On September 18, 1928, José María Arboleda Llorente began cataloguing the Former Central Archive of Cauca, a collection that documented the administrative and political development of one of the most prominent territorial entities in national history, whose greatest extent encompassed 70% of present-day Colombian territory: the Government of Popayán during the Colonial period, or Province of Popayán; the Sovereign State of Cauca; and the Department of Cauca during the Republic. The documentation accumulated over more than 300 years reflects not only local history but also that of all the affiliated municipalities which, under a centralized administration, sent copies of their various proceedings to the city of Popayán.

Since there were no established archival science guidelines at the time to determine how historical documents should be catalogued, Arboleda Llorente devised his own system, grouping the documents by period (Colonial period, Independence, and Republic) and, in turn, organizing them by topics and subtopics. Likewise, each document was assigned a topographic number, and a cataloguing record was prepared containing the sender’s and recipient’s information, a brief summary of its contents, date and place of origin, number of folios, and observations. These elements resulted in one of the most comprehensive cataloguing systems for historical archives in Latin America.