Augmented Archive: Connected History, Digital Design, and US-Guatemalan Borderlands

This study centers the joint United States Public Health Service-Guatemalan Syphilis Study (Cutler Papers) in 1946-1948 to examine how the digitization of these papers formatted a digital borderland between the U.S and Guatemala. I argue this digital borderland, created from the collaborative investigation of Guatemalan and U.S researchers and archivists, offers a case for what I call augmenting the archive—a composite expansion to preserve the historical materials of these biomedical experiments. As Laura Putnam suggests, text-searchable technology has become the “unacknowledged handmaiden of transnational history”, disconnecting data from place thereby disrupting the ethical and structural constrains which anchor historical data to institutions.^[1] Building on this framework, the Cutler Papers illustrate how digitization projects solve inaccessibility often encountered by lay public and academic groups in Guatemala including, funding, location, and time constraints. However, the present digital archive remains inaccessible as an unsearchable block of text and files rather than individual letters, documents, and tables. The archive requires organization, translation, selection of metadata, and visualization. I demonstrate that the operative processes for augmenting the archive are the result of innovative labor deployed by researchers on both sides of the border—Guatemala and the U.S—who negotiate their decisions transnationally to make the history of the Guatemalan syphilis experiments “usable” and “accessible.” My presentation will examine key moments of disruption, translation, and negotiation in the effort of formatting the digitized Cutler Papers to show how transnational exchanges contribute to shape the archive. The objective of this iterative project is to advance the information design of historical materials to transform and enhance research as well as educational practices centered on primary sources.

^[1] Putnam, Lara. 2016. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast.” The American Historical Review 121 (2): 377–402. pg. 377