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UF helping preserve Cuba's archives



UF helping preserve Cuba's archives
By CARRIE MILLER
The Gainsville (Fla.) Sun

April 17, 2001

GAINESVILLE -- The University of Florida libraries are poised to undertake an ambitious rescue operation in Cuba -- preserving three centuries of handwritten history deteriorating in that country's National Archives.

Historians are eager to examine what are known as the Notary Protocols, 10 million handwritten pages that tell the story of colonial Spain in the intimate details recorded by a notary: the colonists' births and deaths, wills and marriages, property deeds and ship manifests.

It's hard to overestimate the significance of making the documents available, said John Ingram, director of collections and the principal researcher on the
project.

``I am convinced that the `Protocolos Notariales' in Cuba's archives will assume their rightful place of global importance for New World history and culture,'' Ingram said. ``These records will truly open a window in time.''

Scholars here in Florida will be particularly interested in the protocols, which span the 16th through 19th centuries, because similar records from the state's Spanish colonial period were destroyed when the United States
invaded Florida in the early 1800s.

After two decades of interest, the university and the Cuban National Archives last month reached an arrangement that will allow the university to send researchers to microfilm the documents and perform digital scans, Ingram said.

Plans call for making as many of them available on the Internet as Cuba's government allows.

But Bruce Chappell, an archivist at the university, said because there are tensions between the U.S. and Cuban governments, ``it's still possible that there could be problems, and this could come to a halt at any moment.''

Archiving the documents and making them available to scholars outside Cuba will be ``a big feather in the cap'' for the university, already a leader in collecting and preserving material from the Caribbean and Latin America,
Ingram said.

Pedro Malavet, a University of Florida law professor, has written extensively on the role of the notary in Spanish colonial life, which he characterized as
``even more important than a lawyer.''

Long before zip disks and computer drives, notaries were required to keep copies of every record they notarized for the entirety of their lives, and to keep them in good condition.

The penalty for lying in a notarized document was death.

Malavet, who is researching the historical treatment of race in Puerto Rico, said reading between the lines on notary records is relevant to his work because they show who was allowed to buy houses and where they were allowed
to buy them, who was able to buy slaves and which slaves were freed.

``Racial discrimination is difficult to prove by records,'' Malavet said.
``But this is information that makes that kind of analysis possible.''

The University of Florida must still find grant money to pay for the project.
But Ingram said he was confident that private foundations will pay for a pilot project early next year, as well as the eventual full-scale archiving, because the documents are so significant and many are in danger of being lost
to decay. ``I've seen some of the tomos or volumes, and some of them are in a condition I would liken to a very well-tatted piece of lace,'' Ingram said.
``There are many holes, and the paper is very fragile and will soon be lost entirely.

When you see history and information that is likely not available anywhere else, you can't help but be affected.

``I've been in this business 24 years, and you don't want to see these things disappear.''
Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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