Cuba's Adopted Son


Ernest Hemingway, affectionately known as “Papa” to the Cubans who claimed him as their own, was one of the most famous American novelists, short-story writer, and essayist. Cuba adopted him after he adopted Cuba, an island he called home for more than two decades. Even today long after he left this life and his beloved country, Cubans still idolize Hemingway.

Hemingway was an admirer of Hispanic culture. Throughout his life he navigated his way in and out of the Spanish-speaking peoples, from Spain to Cuba. Beginning in the late 1930’s, Hemingway lived out his life in Cuba. He first resided at the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Old Havana, frequenting two bars in particular, El Floridita and La Bodequita del Medio, now internationally famous through his writings. In 1940 upon completion of For Whom the Bell Tolls, he used its earnings of $18,500 to purchase a 15-acre estate outside Havana called “Finca Vigia” (“Lookout Farm”). The Finca presented a spacious, quiet place for him to work, and he settled there to the extent that a man as restless as Ernest Hemingway could settle anywhere. At all the old haunts he frequented, he cultivated a status as a man larger than life, a figure who could out-drink an alcoholic and reel in bigger marlin than professional fishermen.

Finca was where Hemingway kept his fishing boat the Pilar, immortalized in his Nobel Prize-winning novel, The Old Man and the Sea. The protagonist of this novel is an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago, who catches a giant marlin after weeks of disappointment, only to have sharks eat the fish on his return to the harbor. It is believed that a Cuban fisherman who had served as the captain of the Pilar in the late 1930’s was the model for Santiago.

In 1960, the Cold War tensions between the United States and Cuba forced the American writer to choose between his birth home and his home of choice. He supported Fidel Castro’s revolution, but ultimately and sadly left Cuba, his “home,” for good when the living became too complicated. Castro returned the compliment of the much-loved and honored cultural hero in Cuba by preserving Hemingway’s house, Finca, as a museum, with Pilar as the core attraction.

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Hemingway's Hideouts

The pedestrian throughway Obispo, one of the most picturesque streets in Old Havana, runs straight through the old city to Hemingway's favorite bar, Floridita Restaurant. The bartender of the restaurant, Constante, created the Daiquiri which Papa praised so much that he immortalized in his book Islands in the Stream.

At the corner of Obispo and Mercaderes is the Ambos Mundos Hotel, where Hemingway lived and wrote during his early days in Havana.

Nearby Hemingway's estate, Finca Vigia, is the fishing village of Cojimar where he spent much time writing and fishing. The village was the setting for The Old Man and the Sea.

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Historic Ernest Hemingway archives open to scholars

Cuba has opened up electronic access to thousands of documents belonging to the writer Ernest Hemingway to scholars, after being stored in the cellar of the writer’s Cuban home for decades. The archives include photographs, letters and manuscripts, as well as an unpublished epilogue to Hemingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Curators say that most of the papers have never been published and will offer an insight into Hemingway’s life while living on the island . . . spending 21 years at Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, in San Francisco de Paula writing some of his greatest works. 

Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of Museo Ernest Hemingway, says that scholars “will be able to study important documents that shed light on the Cuban period of Hemingway, which was very important and not well known by his biographers.” The project is part of a joint effort by the Cuban National Cultural Heritage Council and the U.S. Social Science Research Council, working together under a 2002 agreement to preserve the archives that were stored in Hemingway's basement. The documents contain coded accounts by Hemingway of his exploits searching for German submarines off Cuba’s coast from his yacht, El Pilar, during World War II and letters about his love affair with an Italian countess, who was believed to be the model for the heroine in Across the River and Into the Trees. At present, scholars will have to travell to Finca Vigia in order to view the documents, but soon the archives will be available at the Hemingway collection in the John F. Kennedy presidential library in Boston.

Ernest Hemingway moved to Finca Vigia in 1939. While living there, he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, A Moveable Feast, and Islands in the Stream. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Returning to the United States in 1960, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide at his home in Idaho a short year later.

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Hemingway's Cuba legacy

Enhanced U.S.-Cuba ties and easing of the embargo could help out the preservation of Ernest Hemingway’s legacy in Cuba. The guardians of Hemingway’s home hope that President Obama’s desire for better relations will aid in saving the writer’s heritage on the Caribbean island.

Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, is the palm tree surrounded hilltop residence which Hemingway called home from 1939 to 1960, and where the writer completed some of his greatest works, including “The Old Man and the Sea” and “Islands in the Stream.” The Spanish-style home had fallen into such disrepair that the U.S.-based National Trust for Historic Preservation placed it on its list of most endangered places. Universities and institutions from the United States contributed to a still-incomplete renovation, but those efforts were hindered by Bush-era regulations that made it difficult to ship equipment and lend technical expertise for work on the house. The same bureaucratic hindrance slowed restoration of Hemingway’s boat “Pilar,” riddled with termites after sitting on the grounds of Finca Vigia for years. The Bush administration argued that improvements on Hemingway’s properties would heighten the flow of tourists and money to the Communist-led government it was in conflict with.

For Obama to simplify the restrictions enacted by the Bush administration, Cuba might have a better opportunity to acquire equipment and preservation materials needed to maintain the home outside of Havana where Hemingway lived for twenty-one years. There also remains work to be done for the preservation and digitization of thousands of books and documents that sat for years in the basement of Finca Vigia.

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