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Memorial to Hemingway in Cuba, despite the U.S.
government
THE fact that Cuba has to date
invested more than $200,000 to restore the Havana
house where the U.S. writer Ernest Hemingway lived,
while the United States has refused to support the
works, was highlighted by various international news
agencies that covered the appearance of Manuel
Palacios, president of the National Cultural
Heritage Council (CNPC) attached to the Ministry of
Culture, at the celebrated farm where the author of
The Old Man and the Sea lived in San
Francisco de Paula.
The $200,000 was further swelled
by one million Cuban pesos given by the Ministry of
Culture and the state to rehabilitate La Vigía farm,
according to the CNPC president.
After a tour of the building and
its surroundings, Palacios Soto informed journalists
that the restoration works should be completed this
year or in early 2008 and the total cost will be in
excess of $1 million and four million Cuban pesos.
But he lamented that the blockade
“is preventing any kind of financial solution” for
the development of the works agreed in 2004 via an
agreement between Cuba and the U.S. Social Science
Research Council. .
Palacios said that to date 21,985
pages have been digitalized and 2,654 pages of
documents and letters by the author of For Whom
the Bell Tolls have been conserved.
The Hemingway Museum conserves
more than 22,000 items, including books,
photographs, film, hunting trophies, weapons, and
sports and fishing equipment.
In November 2002 the Social
Science Research Council and the CNPC signed an
agreement to undertake the initial stage of the
restoration of 11,000 letters, pamphlets and books
belonging to Hemingway.
He explained that the works
included the restoration of a tower that Hemingway
ordered built, the 40-foot Pilar yacht, the
swimming pool that Ava Gardner is said to have used,
the bungalow and the coach house.
In the meeting with the press,
Ada Rosa Alfonso, director of the Ernest Hemingway
Museum, and the coordinator of the Cuban-U.S.
exchange on the works, and Gladys Rodríguez,
ex-director of the Museum, criticized Washington for
blocking the restoration and conservation of the
writer’s papers.
Translated by Granma
International
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