Near the docks and custom house of Old Havana, in front of the meticulously restored basilica of the convent of San Francisco de Asís, stands the life-size bronze statue of a figure with long, flowing hair and beard, wrapped in a D'Artagnan-style cape which seems to drift in the wind as he walks. This statue is one of the very few erected in Havana since the revolution of 1959. It does not portray a rebel hero, a patriotic general, a famous writer, a great architect, or the composer of some unforgettable song dedicated to this city on the bay. Rather, it is the statue of the Parisian Gentleman, El Caballero de París. The French themselves would have called him a clochard , a vagabond. From the 1920s to the 1970s he slept where he could, on one corner or another as he moved about the city, feeding himself on what he found or was offered by street vendors or passers-by, holding up his pants with a rope belt from which dangled pencils secured by strings. Yet, dressed in his signature cape over a tattered set of tails, the self-styled Parisian Gentleman projected an aura of dignity and majesty. The European aristocrat washed up on the shores of this New World--or so he presented himself--made speeches to the crowds in seventeenth-century Spanish or busied himself arranging his mysterious bags and bundles and masses of newspapers and magazines. He was, by most accounts, a Spanish immigrant who had come to Cuba as a teenager and found work in Havana's sophisticated stores and hotels. Some said he had gone crazy for love, while others said he'd been jailed for a murder or a robbery he did not commit. Over the course of decades, he became an institution. Ageless, capable of appearing at any hour of day or night, attached to no neighborhood in particular, white but poor, both comic and tragic, he became a sort of essential citizen of Havana, to whom the city's residents have dedicated songs, poems, memoirs, imagined biographies, and plays. " Un tipo muy popular ," one such song calls him--which suggests "popular" and "of the people" all at once. The Caballero died in 1985 and was buried in an obscure grave on the city's outskirts. When the ruined colonial church and convent of San Francisco (turned to civilian uses since the mid-nineteenth century) was restored in the year 2001, the city historian requested the transfer of the Caballero's ashes to that sanctuary beside the city's earliest marketplace. The reception this vagabond received sums up the spirit of his adopted city; throughout his lifetime on the streets, even those who laughed at him protected him. They conversed with him and accepted the quill pens and colored papers he gave out as gifts to those who offered him alms. He once buttonholed a Cardinal, who listened politely as the Caballero explained that the church should sell all its goods and distribute the proceeds among the poor. By the 1940s, he was such an institution that he was interviewed in the press. In the 1950s, he appeared on television alongside two similar itinerant characters, La Marquesa and Bigote de Gato. In the 1960s, he was afforded carte-blanche for free food from the kitchens of the newly state-run restaurants. The courtesy and protection afforded to the Caballero testifies to something about Havana that every visitor notes--this city is the most welcoming place. The people of Havana welcomed the Caballero as they welcome almost everyone, with hospitality and compassion. It doesn't take much to strike up a conversation, even if you are a stranger, or strange. We believe this characteristic stems from the city's origins. Havana began as a port and a crossroads, and it has been that way ever since--a melting pot of transients and immigrants and refugees, of slaves and freedmen and freedwomen, as well as conquistadors and plutocrats, a confluence of the four points of the compass, of Spain, Africa, China, and the Levant, of the Caribbean islands and the Americas on both sides of the Rio Grande. The name of the city, La Habana or La Havana, comes from Spanish transcriptions of an indigenous word. But in ensuing years many came to believe that the name derived from haven and harbor, which the city has always been in both a physical and a social sense. Exiles adding to city's mix in various eras have included Irish Catholics, French Protestants and Bonapartists, South American royalists and revolutionaries, Haitian ex-planters and ex-canecutters, Indonesian communists and South African guerrillas, and American fugitives ranging from Black Panthers to gangsters and millionaires. Through it all, Havana has been a city that takes what comes--and assimilates it. Comparisons of the Cuban capital to the French one have been frequent, and will appear in what follows, but what made El Caballero de París beloved was that he was quintessentially Havana--and being quintessentially Havana did not rule out naming himself after someplace else. Excerpted from The History of Havana by Richard Cluster, Rafael Hernández, Dick Cluster All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
