Hemingway, Neighbor and Friend, Part I – The Hemingway Review (THR) Blog

By Alfredo A. Ballester

Part of my childhood education took place at Santana School, located in the town of San Francisco de Paula, Havana, Cuba.

Like many boys from the neighborhood, I used to wander into the nearby estates looking for fruit.

One day, several friends invited me to go eat mangoes at “the American’s” estate, without imagining what would happen. We sneaked past the workers and climbed some of the mango trees.

Suddenly, we saw an old man approaching us. He had white hair and a white beard and carried a long stick in one hand, waving it while shouting things we could not understand. His voice grew louder and more aggressive, and it seemed like he wanted to hit us. I became so frightened that I felt something warm running down my leg all the way to my shoe.

I was not bleeding.

I had wet myself from fear.

This happened at Finca Vigía, and years later we learned that the old man was Hemingway.

Eventually we climbed down from the trees. By then he had calmed down, and we began to understand what he was saying. His conclusion was simple:  “Anyone who wants to eat mangoes from my estate must come through the front gate. No throwing stones. No climbing the trees.”

Some time later, after several other encounters, a friendship had developed between us and “the American.” One day he was even angrier than when he first caught us in the trees. A neighbor had ordered his dogs to attack one of Hemingway’s cats after it supposedly crossed onto his property. The cat was killed.

So “the American” came up with the idea of forming a guerrilla group — and we became part of it — to attack the neighbor’s house with stones.

And that is exactly what we did.

The neighborhood boys were thrilled. We launched the attack almost immediately. The neighbor quickly called the police, and we hid behind tall cane plants while “the American” argued with the officers and protected us by driving them off the property.

As the friendship grew, Hemingway even allowed us inside the house to show us fishing photographs and stuffed animals he kept as trophies.

He never spoke to us about literature.

I remember once asking permission to use the bathroom, and he asked whether I needed to pee or take a shit — using vulgar Cuban slang perfectly. Then he joked that I was always peeing myself.

We were allowed to enter the estate whenever we wanted, though not the house itself. We were privileged. While Hollywood stars like Gary Cooper or Errol Flynn had to schedule appointments to see “the American,” we simply opened the gate and walked in.

                                                                           To be continued . . . 

Alfredo A. Ballester is the author of Ernest Hemingway and the Neighborhood Boys, a book in which he recounts  his personal experiences with “the American”—the celebrated American writer Ernest Hemingway—at Finca Vigía in Havana, Cuba. Born in Cuba, Ballester now lives in Miami, Florida.  He presented an earlier version of this blog post in Spanish, with an accompanying English translation, at the Florida Hemingway Society Virtual Conference on May 30, 2026.

Alfredo A. Ballester 06/09/2026

Works Cited Entry

Ballester, Alfredo A. “Hemingway, Neighbor and Friend, Part I.” THR Blog, The Hemingway Society, 9 June 2026, http://www.hemingwaysociety.org/hemingway-neighbor-and-friend-part-i.