A restoration centre to preserve the work of Ernest Hemingway opened in Cuba on Saturday, highlighting an area of co-operation with the United States even as bilateral ties between the old Cold War foes have chilled again.
Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, wrote some of his greatest books during the 21 years he lived at Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, now a museum in San Francisco de Paula on the outskirts of Havana.
The restoration centre built by the Cuban National Cultural Heritage Council and Finca Vigia Foundation of the United States is located on the 15-acre (6-hectare) property where Hemingway lived in a tree-shaded, airy Spanish-style home.
“When we come together, when we work together, we can do positive and amazing things,” Jim McGovern, a U.S. congressman for Massachusetts who wants better U.S.-Cuban relations, said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
McGovern said the project would have been much easier were it not for the decades-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, which President Donald Trump has tightened since coming to power.
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