MB Civic

Americans defy Cuba embargo to toast Hemingway in Havana

Caribbean Net News, Cayman Islands – February 7

By Patrick Moser

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Talk in Ernest
Hemingway’s former Havana watering hole
often turns to the old man and the daiquiri
and, at times, to the 45-year-old embargo
that officially prevents US fans from tippling to his memory in the Cuba he loved.

“We’re not even supposed to be here,” says
New Yorker Neil Kok, 47, raising his glass
to a life-size bronze likeness of “Papa”
Hemingway in the Floridita bar that was
the literary giant’s second home during his
years in Cuba.

Like many Americans visiting Cuba in
defiance of the US sanctions, Kok flew in
through Mexico, where he bought a loose-leaf Cuban visa he planned to tear up
before returning to the United States.

“I feel sadness about US politics toward
Cuba and the embargo,” says Kok, who
calls Hemingway his favorite author and
“an all-time American great.”

Proclaimed by then president John F.
Kennedy on February 3, 1961, and
tightened on several occasions since, the
embargo’s stated aim is to bring
democracy to the communist-run island.

Under the terms of the embargo, US
nationals may not spend any money in
Cuba, which effectively bars them from
traveling to the Caribbean island located
just 90 miles from the southeastern tip of
the United States.

“It seems absurd,” says Kok, pointing out
that Hemingway loved Cuba, where he
lived on and off for two decades before his
1961 suicide.

At the hole-in-the-wall Bodeguita del
Medio bar just down the road from the
Floridita, a photograph shows the late US
novelist shaking hands with the now ailing
President Fidel Castro.

The beverage of choice at the Bodeguita,
another Hemingway favorite, is the mojito,
a Cuban concoction made of rum, sugar,
soda water, mint and ice.

A handwritten entry on a yellowed page of
the bar’s guest book bears witness to
Hemingway’s famed drinking habits: “My
mojito in the Bodeguita, my daiquiri in the
Floridita.”

The busy barmen at the two
establishments say they see plenty of
American tourists who defy the embargo
to spend time in Cuba.

The Hemingway image helps Cuba attract
tourists and their desperately needed cash.

But, banned from receiving US funds, Cuba
is also having to dish out 1.2 million dollars
to renovate Finca Vigia, the house just
outside Havana that Hemingway bought in
1939.

It is there that he wrote some of his best-known novels, including “The Old Man and
the Sea,” a story set in Cuba that won him
the 1954 Nobel Prize for literature.

Set amid lush vegetation, the colonial
house still contains Hemingway’s
belongings and many of his books, rifles
and fishing rods, and the garden
showcases his old fishing boat, the Pilar.

Cuban experts recently finished renovating
a facade of Finca Vigia, the first stage in
their ambitious project to restore the
house that for decades suffered the
damages of time, termites and tempests.

A few years ago, Finca Vigia, which is now a
museum, was in such a state that the
prestigious US National Trust of Historic
Preservation included it in its 2005 list of
the 11 most endangered sites.

The trust was given an exemption from the
embargo that allowed it to send experts to
provide advice for the restoration.

But, however devoted to Hemingway’s
memory it may be, the trust, or any other
American for that matter, cannot
contribute any money to the project.

“This is just one of many absurd facets of
the embargo,” says Finca Vigia museum
director Ada Rosa Alfonso.