Cuban embargo slows efforts to preserve Hemingway’s Finca Vigia

Ernest Hemingway’s Finca Vigia (Overlook Farm) has been battered by rain, humidity, heat, hurricanes and termites and it was included by the National Trust in its 2005 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places - the only one outside the United States.

Moreover, this 2006 article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy quoted Mary-Jo Adams, the executive director of the Hemingway Preservation Foundation, as saying that:

"We have Hemingway papers that are deteriorating in tropical climates," she says. "We want to preserve them for scholars for decades for come. I think when you sit down with people and explain it, it's very logical."

However and despite the Cuban trade embargo, the Hemingway Preservation Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation have for almost a year been sending architects and preservationists to Havana to advise a Cuban group about how to fix the structural problems that afflict the villa.

The entire Chronicle of Philanthropy article about these preservation efforts can be read here.