PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS

 They are called the Notary Protocols, and to historians and lovers of ancient manuscripts this vast, moldering record of life in Cuba dating to 1578 is a treasure of
 knowledge more precious than any hoard of Spanish doubloons.

 But the 10 million pages of the protocols -- which could shed light on early settlement in Spanish Florida and on shipments of Africans sent to the United States as slaves -- are housed in the non-air-conditioned National Archives of Cuba in Havana where heat, humidity and insect attacks threaten them.

 Their uncertain fate is why an unlikely alliance of book fans, preservation experts and archivists in the United States has been quietly at work, attempting to rescue the vast collection of documents relating births, deaths, marriages, church records, tax receipts and business deals over the centuries.

 Jeanne Drewes, an archivist at Michigan State University who helped ship an entire mobile book repair lab to Havana this month, says the situation with the supply
 strapped Cuban archives is grim. "An 82-year-old woman was copying with a pencil on very bad paper the content of one document to preserve the intellectual content. It just broke my heart.''

 Leading this effort to help -- which transcends the decades of enmity between the two nations -- are archivists at the University of Florida.

 The school signed a contract in March with Archives Director Berarda Salabarría to start copying the 15.5 linear miles of the protocols, contained in 6,658 oversize tomos (volumes) and legajos (files) -- onto CD-ROM. The university still has to raise the $10 million to $15 million for the project, but it says it has won support from the U.S. government and Florida's congressional delegation, including those who vigorously oppose Fidel Castro's government.

 Asked whether U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, gave his endorsement, an aide said Friday he had not. But the congressman did not block the signing after Florida Rep. Marco Rubio, R-Coral Gables, showed him a letter in March from UF Provost David Colburn telling him about the project and saying: "We want to be sure that no one is offended if we pursue this matter.''

 Díaz-Balart, however, fired back in a handwritten note: "My position is that we should have no relation with any institution of the dictatorship -- no relation until it is with free Cuba.''

 Also trying to assist is a New Orleans-based expert on jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton and several rare-book dealers who have donated repair materials. The
 Washington-based Marine Conservation Center, which has been helping Cuba study its pristine reefs, has been shipping old oak bookcases from the Smithsonian
 Institution to the Archives. Experts from Johns Hopkins and Yale universities, and from the Amherst, Mass.-based Northeast Document Conservation Center, have visited Havana to offer classes in copying and preservation techniques.

 URGE TO PRESERVE

 Alfred Lemmon, custodian of the early jazz collection at the Historic New Orleans Collection, began photocopying the 30,000 pages of the Fondo Floridas papers at the Archives -- an early record of Spanish settlement on the Gulf Coast -- in 1994. He said the urge to preserve negates the bad politics between the two countries.

 "You are aware of the political differences by being there in Havana,'' he said. "But when I was with my colleagues [at the Archives] we spoke the same language -- how to save those items. It just transcended politics.''

 Cuba is one of several Latin American countries trying to protect documents and eager to make use of modern scanning, CD-ROM, microfilm and paper preservation techniques. In March, the Mexican government asked New York City-based Marylou Nichols to assemble experts to appraise antique books in the Mexico National Archives because Mexico's government would like to insure the collection. Officials in Cartagena, Colombia, also are seeking advice.

 Cuba, the U.S. experts say, is committed to making the CD-ROM copies and even the originals available to scholars. The Notary Protocols, they say, are an important part of Cuba's patrimony and the Havana government, short on supplies, has done its best to try to preserve the documents. It regularly fumigates the 1944-vintage Archives building near the waterfront in Old Havana.

 Many of the documents have been deteriorating for decades. A letter in the archives describes how officials were worried about attacks by bugs and mold as early as 1830.

 "The climate in the [four] rooms where the protocols have been placed on shelves is very similar to rooms in Egypt,'' said John Ingram, director of UF's P.K. Yonge Florida History Collection. He said the university hopes to get a pilot project off the ground in January to copy 70,000 pages if it can put together the more than $300,000 cost.

 "The rooms are very hot. It is like the conditions for papyrus. With a microclimate like that, the protocols could last for years. But they were assembled from all parts of Cuba where they sometimes were damaged by rain and insects.''

 Some page fragments look like pieces of the Dead Sea scrolls. The ink on other pages has become nearly illegible. Ingram said that Bruce Chappell, a UF paleographer (expert in ancient script), will work on the project and help train both American and Cuban scholars to understand the writing on the pages.

 ON SLAVERY

 Ingram said African Americans should be especially interested in the trove, which includes bills of landing for shipments of slaves arriving in Havana. "Havana was a
 central embarkation point for a large number of African Americans sent to Florida and other parts of the U.S.,'' he said.

 Historians trying to understand early Florida history from the Spanish era, which ended in 1821, may also find clues. Most documents from that period housed in Florida settlements were destroyed by fighting and by the climate, he said.

 In addition, Ingram said, "the documents really do open up a window to many facets of life in Cuba we don't know about.''

 They include, he said, wills, inventories, records of baptisms, baptisms, marriage certificates, and records kept by clergy. But 25 percent of 50 volumes inspected by UF  researchers in March ``were in a very precarious state,'' he said.

 CAUTION ESSENTIAL

 Michigan State's Drewes -- who has been a key organizer of other efforts to save the protocols since her days as preservation librarian at Johns Hopkins University Notary
 in the mid-1990s -- says the UF team will have to proceed cautiously when it opens the volumes to photograph them.

 "They don't copy very well,'' Drewes said, citing the fact that some libraries copying old documents in the United States have sliced them apart to do the task.

 She said she witnessed how damaged some of the protocols are on one visit to Havana when a staff member at the Archives opened up an early Spanish hand-colored map. It was in tatters, full of insect holes. Drewes said she was overcome by tears.

 But she applauds the UF project.

 "We care about the intellectual content of these materials,'' she said.

© 2001