The offer is generous in variety and diversity: gas stoves maintenance, repair service of spring mattresses; vendors of soft bread, biscuits, and onions or strings of garlic which they wear as bandoliers across their chest; street vendors pushing wheelbarrows overloaded of green beans and avocados or walking prepared food sellers pushing vans full of sweets. But the prize should correspond to newly emerging specie which not sells but purchases "any piece of gold, veneers, antique watches, coins, silverware".
The enactment of a list of activities which, according to the national economic model updating, Cubans may do to win their support by themselves, brought the greening of an ancient practice: to proclaim the products and services while walking (most often aimlessly) through the streets of your town or neighborhood.
Obviously, as a marketing strategy, the vendor’s cry is a primitive, but effective tool, no doubt, considering the number of people who usually practice this activity in Havana today.
Someone could say, and he would be right, by the way, that the vendor’s cry fills an important part of Cuban culture. Most of the Cuban ancient traditions need in a kind of spiritual quest that leads us to self-recognition as a nation and to the foreshadowing of a future that must, out of necessity, find a place in the historical past.
Another thing is to update schemes, due to Cuban reality, which have been long surpassed by the grace of technological development. Put it more simply: life has run its inevitable course and occupations and trades that have lost rationale can not (or should not) be raised, except as part of a program designed specifically for their rescue as a cultural manifestation (if applicable).
So I find, as user, consumer, or client, no much sense, for example, that two or more mattresses repairers proclaim their offer on the same day, at the same time and on the same block. In the contemporary world people often use less annoying but more effective tactics, opinion I voice on my condition as a neighbor.
The greenmarkets of Havana have moved to the corners. You can find, in the countless carts that circulate in my neighborhood, with negligible differences in price, more or less the same products that were previously accessed exclusively on the Gervasio and San Rafael market, or in any of the establishments of its kind which operate based on the supply-demand relationship.
It may be assumed: is not an advantage? At first glance, yes. You save time, if not money, and you can afford to choose between offering bananas from either vendor, without straying too far from your place.
However, the imprint of such nomadic traders, strictly in accordance with the legal regulations in force, may be discovered as snail trail on the pavement or sidewalk they parked to make a sale. It happens that the agro -products, rarely subjected to prior- cleaning, can not be manipulated without leaving the establishment track. The agro food residues persist for days at sight of passers-by, without anyone express concern about it.
The Law 81 of July 11, 1997, about the Environment, in its Title XIII, Chapter I, Article 147, says that: "It is prohibited to issue, dumping or discharge substances or wastes, make sounds, noise, odors, vibrations and other physical factors that affect or may affect human health or to harm the quality of life of the population."
Meanwhile, Decree-Law No. 141 of 1988 regulates contraventions of internal order and, in its Article 1, states that: "contravenes public order and a fine and other measures as indicated in each case will be imposed to whom disturb the tranquillity of the neighbors, especially at night, through the abuse of electronic devices, or other unnecessary noises (…). Members of the PNR (National Revolutionary Police) are the authorities empowered to impose appropriate action. "
The improvised criers add currently to the aggressions, which for years have been starring by bicitaxis -not a few of them turned into real mobile discos, specializing in reggaeton and timba- determined to sell whatever they carry, regardless in hours and schedules.
Please welcome those crier vendors, which in no way should be excluded from Havana landscape, because they easy on many occasions daily subsistence to its inhabitants. At the same time we exhort those who regulate their tasks, that we, users, customers, consumers, neighbors who just get up to work in the morning, do not have to interrupt our sleep to the sound of a cry after midnight, when, at least in theory, we all sleep.
Author
Leopoldo Luis
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