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| Ambros Mundos Hotel |
This is an article that was printed in the Miami Herald last Saturday. It makes some very good points about the relations between the US and Cuba, things that are very long over due and it is a time for normalizing of relations between our countries. I have shared the feelings of walking in Ernest Hemingway's footsteps and enjoying the marvels of Cojimar, Havana, Mundos Ambros, and Finca la Vigía. The trail that he carved during his days in Cuba is one of fun and serious times, but more importantly a time when there was a lot of mutual sharing between the U.S. and Cuba.
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| John and Patrick Hemingway |
Walking in Hemingway’s Footsteps
Recently,
we traveled to Cuba to help celebrate two important anniversaries honoring the
legacy of our grandfather, Ernest Hemingway. For five days, with a group of
Americans that included marine scientists — under the auspices of the Latin
America Working Group of Washington, D.C. — we experienced the hospitality and
warmth of the Cuban people as we celebrated our grandfather and had discussions
on promoting U.S.-Cuba cooperation to protect the marlin, tuna and other game
fish of the Florida Straits that are such an important part of the image that
Hemingway’s generations of readers have had and continue to have of the man and
of his work.
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| Hemingway's Beloved Pilar |
Of
the two anniversaries, the first was a celebration of Ernest’s arrival in Cuba
80 years ago aboard his beloved fishing boat, the Pilar, after a trip across
the Gulf Stream from Key West to Havana. The other anniversary is of our
grandfather’s 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He
later donated the gold medal to the people of Cuba, saying, “This award belongs
to Cuba, because my works were created and conceived in Cuba, in my village of
Cojimar, of which I am a citizen.”
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| La Terraza in Cojimar |
On
our first day, we traveled by boat to Cojimar harbor, cruising down the coast
in fishing boats similar to the Pilar from the Hemingway Marina near Havana.
More than 100 people greeted and embraced us that morning in an outpouring of
love and respect that made us realize just how deeply Ernest felt about being a
citizen of Cojimar. We talked with fishermen in their 80s who had known Ernest
when they were boys, and we hugged and posed for photos with groups of school
children.
We
had lunch at his favorite restaurant, La Terraza, sitting at his favorite table
and looking at many photographs of him on the wall.
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| Finca la Vigia |
A
few days later, we helped celebrate the 60th anniversary of our grandfather’s
Nobel Prize in Literature, given to him in large part for his enduring tale of
a Cuban fisherman’s struggle to capture a giant marlin with just bait and
tackle and a tiny skiff, and of his eventual defeat.
The
Old Man and the Sea is a classic of American literature, and we
were afforded the rare honor and privilege of seeing and holding the actual
Nobel medal, which our Cuban hosts graciously brought to the Finca la
Vigía
from its usual repository at the sanctuary of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre
outside Santiago de Cuba. Touring our grandfather’s house and lingering over
the photographs, books and other personal items collected over a lifetime —
which included living in Cuba for more than 20 years — we could easily see just
how much he truly was a citizen of this island.
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| Patrick and John at Hemingway Memorial in Cojimar |
We
hope that our journey to Cuba will begin to address these problems and restore
balance to an important and delicate ecosystem that is of vital importance to
both the American and Cuban people. We also hope that the cooperative nature of
our trip will help demonstrate that better relations between the United States
and Cuba are possible, and desirable. We support these changes in U.S. policy
toward Cuba: The fundamental right to travel to Cuba without restriction should
be restored to U.S. Citizens; Cuba should be removed from the list of state
sponsors of terrorism, which it is not. It’s time to move beyond more than 50
years of antagonism to normalized relations.
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