Manatí Sugar Company

The work of rescuing and preserving the documentary collection of the Manatí Sugar Company has occupied the efforts of those who work in the Provincial Historical Archive of Las Tunas for a good part of the year.

Las Tunas, Cuba - This, among other aspects, thanks to the Program of Support to the Development of the Ibero-American Archives, which has allowed them to acquire essential materials for the adequate restoration of the paperwork.

Manatí Sugar CompanyThat is why now when the most urgent work is finished and the sample is almost ready to be consulted, they talk about it with a broad smile. In addition, at the same time, they attest to the notarial deeds, payrolls, labor contracts, and foundational documents that makeup such a valuable archive.

Carlos Manuel Soler Falls, the main specialist in Conservation and Restoration of the place, explains to 26 that most of the original documents went to the United States, with the owners of the sugar mill until the revolutionary intervention; however, among those that remained here and the copies that are preserved, there is the material that has been worked on.

Moreover, it is not minor. It was necessary to join the documents in the Archive with those in the central vault of the Argelia Libre sugar mill.

The rest of the sheets of this collection are in Santiago de Cuba, where a good part of the history of the sugar mills of this part of the Island is located, following the political-administrative division that was valid in the past. And it is not possible, for reasons of space, to transfer them to the archives of Las Tunas.

Soler Falls explains how exciting this task is. "The documents had not been processed before and were in an appalling state of conservation. There was a lot of surface dirt, tears, folds, and some books with damage to the bindings, and they had loops and seals on top, which, in the long term, deteriorate the document."

"First we did a dry cleaning to remove as much dirt as possible, they may have had fungal spores although they did not proliferate yet; we checked the stains that may impede reading, the relevant tests are carried out so as not to run the risk of damaging the inks, which is the most important thing in the document."

"Of course, they have been damaged due to paper aging, yellowing, acidity, and the pulp with which it was made; sometimes they are irreparable, but we measure the pH, we do some washing, always with a lot of tact, to preserve them."

"Now they must be sewn with cotton thread, the files must be organized; then they are bound, taking into account, as much as possible, their original binding.

"The best thing is that they can be consulted even if they are not digitized. This other part will come later, later on."

Manatí Sugar Company