The Archives of Cuba/Los archivos de Cuba (review)

Those who dream of going to Cuba to do historical research will pore over this book like a treasure map. Historians Louis Pérez and Rebecca Scott, with the help of nine Cuban contributors, have collected information from archives, libraries, museums, churches, and research institutes across the island. The list of holdings is impressive: in addition to the national, provincial, and municipal archives, whose collections often include not only official documents but also private manuscripts, the book lists records from parishes, courts, prisons, cemeteries, businesses, commercial associations, immigrant societies, museums, and more. There is material here to entice cultural historians (letters and private papers), quantitative social scientists (notarial records, parish registers, business ledgers), and legal and social historians ( judicial and prison records). Political historians will also find listings of ample research materials, whether they seek to revise the island's macrohistory at the Archivo Nacional in Havana or want instead to devise completely new microhistories by exploring the records collected for provinces and municipalities.

The would-be micro- (or macro-) historian, however, will find this guide both tantalizing and frustrating. It does list a wealth of sources in 15 chapters that cover archives in the island's 14 provinces plus the special municipality of the Isla de la Juventud or Isle of Youth (known in prerevolutionary times as the Isle of Pines). The quality of the chapters is very uneven, however. The chapter authors seem to have decided for themselves how to organize and present their material, with little or no input from the editors. Some have written succinct summaries of each archive and its holdings. Others seem to have merely copied out extensive lists from official catalogues.

Thus José Vega Suñol, author of the chapter on Holguín, begins with a brief but useful outline of how the provincial government has evolved since the city's founding was authorized by royal decree in 1751. He then describes each archive and its holdings, without neglecting to provide helpful hints for researchers. Rather than simply listing the notarial records, for example, he points out that the notary "Wilfredo Albanés (33 protocolos de 1922 a 1952) [. . .] se convirtió en el abogado holguinero más vinculado a las compañías nor-teamericanas" (146). He also notes when records have deteriorated. In contrast, the chapter on Santiago de Cuba, by Olga Portuondo Zúñiga, the official city historian, begins with a bureaucratic statement of purpose: "Con el objetivo de rescatar, organizar y conservar la documentación de valor histórico, y como parte extensiva de la labor del Archivo Nacional de Cuba, crean con el triunfo de la Revolución, los Archivos Históricos Regionales [. . .]" (171). This is followed by three pages listing notarial records from 1793 to 1941. There is no description of the contents or their state of conservation. The rest of the chapter is similarly extensive, without being very informative.

An official catalogue of holdings is not useless. But my experience as a veteran of the National Archives in Havana suggests that what is listed is not the same as what is available. For example, the chapter on Havana by Lilian B. Vizcaíno González is an admirably thorough recapitulation of the holdings of the National Archives, including descriptions of 79 collections or fondos, plus a listing of some 60 other state and ecclesiastical archives, libraries, research institutes, and museums. Among the holdings listed at the National Archives are the Registros Mercantiles or Commercial Registries, which include inscriptions, licenses, and other business records from 1886 to 1987. When I was in Havana two years ago these records, though catalogued, were strictly off-limits to researchers. Are the Registries now open to the public both in Havana and at provincial archives around the country? Or has Vizcaíno González simply relied on a guide published by the National Archives in 1990, which she lists as a source? Other archives were unofficially off limits simply...