Cuba also seemed to attract a unique assortment of personalities that represented powerful threads from America’s own story. Ernest Hemingway had lived there for more than twenty years, and his grandsons reached out to me before our trip. José Andrés, the prominent Spanish American chef, came with us, as he had supported Cuba’s self-employed cooks. Jimmy Buffett made plans to play a concert. Jackie Robinson had played baseball in Havana, and we were joined on Air Force One by his daughter and ninety-three-year-old widow, Rachel. It felt as if we were traveling to Havana with a cast of American
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