Old Havana and its picturesque characters

Old Havana is like a postcard where the picturesque characters abound and tell us their little stories, sometimes with just a glance.

At the corner of Hotel Ambos Mundos we stumbled upon the smart guy, who wears a suit, hat and two-tone shoes, and with that other one who is disguised as a policeman from the time of dictator Machado.

There are elderly women sitting in the recesses of the old buildings, which have floripondios on their heads or cover them with red and yellow handkerchiefs, with cigarettes that smoke or simulate smoking.

Young women, white, black and mulatto, wander everywhere with colorful satin dresses carrying baskets on their arms, smiling at outsiders to take their pictures with them.

And there are the striking living statues, with their make-up made of melted cork, with all the scaffolding that implies the corresponding characterization: we observe a Chaplin come to less, a metallurgical worker, African warriors, the Knight of Paris, the violinist ..., all with their statism and their basket on the floor to collect the money that people put, to somehow defray their art of posing.

There have been new ones, like the man of the serpent, and there are the habitual ones who impose themselves: the can-pickers, the blind, the paralytic, the crazy ..., a large group that floods the tourist walk, Animated postcard where a landscape is exhibited that could well be included in a novel of the real wonderful, but written by all the Cubans.

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