Don’t say you didn’t hear me!
Don’t say you didn’t see me!
Here I am!
Tamal-ize yourself!
The sight of this sexagenarian pushing his cart through this lovely neighborhood so full of hills — from Calzada de Boyeros to 23rd Street, his head covered with a big balsa hat to protect himself from the harshness of our scorching sun — aroused my admiration.
On one occasion I noticed he was particularly happy and asked him why. With a smile on his face he replied, “My tamales have finally gone international!”
“A Cuban from Miami bought fifty tamales from me (one for each star in the American flag) to freeze and take back with him,” he explained.
“You are going to be famous, Pepe, though you are already the best in Nuevo Vedado,” I said.
’I am the only one in Nuevo Vedado,” he replied.
Early Saturday I found out through a neighbor that Pepe had just died of a heart attack.
Never more will we hear his cheerful cries. He was a fixture of one of those urban street scenes so evocative of a bygone era, which fills both those of us from here and those of us from there with nostalgia
Rebeca Monzo, 13 July 2015
