My Cuba Encounters with Hemingway, Batista, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro

Ian J. Sanders (0:00)

Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War.

SPEAKER_2 (0:06)

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Peter Lamas (1:06)

And he grabs me by the shoulder as I'm walking towards the door. And this is Che Guevara.

And he didn't even introduce himself. He didn't have to.

Ian J. Sanders (1:21)

What happens when a Cuban teenager who has lost his homeland finds himself across the lunch table from Fidel Castro? Peter Lamas recalls an extraordinary childhood in pre-revolutionary Havana and a life touched by history. He describes meeting Ernest Hemingway, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Political upheaval has forced his family to flee Cuba, leaving everything behind. Beginning again in New York with little money and no English, Peter found kindness in unexpected places, before a remarkable invitation brought him face to face with Castro, the man he blamed for uprooting his family in an unforgettable and deeply painful encounter. I'm delighted to welcome Peter Lamas to our Cold War Conversation.

The stories in this episode are from Peter's book, Jackie Kennedy's Stylist. There'll be links in the episode information for you to purchase the book and support the podcast.

Peter Lamas (2:33)

I'm today 82 years old, so writing this book really was quite an interesting experience going back in time. I was born in Havana, Cuba in 1944, just before the war ended, World War II.

And I grew up in a very interesting international ambiance because you had a lot of tourists from all over the world. I thought Cuba was the Monaco of the West.

It was very international. It was the largest island in the Caribbean, 90 miles away from the United States. Beautiful waters, beautiful beaches. And my parents were, we were, I don't want to say poor, but we were middle class, a little bit lower than middle class. My father was a barber. My mom would stay at home and she took up accounting eventually in school. And we lived with my grandmother and my aunt. It was a small family that I come from. I'm an only child. And one of members of my family and my mother's side had some money provided us with enabling me to go to a private school. It was quite interesting to meet a different class of people that I was used to growing up in. And these were very affluent individuals. So I felt out of place there. But no matter what, somehow with my interest in art, interest in beauty, interest in everything that had to do with art in general. My mother and I used to sit when I was very young, three, four, five years old.

She collected magazines from all over the world. And we would look at them together. So I got very interested in what was beyond Cuba, in a way that she exposed through these magazines and books.

Ian J. Sanders (4:22)

And sort of this appetite for travel or meeting people is, throughout the book, there's an amazing cast of characters in here. You get the opportunity to meet Ernest Hemingway.

Peter Lamas (4:41)

Oh my gosh, yes. That, out of all the chapters I wrote about, there are two there that are my favorites, starting with Hemingway.

Because Gregorio Fuentes was Hemingway's captain in his fishing motorboat.

It's not a yacht, it's more, it's like a cabin cruiser. And he took care of the cabin cruiser for Hemingway. He was an expert fisherman. He would take him out outside of the waters of Havana for marlin fishing. Hemingway loved marlin fishing. And they would spend sometimes two or three days out there fishing day and night for marlin. And so Gregorio Fuentes, being the captain of Hemingway and worked with Hemingway for over 20 years. I think he really knew him for about 30 And out of the 30, 22 years he spent being the captain of the Pilar. That was the name of the cabin cruiser that Hemingway owned. And he had it in Havana Harbor. They would go fishing. Now, Gregorio came one day and said to my parents, who we knew him well, he was a friend of my father's older brother, a close friend. He says, I want to take you out for lunch, and then I'm going to take you, because my mother was dying to see where Hemingway lived. He lived right outside of Havana, not far from the city, but up in the hills. And he says, I know you've been dying to have a ride. We'll go, I'll take you for a ride around the Fika, and maybe we'll even go in and just show you around. And so my mother said, well, you know, if that's possible, but I don't want to, you know, get Mr. Hemingway, if he's there, upset. He says, no, he's there, but let's go for lunch. So we went for lunch to make our own story short. We get into the car and go driving up to Hemingway's home. And as we approach the house, the Fika, as he called it, is a big complex with many acres of property, of land encompassing the Fika. And he says, let's go in, let's go in. And he drove in, he was driving, he goes in and there's a big circular that goes around the front of the house and then it takes you to the property inside their gardens and all kinds of different areas for planting and growing crops and things of that nature. It was almost like a farm, not really. And as we're passing the house, he stops and I can see this man that looked like Santa Claus to me. He was 12 years old. And he comes out with Bermuda shorts and a white shirt that looked like he slept in and rolled up sleeves and comes out. My friend, what are you doing here? And he says, I just came to, he called us family to bring my family just to see where you lived. They wanted to go by and check it out and blah, blah, blah. So he said, no, no, no, no, come on out, come on out, right here immediately. So he forced us out of the car and my Gregorio introduced my dad and his best friend, my dad's older friend, Miguel, and my mom. And then as he was introducing me, he says to me, Mutacho, what's your name? He didn't give Gregorio a chance to introduce me. He asked me immediately. And there was a bond that immediately happened. I don't know, a connection, not a bond, but a connection that happened that I couldn't understand, but he liked me. So I went along with it and I was a little bit of a shy 12 year old. And I knew I wasn't reading then at 12 I didn't know that the personality that was standing in front of me, I know it was as big as God in the world of literature, but at that age I wasn't aware. And but I liked him and he reminded me of Santa Claus.