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The "Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola Vizcaínas" was founded in the 18th century in Mexico City as a social action project aimed at protecting orphan girls and destitute women, one of the neediest sectors of viceroyalty society. The founders aimed to build and sustain an institution highly specialised in attending to the different nuances of women's suffering, focusing on the two most fragile moments of their lives: childhood, at the beginning of life, and old age, at the end. 

The founders' great social purpose meant that, from the beginning, they were concerned with recording institutional life and preserving it in documents, the product of a profoundly enlightened vision. At the school's inauguration, instructions were given to keep a detailed record book of the institution's development. In other words, the archive preserves complete, unique and irreplaceable information about an institution that had a positive impact on the society of its time, through the education and protection of women.

Due to its survival and continuity, the school's documents provide a unique testimony on the female educational process in Mexico from the 18th century onwards. The "Archivo Histórico de las Vizcaínas" (also known as José María Basagoiti Noriega Archives) was founded in September 1767, so that those in charge of the school could record its development. All documents relating to the school's administration, instruction and life (food, medical care, admissions, marriages, etc.) have been carefully preserved from its start to the present day. The documents are in the same place where they were generated, never having left their place of origin.

Due to the country's upheaval as a result of decreed disentailment laws during Benito Juarez Presidency, other schools and religious establishments enriched the archive with their documents: Colegios de Niñas de San Miguel de Belén; Colegios de Niñas de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad; Archicofradía del Santísimo Sacramento y Caridad; the Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de Aránzazu; the Congregación del Divino Salvador del Mundo y Buena Muerte, the latter part of the "Hospital de Mujeres Dementes" with the same name; as well as documents referring to the "Real Sociedad Vascongada de los Amigos del País". 

The archive also has a collection of music from the schools, stretching from the 16th to the 20th centuries, and around 1,185 volumes in its library, the oldest fonds of which come from women's institutions of the colonial period.

The School Fonds of the "José María Basagoiti Noriega" Archives were inscribed on the Memory of the World Regional Register for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2010 and on the MoW International Register in 2013.