Archivo General de la Nacion Mexico and familysearch.org

I have records/data from the Archivo General de la Nacion (Valparaiso, Sombrerete, Zacatecas, etc) which I find very helpful. My records were extracted from the Archives themselves and sent to me by a friend. Unfortunately I have had little luck in trying to find out how to locate and use the Archivo General de la Nacion; their website is not user friendly and so far useless for me. I emailed the Family History Center that I use and asked how to use the Archive General de la Nacion, and I obtained the following response, which I will use in my investigations of the Archivo General:

Search for the Saldivars and Introduction of new membership

Greetings and Salutations to all ,

My name is Welester G. Alvarado and I hail from Los Angeles , California now living in Monterrey , Mexico . I came here almost six yrs. ago to spend one year looking for family and to continue my family search .

New files for San Miguel El Alto and Valle de Guadalupe

Hello, I am Maureen Bejar and I have two new files located in members files.

The first is the Alviso line from Nuestra Senora de La Asuncion, San Miguel El Alto and Valle de Guadalupe. This includes surnames of Alviso, Gonzales, Dias, Sanchez, Paulin, Araujo, Garcia, Alvares, Ortiz, Vasques, Gallardo and Becerra.

Conquista del Reino de Nueva Galicia en la América Septrentrional

The Library of Congress has a lot of documents, books and manuscripts on their website. One manuscript of particular interest to this group is the title in my subject line, written by Mexican lawyer, Matias de la Mota Padilla in 1742. It is hand-written, but very legible. It contains a lot of names of people and places dating from the Conquest to 1742 in Nueva Galicia. The link to the Library of Congress is already in the links section. You can find the book by clicking on "Collections" and then browsing through the list of Selections from the National Library of Spain.

Grupo sol y Mar

Just a little Mexican musical history lesson for you...if you are interested in this music, you can refer to my two sites, www.elsondelpueblo.com or www.gruposolymar.net. John Robles

John,

Too bad I didn't know you were in this group sooner. I have heard it advertised on the radio here in San Jose and not knowing what type of musical instruments or type of music, I never gave it a thought. The next time you are going to be in the San Jose area, please do let us know so we can come to your performance and hopefully meet up with you.

African Influenced Music in Mexico

----- Original Message ----
From: john robles john9ten@pacbell.net

That is a subject that interests me, as although I have never mentioned it here before, I play arpa jarocha, the folk harp from Veracruz, Mexico, and the music from that region, the son jarocho, has a heavy African influence in the rhythm, certainly, but most pointedly in the singing style. Traditional son jarocho

"Re-thinking Conquest: Spanish and Native Experiences in the New World"

I saw this announcement concerning a lecture to be held next week at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Is anyone familiar with the speaker, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto?

News from the Library of Congress

Contacto sobre don Mariano González-Leal

Saludos otra vez Ivonne:

Gracias por contestarme, no fue mi intencion que se molestara.
Usted me escribio que era una tesis, y generalmente de las tesis se
hacen solo algunas copias para entregar a la biblioteca de la Universidad

Foods from Africa, Burt Wolf Travels

Yesterday while mostly listening to the TV on my local PBS, Burt Wolf had a segment on the food and people migrations from Africa and the impact they had on the Americas. I found it extremely interesting considering that some of the foods mentioned such as yams, peanuts, bananas and watermelon are still some of the main staples of both the Mexican and American diets.