HAVANA -- Cuba's literary tradition and its contemporary writers remain as largely untouched in America today as a Montecristo No. 2.

It's a great cigar, but hard to find because it's illegal to bring one back. Cuban literature is available in the United States, though, a survivor of the Bush administration's 2004 ban on business with Fidel Castro.

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The federal government has lifted restrictions on American publishers who want to feature writers from Cuba, Iran and Sudan. The economic bans remain in effect, stopping those cigars, but also stopping Yankee dollars from contributing to the improvements at Ernest Hemingway's house near Havana, the Finca Vigia.

The work goes on, regardless, largely with Cuban funds, but the curator of the estate, now the Hemingway Museum, told me other countries are willing to pitch in.

Ada Rosa Alfonso, a walking encyclopedia of Hemingway lore, hinted that Great Britain and perhaps Japan, are ready to fund the on-going restoration. She was my tour guide at the home March 3.

The museum needs a flatbed computer scanner to copy the many notes that the writer scribbled in about 3,000 of the 9,000 books in his home library.

Various Hemingway organizations in the United States would write a check tomorrow, but are prohibited by the Bush ban.

"Inglaterra," she whispered to me conspiratorially as we stood sweating in the sunny 88-degree heat of the finca's backyard trying to see the Havana skyline through the polluted air. "They will pay."

Papa Hemingway is more popular than I ever realized in Cuba. There's a whole mythology about the gringo who, in truth, spent more time in Cuba writing. Fishing, drinking and entertaining took a backseat to his work.

Two books -- "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Old Man and the Sea" -- hold the top spots on Cuba's Hemingway pantheon.

Hemingway wrote a prologue for his Spanish Civil War novel in Cuba, but it was unused. Later Castro claimed he learned guerrilla warfare tactics from the book.

The Cubans revere "The Old Man and the Sea" because it is about one of them and uses the fishing village of Cojimar, several miles from his home, as its setting.

Hemingway's role in Cuban culture asserted itself at a presentation by his daughter-in-law, Valerie Dabney-Smith Hemingway, at the Jose Marti International Institute of Journalism.

In a country where there is no free press, the institute's role seems a little confusing, but it does offer post-graduate instruction and sponsors seminars and conferences.

(Cuba is a socialist dictatorship. In order for me to practice my trade in Cuba, I was required to register, tell a government official my plans and buy a $75 license. Occasionally, I would notice the same heavyset Cubano puffing a habano lurking in the background on my travels.)

Valerie Hemingway, 67, was a 19-year-old Irish fledgling journalist when the writer added her to his cuadrilla that followed him around Spain in the "dangerous summer" of 1959 at bullfights.

She became his personal secretary, living at the finca during Hemingway's last year in Cuba and would later marry his youngest son, Gregory. He died in 2001.

Valerie, now a Montana resident, was in Cuba two weeks ago for Smithsonian magazine to write about the finca. Her talk about her former boss attracted about 60 listeners.

Most were students, but several were members of the Havana media, attracted by the Hemingway mystique.

The speaker held their full attention for more than an hour, answering questions about the most arcane details of Hemingway's life, but not his books.

Later, Valerie said she believed that "Hemingway's celebrity side" was so far from the reality she knew of the man and his life.

"He was a writer first and foremost. He was not interested in making headlines or worrying about his legacy," she said. "As hard as it was for him, Ernest wrote. The rest isn't important."

The Cubans would disagree. The government has invested a great deal in promoting the American writer, looking ahead to the day when better relations with Washington, D.C., will bring a flood of Yanquis ready to spend dollars on Hemingway.