The Finca Vigía Archives: A Joint Cuban-American Project to Preserve Hemingway's Papers

Abstract

the wooden cellar door slid open with a creak and a groan. We picked our way down the steep steps and bent to avoid hitting our heads on the low ceiling. After a year ofdelicate negotiations, we were inside the basement ofErnest Hemingway's Cuban villa, Finca Vigia. This dank, low room, dug out of the underside of the guest house, contains thousands ofHemingway's last remaining unexamined papers, letters, personal photographs, and manuscript documents. The Cubans are immensely proud oftheir efforts to preserve Hemingway's legacy, which has always served as a potentially strong cultural bond between the American and Cuban peoples. But the U.S. embargo ofCuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the years ofCold War relations had kept the materials—and his 9,000 book library—out ofthe reach ofAmerican scholars. Relations between the Cuban curators of the documents and the North American academics and scholars who had over the years sought these materials had become strained. Now, a trust has been forged. A unique joint Cuban/American cultural project has been launched. As part ofthat, we were about to see what was in the boxes and files in the basement, a treasure trove that has been out ofsight and inaccessible for decades..The moment was replete with suspense. This was also the culmination of a personal odyssey that stretched back over sixty years. My grandfather, Maxwell Perkins, was Ernest Hemingway's