David Lafevor said there is nothing like Cuba's documents in the U.S., where slaves were considered possessions, not human beings. "The documents are not only pertinent to the Catholic Church because the church was often the most substantial building in town, so other documents were kept there as well," he said. Cuba's Catholic Church has played a major role in the preservation project, granting access to church archives around the island and assisting in identifying important documents. Church officials like Deacon Felix Knight of the colonial Santo Espirito Church in Old Havana, tucked away in a warren of narrow lanes in the city's colonial heart, work with the academics to find and preserve old documents. He said the current project will run until 2018 and hopes to digitize almost 2 million documents in four cities around the island.

Source: New York Times January 16, 2017 05:14 UTC