Help needed to preserve Latin American genealogy records

by Marisa Treviño of of Latina Lista

My abuelita, Guadalupe, used to like telling all of us grandkids while she made us stand in line at the stove to receive a hot-off-the-griddle corn tortilla, that she invented Fritos.

She would explain how it was just a matter of cutting into strips a corn tortilla, deep-frying them, transferring the strips to a paper towel to drain the grease and topping them off with a sprinkle of salt or chili powder.

Of course, we believed her. Nobody in their right mind contradicted their abuelita, especially if they wanted to be first in line for a fresh tortilla slathered with butter that melted so quickly you had to slurp it from one end of the rolled-up tortilla.

So, you can imagine how a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram detailing how it wasn’t Grandma Lupe who invented Fritos but another Mexican immigrant by the name of Gustavo Olguin who sold his (eventual) multi-million dollar idea to a man by the name of Elmer Doolin, could be somewhat unsettling.

It seems Mr. Doolin took over Olguin’s corn chip business in San Antonio, reworked the recipe and as they say — the rest is history.

No one ever heard of Gustavo Olguin again — he just disappeared, a part of U.S. history, and not.

In fact, there are many Latino families who can trace their roots back only so far and, like Gustavo Olguin, find that their relatives just disappear due to poor record keeping in both Mexico and the United States.

But FamilySearch.org, a non-profit service sponsored by the experts of genealogical record keeping, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wants to correct that problem but it needs help.

The service needs 10,000 volunteers who can read both English and Spanish. The volunteers are needed to help index Mexican, Argentine and other Latin American records for the Internet.

FamilySearch has undertaken an initiative to digitally preserve and index millions of Latin American records that are now too difficult to access because they are either located on microfilm or in an archive.

The first project of the initiative is the Mexican census of 1930 and is being launched in cooperation with the National Archives of Mexico.

Now, people who want to research their ancestors in that census have to comb through 506 rolls of microfilm at a special library.

The project’s directors say that once the Mexican census project is completed, in about one year, people will be able to search for their relatives from their home computers instead.

But this is where the volunteers come in. They’re needed to index the records. The volunteers would spend as little as 30 minutes a week, on their own home computers, indexing the records by downloading one batch (one census page) at a time then typing in the information highlighted on the digital image.

When the project is completed, it will be a free, fully searchable online index of the 1930 Mexico Census and linked to the original census page images that are already found at FamilySearchLabs.org.

According to Paul Nauta, manager of public affairs for FamilySearch, "The 1930 Mexico Census is priceless to genealogists because it is the most recent, publicly accessible census for Mexico. It can provide an ancestor's age, birth year, religion, birthplace and occupation, explain an individual's relationship to family members and provide other family information."

The 1930 Mexico Census project is the first Latin American project for the web-based FamilySearch Indexing program. Yet, volunteer indexers have completed the Argentina census of 1895 and are scheduled to start the 1855 census.

Also underway is a four-year project to digitize historical land and property documents and wills of Paraguay and civil records of Nicaragua.

However, before beginning to trace the past, volunteers must register first at the FamilySearch indexing site.

Only by organizing all these records and putting them at our fingertips will it keep Latino family history from being forgotten or better, disappearing entirely.

It will also make it easier to contradict future claims from abuelitas — for those brave enough to do it.