build out the library's beta website, which launched this January 2026 and currently hosts none of the library's materials.
Your Donations Contribute to BHGAP this Summer
This summer, the Guerilla Archiving Program will travel to the Biblioteca Renovación in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Funds raised will go toward airfare, lodging, and the purchase of an overhead scanner that we will donate to the partnering institution at the end of the program cycle, leaving behind a resource that will support their ongoing archival work for years to come!
