Berta: The Top Hawker in Town
She takes control of every street and place in the Hero City with her hawking cries of street vendor. With her daily walk she looks like a singular character taken from novels based on the colonial age.
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This Santiago woman, a real fighter, joyful and mother of three, is Berta Lidia Hechavarría Heredia, or just Berta, the Top Hawker in Town when it comes to Santiago de Cuba.
She dresses simply. A headscarf decorated her head, her colorful dress dances with the wind, her widened anatomy disappears among the people, but her voice prevails because the cry sounds again and again. An authentic Santiago cry.
Her head masterfully carries a basket with the products she sells thanks to her cries. In that basket you can bee honey, lemon, toasted peanut or one of the potions she prepares to relieve the pains of her many clients.
"You drink this and your body will be “bug-free”, you’ll be clean", the Top Hawker in Town asserts, and this is how the city that saw her come to this world 84 years ago has labeled her.
Berta knows the properties of such plants as higuereta, tuba tuba, romerillo… the list seems to be endless. These plants can be used to relieve sufferings related to the prostate, inflammation, renal calculus. “I’ve learned everything I know from my African ancestors”, she says.
She has not always been a town crier. She has worked as a domestic servant, she has harvested coffee, cotton, sugar cane and she has worked washerwoman in kindergartens, among the many other things this woman has done in Alta Providencia, El Caney.
This great town crier is sometimes compared to the mother Dolores character, from Félix Benjamín Caignet’s The Right to be Born or Januaria, one of the main characters of the popular Brazilian soap opera The Slave Isaura, although she claims to be more like Januaria.
The Top Hawker in Town has won several prizes during Santiago’s Carnivals and Cry Festivals. In 2007 she was given the Memoria Viva Award, by Juan Marinello Cuban Institute of Cultural Research, to recognize the cultural continuity of the Caribbean and the way her cry describes the history of this people.
She has participated in the Fire Fiesta and was given, in the 30th edition of the event, Casa del Caribe International Award; but Berta’s greatest prize is her gifted voice and the recognition of locals and visitors that greet her on every step she takes.
