14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, May 30, 2024 — How much can a piece of cardboard with the portrait that Andrés Estévez made of José Martí in Key West during Christmas 1891 cost in Havana? The answer comes from a man who walks along Obispo Boulevard, without people paying much attention to him, with filthy clothes, his keys tied with a cord around his waist, a cap and a bag made of jute.
The walking vendor sells one of the 42 known portraits of Martí. His face, captured after an event at the Cuban Patriots Organizing Committee in Key West, is neither heroic nor inspiring. He avoids the camera’s gaze and there is a certain skepticism in his eyes. 1891 is the year of Con todos y para el bien de todos y de Versos sencillos (With All and for the Good of All and Simple Verses). According to his biographers, that December he was very ill, and the photo is the best testimony.
Nor is the man carrying the portrait in good health. The employees of Obispo’s restaurants, the riders, passers-by and even a beggar who rests his crutches on the walls of a tourist information agency look at him with some caution. In the jute bag he also carries notebooks that he sells at the same price as Martí, and other objects that he has found and intends to resell. His Via Crucis begins in the Plaza de Armas and ends, in case it gives him a little good luck, under the statue of the Apostle — as Cubans call José Martí — in Central Park.
If the writer Eduardo del Llano – father of Nicanor and staunch defender of the regime – said that “the History of Cuba is not for sale,” the quote does not matter in the least to the walker. Everything has a price, and even more so when you are poor and food is, when it exists, too expensive. It is enough for the first interested party to approach him and, to his surprise, ask him: “Partner, how much is the Apostle worth?” He will answer: “20 pesos.”
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