In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

30 An Interview with Gigi’s All-Stars at Ernest Hemingway’s Finca Vigía, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, July 6, 2004 David B. Martens What follows is the transcript of a recorded 2004 panel discussion led by American journalist David Martens with Cuban men who, as boys, played baseball with Ernest Hemingway’s son Gregory, nicknamed Gigi. Gladys Rodriguez Ferrero, then director of the Finca, Hemingway’s home that is now a public museum, made the introductions. Questions came later from Scott Schwarr, who helped organize the trip for the American travelers; Carmen Fournier Cusa, a Cuban Hemingway scholar, and other unidentified Cuban and American audience members. Gladys Rodriguez Ferrero: In 1997, David Martens interviewed Neftalí Pernas, who participated in the Hemingway colloquium that year. Among the many memories they discussed, Pernas told David his recollections of submarine hunting during World War II; Neftalí had lived in Guanabo, which was one of the places where they used to dock their boats. In 2003, Martens brought a tape of that interview to the annual colloquium, where he made a presentation with the interview. Since Pernas had passed away, Martens also gave a copy of the tape to Pernas’s relatives. After the 2003 colloquium ended, Martens interviewed Alberto Ramos Enr íquez, known as Fico, who had been a member of the staff of the Finca Vigía—a cook—as well as earlier being a member of Gigi’s All-Stars (or Gigi’s Stars), the baseball team for his sons and local boys that Hemingway organized in the 1940s. This team (whose original name in Spanish was Las Estrellas de Gigi) was—as far as I know, and I’ve done some research on this—the first young baseball team, baseball team with children, in the whole municipality. Then later, in the 1950s, An Interview with Gigi’s All-Stars 31 we had the Las Estrellas de Camilo (Camilo’s Stars). I’m not a specialist in sports, but anyway, we are treading around there. The following account presents a later interview with Fico and other members of Gigi’s Stars. We wanted to talk with these other members of the baseball team, the boys; we wanted them to be here today also. We have Fico; Humberto Hernandez (known as Berto); and Oscar Blas Fernandez (whom the boys called Cayuco, to which Hemingway added Jonronero, or “the home-runner,” because he hit the ball so hard that he was the only one who could make home runs). So here we have the boys of a long time ago, dear friends of today. David B. Martens: Gracias, gracias. I begin by saying thank you to Fico, because Fico brought me back. Last year, as Gladys mentioned, at the end of the conference, one of my friends here at the Finca said, “David, would you like to interview Fico? He was Hemingway’s cook.” So I met with Fico poolside, and we spent a little better than an hour chatting, and he was telling me the stories of his life here in the Finca, and I will tell you a few of the stories he told me. But the real reason we are here is for the reunion of Gigi’s All-Stars. And after I tell you a bit of Fico’s story, I’m going to ask them to tell us their stories of life here at the Finca, and their experiences with Gigi and the All-Stars, and their relationships with Hemingway. So I’d like you all to be thinking of what questions you would like to ask of Gigi’s All-Stars. Because we’re going to open it up later on, and let you ask the questions that you’d like to know. Alberto Ramos Enríquez, now seventy-two, was nine years old when he went to work at the Finca in 1940. Fico told me that Hemingway talked to his father about his opening the main gate to the property, and afterwards he went to the main house to run errands, sweep the terrace, feed the cats and ducks, and he would occasionally go to the post office for mail in the morning. Gigi and Patrick came here, and because Hemingway was such a fan of baseball, he made a small baseball field; I’m not quite sure where it was on the grounds, where the boys used to play baseball. That was in about 1941 or 1942, and, according to Fico...

Share