A construction crew from Detroit did something last week that might have been hard to imagine in a different era: board a plane to meet a team of Cuban architects and engineers outside Havana.
They gathered at a hillside home that overlooks the capital city, and worked together on a project to protect literary artifacts and the personal belongings of a famous American writer.
The estate that belonged to Ernest Hemingway is affectionately called Finca Vig铆a 鈥� the lookout farm. He lived there for two decades and penned some of his most famous works at the typewriter that still sits on a desk in his study.
鈥淚t鈥檚 rustic,鈥� says Mary-Jo Adams, who leads the U.S.-based , the group heading up the preservation project. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just a low, seven-room bungalow. Yet it鈥檚 filled with everything the author collected.鈥�
Hemingway was a prolific collector. Trophies from hunting trips to Africa hang on the walls: an impala, a water buffalo, a kudu鈥檚 twisted horns. Thousands of books are scattered about the house. The author鈥檚 beloved 38-foot fishing boat, Pilar, is still resting on dry ground in the backyard.
Finca Vig铆a appears stuck in time, and that鈥檚 part of its appeal.
鈥淭he house is as he left it,鈥� Adams says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 as though he鈥檚 just gone for a swim in the pool and is ready to come back.鈥�
Hemingway left the country for the last time in 1960, soon after Fidel Castro鈥檚 revolution upended political order in the Caribbean and around the world. About a year later, in the summer of 1961, the Nobel Prize-winning author killed himself in Ketchum, Idaho.
After his death, Hemingway鈥檚 widow enlisted the help of Jacqueline Kennedy to bring some of his papers back to the United States. The first lady had 鈥渁 great respect for the arts, culture and for Ernest Hemingway,鈥� Adams says.
But most of his belongings never made it back. The Cuban government took control of the house and turned it into a museum, and the following decades were hard on the building. In 2005, the National Trust for Historic Preservation called the home one of America鈥檚 .
鈥淚 first went there as a termite expert,鈥� Bob Vila, the TV home renovation guru who also serves on the Finca Vig铆a Foundation鈥檚 board, said in a phone interview. 鈥淎ll the windows had rotted out, and they were making new wooden casement windows on-site.鈥�
That first trip was in the early 2000s. With help from the Cuban government, the foundation started making renovations to the home. They also began a project to preserve the manuscripts, letters and photographs on-site. They got permission to bring U.S. tools and materials to the island, and just last week the team from Detroit was there to work with Cuban architects and engineers on a sealed vault to keep the documents preserved for generations.
The spirit of cooperation between experts from two estranged countries is 鈥渁 credit to Ernest Hemingway,鈥� Adams says. 鈥淚 wonder what he would think.鈥�
Today, there is little doubt how Cubans feel about the American. In Old Havana, tourists still pack the hotel where he stayed and where Hemingway downed up to a dozen daiquiris in a single sitting.
There鈥檚 a bearded statue of 鈥淧apa鈥� Hemingway at the Floridita, and around the city it鈥檚 easy to find the of him standing face-to-face with Castro.
鈥淗emingway was, for Cuba, a Nobel Prize,鈥� says local tour guide Luis Enrique Gonzales. He grew up a few blocks from Finca Vig铆a listening to stories from his grandmother, who came to the house as a girl to eat mangoes.
鈥淗emingway opened the gates to this huge house to all the kids,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hat an American guy came to Cuba, decided to live in Cuba and felt like a Cuban in that difficult moment Cubans were living, it felt like a gift.鈥�
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