Saving Haiti's past.

• Position: ARCHIVES - Brief article

Thousands of historical documents are believed to be trapped inside two libraries in downtown Port-au-Prince, buried in rubble caused by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti January 12, 2010.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural agency, has launched a campaign to protect Haiti's heritage. It has called for a ban on the "trade or transfer of Haitian cultural property" to prevent looting from art galleries, museums, and historical sites, according to media reports.

Haiti's La Bibliotheque Haitienne des Peres du Saint-Esprit housed a collection of letters, manuscripts, newspapers, and books spanning the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, according to The National Post.

Included in the archives are one-of-a-kind documents from the 13-year Haitian revolution from 1791 to 1804, which resulted in Haiti becoming the first independent Western nation ruled by...