Repeating Islands

Among those hoping for a quick US-Cuba rapprochement are the keepers of the home and heritage of Ernest Hemingway in Cuba. They hope that better U.S.-Cuba relations will help them preserve the writer’s legacy on the island, as they are in urgent need of money, equipment and preservation materials to maintain the house outside Havana that was home to Hemingway for 21 years. Ada Rosa Alfonso, director of the Ernest Hemingway Museum, said on Tuesday that “if Obama really sticks to his platform, if he can make his intentions real, it will undoubtedly be different,” she said. “But we have to wait and see what happens because it takes more than a president’s goodwill to achieve results,” she said at the veranda of Hemingway’s Finca Vigía, or Lookout Farm.

U.S. universities and institutions have contributed to a still-incomplete renovation of the Spanish-style, hilltop residence that Hemingway called home from 1939 to 1960 and where he wrote some of his greatest works, including The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream. But Alfonso said the Americans were hindered by Bush-era regulations that made it difficult to ship equipment and lend technical expertise for work on the house, which had fallen into such disrepair the U.S.-based National Trust for Historic Preservation put it on its list of most endangered places. The Bush administration argued that any improvement to the property would increase tourist revenues in Cuba. The same bureaucratic obstacles slowed restoration of Hemingway’s boat “Pilar,” riddled with termites after sitting on the grounds of Finca Vigía for years. There remains work to be done not only on the home, but in the preservation and digitization of thousands of books and documents that sat for years in the basement, Alfonso said. Cuba, feeling the effects of the global financial crisis, is committed to protecting Hemingway’s legacy but has limited access to expensive equipment due in part to the U.S. embargo, she said.

The museum is organizing a biannual conference on Hemingway’s heritage, with several experts from the United States scheduled to attend the June 18-21 event. The conference will be held at the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Old Havana where the Nobel-winning author lived and worked upon his arrival to Cuba in the 1930s.The academic event will include a pilgrimage to some of the writer’s favorite bars like La Bodeguita del Medio and El Floridita. There will be plenty of mojitos and daiquiris, Hemingway’s favorite drinks, the organizers said.

Hemingway left Cuba in 1960, a year after the Cuban revolution. Wracked by depression, he committed suicide a year later in the United States.

For more on the story go to http://www.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUSN2651506820090526

Photograph: “Ernest Hemingway and Cat in Cuba” from the JFK Presidential Library collection at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset+Tree/Asset+Viewers/Image+Asset+Viewer.htm?guid=%7B2BD8E010-97D6-4D73-8065-0602B1797CF7%7D&type=Image