The ugly practice of begging has become a safety net for Cubans

The hand is to receive the almost-painful donations, which continue to arrive and range from an aspirin to a used bus. That custom of expecting someone to send something is about 10 years old here.

In the State of the Gardener [a reference to a Spanish saying: ``The gardener's dog doesn't eat or let others eat.''], which does not produce and does not allow others to produce, the ugly practice of begging came about as a safety net. Large groups of Cubans have sought relief in the uncertain shelter of donations.

I always knew that help, as an act of solidarity, had a transient and urgent character, as in a disaster, an unexpected happening that surprises and devastates a family, a regime, a country. But I do not believe that anyone would assume forever the maintenance of a family, the clothing of a community, the supplying of medications for a hospital, or the purchasing of the transit-system equipment of a city.

The gratification of helping someone in need becomes an inconvenient and agonizing burden if it is extended and mandatory. What once was a clear human value becomes, at least in Cuba's case, humiliating to the receiver as well as the provider.

A physician friend told me: ``At times I feel a strange restlessness when I go home to Guanabacoa in a bus that has large letters on its side saying, `Donation of such-and-such municipality of Andalusia to the people of Havana.' It may be because I am proud.''

Most Cubans ask only for medicines. They ask a traveling friend, a foreigner, even an unknown foreigner, for a remedy needed for a family member. To ask for anything else is harder, although some sectors of our society now expect that their family members abroad or some institution in Holland or Sweden will send them something to survive.

For some groups, especially in the areas where there are no dollars -- which is most of Cuba -- to survive without the money from Miami or donated clothes and medicines is impossible. There also is a smaller group: the beggars. These have been growing in numbers and now are part of Cuban folklore. Each place in Havana where sales are made in foreign currency now has its assigned beggar.

Cuba is one of the few countries that brags of a beggar: ``El Caballero de París'' [The Gentleman from Paris]. That deranged gentleman never asked for anything during his long pilgrimage through the gateways of Havana, but everyone knew that he had to be given food and clothing and shelter to survive. And he survived for years.

The heirs of El Caballero, expelled from the workers' paradise with the big boom of the collapse of the socialist world, have become more demanding. Some, when they fail to receive the gift (donation), will insult the customer, the employee, or the passerby. A sort of ``alms-by-force'' attitude caused by an egalitarian speech, heard over the past 40 years and that now -- in the strange social universe in which it lives and dies -- provokes in the individual a formidable wasting of spirit.

In Old Havana, in Vedado, Miramar, or other parts of the capital, those men and women who search garbage cans are now familiar. They also approach the tables, they make up sad stories of sick family members or long trips to the provinces to pay their respect to the dead. Some are demented, and some have all their senses; all dress in shreds.

They are locked in their world of hunger and delirium. Without understanding what is happening, they ask something.

These are the heirs of the Gentleman of Paris who spent his life in Havana and now rests in the Santiago de las Vegas cemetery. It is the saga of El Caballero. The people simply call them the Fellows from Paris.
©1998 Cuba Free Press, Inc.
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