Hemingway's Cuban Landscape

Abstract

Hemingway tourism in Cuba represents an evocative geographical landscape of inquiry for two primary reasons. First, Hemingway tourism, and tourism in general in Cuba, exists side by side with the larger socialist economy and political system that limits local interactions with the very things and places foreigners desire and visit. Thus contrasting messages are presented in the “text” of the landscape. And second, Hemingway was an American, yet his landscape and image in Cuba is vigorously preserved and promoted, often as one of their own. The Cuban government packages Hemingway for foreign tourists who wish to visit authentic Hemingway memorials and landscapes. Packaging heritage landscapes, literary or other, is not limited to Cuba and Hemingway, but instead a common landscape phenomena. Again though, the political dimensions and economic inconsistencies of Hemingway promotion in Cuba make it especially interesting. This essay discusses three locations in the literary landscape of writer Ernest Hemingway in Cuba; Finca Vigía, his long time home located 12 miles outside Havana; his favorite bar El Floridita, found in the heart of old Havana; and the Marina Hemingway, located just outside Havana. This paper is interested in what these landmarks tell us about Hemingway's image and meanings within Cuba, and how the public, broadly speaking, views the landmarks and Hemingway.