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The Sunday Times August 20, 2006
Matthew Campbell, San Francisco De Paula, Cuba
FORGET about Che Guevara, mojitos and palm-fringed beaches. Cuba’s latest efforts to woo tourists are focusing on the pre-revolutionary epoch when American mobsters carved up Havana and Ernest Hemingway, the novelist, held rum-soaked parties up on the hill.
In what seems an unlikely undertaking for one of the world’s last communist strongholds, Cuba is sinking more than £2.5m into restoring the hilltop villa overlooking Havana where “Papa”Hemingway lived, wrote and caroused from 1939 to 1960.The ailing Fidel Castro, who has handed power to his younger brother while he convalesces from abdominal surgery, might not approve of such frivolity. But as part of its effort to court hard currency tourists, the government is also playing up the Caribbean country’s past as a haven for mafia mobsters.
Guests checking in at the Nacional hotel, which in its heyday was home to crime bosses such as Meyer Lansky and Al Capone, are invited to tour “the suites where the gangsters lived” and the cavernous room downstairs in which they had dinner.
At Finca Vigia, the termite-ravaged villa where Hemingway lived, workmen were replacing sagging ceiling beams and fixing a leaky roof last week. Pilar, the 40ft boat he used for marlin fishing expeditions that inspired The Old Man and the Sea, was also undergoing restoration.
Few things connected to Cuba, however, avoid being dragged into its bitter political dispute with America. Anger has been provoked by Washington’s refusal to allow the Boston-based Hemingway Preservation Foundation to commit funds to the restoration project.
Hemingway enthusiasts consider the house and contents to be an American cultural gem, even though they are located on foreign soil. Washington argued that contributing money would violate trade sanctions against Cuba by helping to boost tourism and keep its communist regime in power.
“It is a great shame,” said Miryorly Garcia Prieto, a Cuban guide showing a visitor around the estate which has been opened as a museum. “We are interested only in safeguarding Hemingway’s heritage. We will do the best job that we can, but obviously Cuba has limited resources.”
Agreement has at least been reached between Cuba and Washington for American experts to help to preserve a treasure trove of papers and photographs which have been stored in the damp basement of the white-walled villa.
The documents include early drafts of major works, a copy of the screenplay for The Old Man and the Sea, letters to friends such as Ingrid Bergman and recipes for the writer’s favourite dishes.
Hemingway was initially attracted to Cuba by the excellent marlin fishing in the Gulf Stream off the northern coast. He also came to appreciate its cocktails — his favourites were daiquiris and mojitos — and the gregarious nature of its people.
He bought the house on the hill for £13,000 in 1939 and it is considered the place where he put down his deepest roots. Here Hemingway wrote some of the classics of American literature, such as A Moveable Feast and Islands in the Stream. He won the Nobel prize for The Old Man and the Sea in 1954.
For an isolated, dictatorial regime that has been struggling to keep communism afloat ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Hemingway connection is undoubtedly an asset. Tourists flock to El Floridita, his favourite watering hole in Havana, to be photographed next to the life-size statue of him propping up one end of the bar.
They have made a shrine of his favourite table at La Terraza restaurant in the port from which he would set off fishing with Gregorio Fuentes, his first mate, aboard the Pilar.
In Hemingway the Cuban government saw a man of the people. “He would often invite people from the village to his parties,” said Garcia Prieto. “They would all come up here,” she added, gesturing to the terrace around the empty swimming pool. “Peasants, farmers, fishermen, he didn’t care about people’s background.”
Hemingway travelled to Europe and then to America in 1960 and was devastated by the US-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961: he was unable to return to the home he loved. Three months later, after a long struggle with alcoholism and depression, he committed suicide at the age of 61.
His memory lives on in Cuba. “He left a big mark,” Garcia Prieto said. “We are all very proud of him.”
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