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James López and Denis Rey learned how it felt to have history fall apart in their hands.

López, a professor of languages and linguistics, and Rey, an associate professor of political science and international studies, traveled to Cuba in April as part of a digital preservation project to recover surviving newspapers, some 150 years old, from the Cuban immigrant communities of Tampa and Ybor City.��

Emigrated Cubans wanted an independent Cuba, which was under Spanish rule at the time, and they communicated their plans and ideas about the movement through these newspapers.��

“This was like the social media of their time,” said Rey.����

The newspapers originated and circulated in cigar companies; the work was so quiet, workers pooled together funds to have a lector speak from the newspapers and read literature aloud while the workers rolled cigars and listened. It educated a class consciousness “known by heart,” said López.

“My grandmother was a cigar factory worker, and she never went to school,” López continued. “She didn’t know how to read or write, and she could talk to you about 19th century Russian literature and French literature and Spanish literature.”

The newspapers made their way back to Cuba, and today they are decaying. Most people go to the archives looking for Spanish lineage to get citizenship, explained López. So, the newspapers, kept in inadequate conditions, have been neglected and are disintegrating.��

“If you go to the archives in Spain, or I'm sure, in Mexico too, you have to either have gloves on, unless there's some sort of climate controller — there's control over it. In this case, really, it was like, ‘Here's a box. Do what you want with it,’” said López.��

When López and Rey tried to pick up the papers, they would shatter in their hands.����

“That's literally sweeping history, pieces of history, into the dustbin,” said Rey.

However, with help from the Cuban government and the University of Houston, López and Rey scanned parts from over 1,000 different issues from 70 different newspapers — up to 5,000 scans in total.��

Preserving the papers preserves the process in which Cuba was freed from Spain, because of emigrated Cubans’ efforts and organizations that used the freedom of the press.����

“The sense of Cuban nationhood was formed here by these Cuban immigrant communities through what they were writing in these newspapers,” said Rey.��

López and Rey are the founders and co-directors of the��Center for José Martí Studies Affiliate��at UTampa.��The center offers useful resources for those interested in José Martí studies and the history of the Cuban immigrant communities of the U.S.

Rey says the newspapers show that Cubans who emigrated "have a boomerang effect and affect the country that they're from,” Rey said. Next, they’re working on uploading the documents to the , available to everyone.

Though some of the printed history is lost, López and Rey saved fragments from a diaspora that changed the fate of an entire country. ��