Castro Trained Using Hemingway’s Shotguns
The man who was in charge of the hunting weapons of one of the “Gods of American literature” tells how the group of guerrillas who attacked the garrison of the Batista dictatorship in 1953 had first trained at a Havana hunting club.
«I was his ‘fetch-dog kid.’ Yeah, I don’t think that’s the wrong word. That’s what they called kids who would collect the dead pigeons off the shooting range after the birds were killed by the shotgun shells.»
Fernando Silvano Nuez Sánchez may have lost a leg, but at 75 he had lots of memories, optimism and honesty to share with the Juventud Rebelde newspaper about the exceptional experiences he lived alongside the “Bronze God of American Literature:” Ernest Hemingway.
«I feel it is my duty and I need to tell to a newspaper for the first time about what I learned alongside Hemingway, how I met him, the little assistance I gave him and a few other things that remain unknown.»
We are interested in the testimony of Fernando Nuez because he speaks about Ernest Miller Hemingway, the sportsman, playing deaf ears to the exhortation “Leave the man alone, his work is all that matters!»
Hemingway’s great colleague and fellow countrymen William Faulkner said that he always stayed within the boundaries and did it in an admirable way, without trying to reach the impossible.
You will be my fetch dog kid
The relationship between Ernest Hemingway and the youth Fernando Nuez shows the writer as a human being who forged kindness and friendship as much as possible.
«I met ‘Papa’ when I was eight years old along the Central Highway, somewhere in the Diezmero neighborhood in Havana. I was hunting little birds with my slingshot, using little green guava berries as ammunition. He was driving by in a station wagon, and suddenly told his driver to stop.»
«He saw me trying to kill a pigeon and he told me in Spanish, ‘Don’t you dare kill that one, the one that’s on that branch!’ Still I did, and I ran so fast that I caught it before it hit the ground. He liked that. He got out of the car and told me something I didn’t understand at that moment, ‘Get in the car, come with me; I’m on my way to do some shooting practice myself.’ »
«I got in his car. He explained to me that he was a member of the Cerro Hunters Club (CCC by its abbreviation in Spanish) and that he was heading for the club’s shooting range.»
«‘I want you to be the substitute for my hunting dog Blackie,’ Hemingway told me. ‘When I kill a pigeon, Blackie runs and brings it to me immediately, just like you did on the highway. If you want, you could be my fetch-dog kid, in the best sense of the word,’ he told me.»
«I asked him who he was, and —smiling— he told me he was a hunter like me, but he didn’t use slingshots or green guavas, but cartridges and shotguns – like in the movies. I didn’t grasp how important he was, but I did realize that he wasn’t Cuban. When we arrived at the shooting range somebody said: ‘There is Hemingway, the American writer!’”
«It was on May 20, 1940. He asked for 60 young pigeons. He said he gave a five-dollar tip for each one that escaped alive. That’s why they gave him the best, the strongest and the fastest ones.»
«Of course, I learned many things during my time there, since I was one of the four fetch-dog kids at the CCC until 1944, when I got a new job there at the club.
«That first time, of the 60 young pigeons he demanded, he killed 59, despite —as I found out later— the young birds had had their tail feathers cut off, so they would fly in circles. That made them more difficult to shoot down – and of course made the tips higher. Nonetheless, only one pigeon escaped alive that day.»
«I returned to the club with him the next day. He asked for 60 young pigeons again, and three escaped alive. He had to give a 15-dollar tip, but he wasn’t mean and he liked helping poor people. I stopped being a fetch-dog kid when I turned 12, when I went on to operating the machine that releases pigeons and throws discs, until I got on the payroll of the CCC shooting range. »
Fernando recalls his first encounter with Hemingway. Fernando has dedicated his life to shooting, even as a judge and an international referee in different events. He also recalls that some of the workers left for Public Works (PW), because at the CCC they earned two pesos a day, while in PW they earned the same amount in about an hour.
«Policarpo, the one who looked after the guns, told Hemingway to look for another person to do it. ‘Papa’ didn’t want to take them to Finca Vigía (Vigía farm), and gave me the key, trusting me with that huge responsibility in my youth.
«Then, he said to me, ‘Fernandito, starting today you will look after the guns. Take the key. They are kept there. Other people can use them here, if you decide so; but nobody can know they’re mine. I will explain it to the firing range officials.’”
Several of those involved in the Moncada attacks used the guns that belonged to «papa»
“There is something that nobody knows. In 1953, several young people practiced shooting at the CCC, without knowing that the guns belonged to ‘Papa.’ I lent those to them, but at that time I didn’t know that they were preparing themselves for the historic attacks in Santiago and Bayamo. Among them were Fidel (Castro), Abel Santamaría, Pedro Miret, and Oscar Alcalde.
«I was responsible for lending the guns, and was authorized to use them all I wanted. Some of those young people, who later became Moncada attackers, asked me not to write down any of their names if I knew them or heard somebody saying them. And I didn’t.
«There was shooting practice on Mondays and Fridays. Fidel shot with any gun, but I always gave him the one Hemingway liked the most; the one he called ‘la yegua’ (the mare): a mean double-barrel twelve gauge. But Fidel knew more about guns than me, and more than many of the people who shot there! He was pleased with any gun I gave him.»
«I lent Papa´s double-barrel guns, with one barrel on top of the other, the famous over-under, as he had told me. Those quiet and easygoing young people knew about my poor situation as a Havana resident who was born in Matanzas in 1932.
«One day, Lieutenant Colonel Blanco Rico, at that time head of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM), arrived and asked them where they were from or what they were doing there. I will never forget what Fidel told him, ‘We’re practicing because we have to go hunting pigeons.’ He convinced him with that subtle irony. Fernando said that ‘Míster Güey’ was an attentive and kind athlete, and that he liked jokes.»
«Many times I heard him saying a word that he had made up. When something went right, he didn’t just say ‘OK,’ but ‘OK-íssimo,’ because he loved things right.
«I was one of those kids who visited Finca Vigía, in San Francisco de Paula. I went there with his younger son, Gregory, known as ‘Gigi’ or ‘Wiwi.’ The middle son was Patrick, and the elder John, known as ‘Bumba.’ According to what he told me, the first was born in 1923; the second in 1928, and the third in 1931. All three of them were born in the United States; the older one in Toronto, Canada; and the other two in Kansas City, in the United States.
«Papa was a great hunter, with no need to brag. What a shot! He used a pair of glasses to control his myopia and stigmatism, but he took them off to shoot... And only a few pigeons got away!
«If he invited to you over to hunt, you had to use his guns and cartridges. And if he invited you over to fish in his yacht Pilar, on which I went twice, he offered the guest his own fisherman’s chair. In terms of hunting, the style he used to shoot made us laugh; not at him, but because of the strange position he used. He would take the gun and before each pigeon was released, he would bend down, and make a movement with his legs, like crouching and then he asked for the bird. At that time, there were five machines that released pigeons.
«He was a huge, smiling and good-natured man, with friendly and thoughtful eyes; very strong, very healthy and sincere. He was humble with the poor, despite his fame. He liked cock fights as much as hunting and fishing.
«Since the beginning of the 1950s, he participated in marlin fishing competitions, and even one of them was named after him. He was a key member of the CCC, which in 1955 became part of Rancho Boyeros. I was one of the poor people who was among his non-intellectual friends.
«In 1959, ‘Papa’ shot in the Cerro’s Country Club, taking part in the Sierra Maestra Cup, which had 106 pigeon shooters. A Canadian man won. I passed along three of the record books of the Hunters Club —dating back to 1907, a century ago— to the Finca Vigía, the Hemingway Museum here.”
«Later it was named the Jorge Agostini Club, but hasn’t been used for many years; that’s something sad.
«I’m retired and had a serious traffic accident in 1959. ‘Papa’ visited me several times at the Emergencias hospital before leaving Cuba for good, when he learned that his fetch-dog kid had lost a leg. But he left convinced that, just like him, I could count on the admiration and support of the Revolution and Fidel.
«I know that bringing memories back hurts. When I heard that he killed himself in the United States on July 2, 1961, my whole body hurt, even my missing leg; but I have never forgotten the things he said to me, nor his example.
«I don’t know if he ever told Fidel that I had told him that during those shooting practices, Fidel used his guns!»
Special thanks to Julio Gómez Lluciá and Doris Hernández Fernández, for their help with the story, for lending us photos and providing us with background information on the interviewee.
