She left Banes on a hot and dusty morning. In a bag, some underwear and the address of relatives in Havana. When the train got to Central Station, Cosita took a deep breath and filled her lungs with that aroma of burnt oil typical of the capital. “I’m on the roof*,” she said to herself, with a feeling of victory. Six months had passed and she was returning to the city with a record of a police warning and a piece of a washing machine boarding the train with her.
Cosita settled into her cousin’s room and started to collect plastic bottles and pieces of nylon from the nearest trash cans. With these she made artificial flowers which she sold in order to eat and to “give something” to her Havana relatives. She asked around the neighborhood looking for single men — older ones — to whom she could offer herself as a “cleaning lady, who can do everything around the house,” but didn’t find any takers. She knew her days were numbered until the police would stop her in the street and discover she was an illegal. One more “Palestinian,” as many capital residents disrespectfully call people from the east of the country.
They caught her one gray and rainy afternoon, while she was selling flowers outside the farmers market. They imposed a fine, for illicit economic activity, and warned her that she had 72 hours to get out of the city. But Cosita couldn’t leave yet. She’d managed to acquire half of an Aurika washing machine, and didn’t have any way to transport it. A neighbor had also given her an old child’s wardrobe, without doors or drawers. These were all the material possessions she’d acquired on her Havana adventure and she wasn’t going to leave them behind.
The truck drivers wanted too much to transport her “treasures” to Banes. She could no longer sell her nylon decorations and the relatives who had welcomed her feared a new fine for having an illegal in their home. Cosita left, on a cold December night, with her piece of a washing machine and her bag as empty as when she had arrived. The wardrobe was abandoned in a hallway and someone used the boards to cover up a window where the rain was coming in. The clothes rod replaced a broken broom and the nails were reused in a chair.
Cosita, in Banes, dreams of returning to Havana. She tells her friends stories of her days in “the capital of all Cubans” and dreams of that “children’s furniture, of good wood,” that someday she might manage to bring — as a trophy — to her village.
*”La placa,” [in the original Spanish] is one of the popular ways to refer to Havana.
Translator’s note: “Cosita” literally means “a little thing.”
The note pinned to the Cuban flag being burned says “Out of Venezuela”
HAVANA, Cuba – The stunning images of the National Guard repressing marches in Venezuela reveal a stark contrast between the capability achieved by mankind to communicate globally at breakneck speed and the existence of apelike behavior: the authorities using their beasts against unprotected civilians.
Things are not going very well in a nation whose president, supposedly democratically elected at the polls to lead to a successful destination all its citizens and not just his followers, has adopted repression as a resource to establish “peace”, while he stokes the fires of hatred and polarization as a means to “solve” the crisis, behavior which evidences the failure of his political performance beyond the period of time he may yet stay in power.
The complexity of the situation in Venezuela is also reflected in that the protests being held steadily since February 12th are not initiated or led from the well-known opposition figures, but are mostly student and civic demonstrations against a government trying to establish itself as a dictatorship. The discontent has been growing from within society, not only because of the increasing shortages and the growing gaps and civil liberties violations, but also since President Nicolas Maduro’s Parliament sought and obtained full freedom to exercise despotism at will.
And, though control of the situation has slipped from Maduro’s fingers, (if he ever had any control), and though he is deserving of, but sadly destined to go down in the country’s history as the perfect scapegoat of the Castro-Chávez experiment that seems to be reaching its end, the truth is that the late Hugo Chávez would not have been able to sustain indefinitely the Bolivarian project either, in the presence of an economy that had begun its countdown at the time of his death, after 14 years of nonsensical policies. The outcome is only a matter of time.
The end of an alleged paradigm
It goes without saying that any leftist project inspired by a “Cuban Marx-Fidel-Martí” ideology — and for some years also “Chávez-Venezuelan” — which manages to achieve political power in Latin America, carries in itself all the essential elements that, though originally intended to perpetuate the new ruling class, leads instead to its failure: contempt for property, populism as a platform to support the political-ideological government programs, the destruction of the infrastructure and of the institutions inherited from earlier periods, the elimination or limitation (radical or gradual ) of civil liberties, the reformulation of the legal basis in favor of the interests of the new controlling power and the identification of an external enemy that hinders or prevents achieving government programs, among others.
This last element, which decades ago allowed F. Castro to polarize society from his power base by establishing a watershed between the government and its supporters (the worthy ones, the Patriots) and those in the opposition (the evil ones, the stateless), currently constitutes a political immaturity that is not delivering the dividends of previous decades, since the ever-villain U.S. government is not showing too much interest in taking part in Latin-American conflicts, an issue that weakens the regional nationalistic outbursts of a sub-continent with a historical past plagued by the interventions of its powerful northern neighbor.
And if that were not enough, the so-called “Bolivarian revolution” supports, in addition, an extra burden: while Castro’s revolution assumed, relatively successfully, a regional symbolic leadership managed to date – this must be acknowledged — with great skill by the Cuban leadership, Chávez’s revolution risked economic leadership by subsidizing the region’s leftist and other related projects, squandering generously Venezuela’s natural energy resources with the consequent deterioration of its very economy, ultimately leading to the current crisis. In short, just like Fidel Castro long ago depicted himself as an image of the Messiah, Hugo Chávez, in his time, ended up as the image of a patron saint, while the fickle masses will end up someday seeing Maduro as “the guy who ruined everything.”
As for the rest, and for the detriment of the radical leftists, Venezuelan oil is the lifeline of that pipe dream called ALBA, conceived as an economic locomotive of the “Latin American integration” which has allowed so much nationalist populism to be reborn in a region particularly addicted to sentimentality and caudillos. Little fortune could be predicted in an alliance whose central axis has its household upside down. Just in case, each fairly astute chieftain should be reviewing his accounts and stuffing his personal savings under the mattress. When XXI century socialism eventually stops developing in its Chávez cocoon, it will drag with it whatever parasites are feeding on Venezuela. It is possible that, at least in that nation, a very long sleep awaits the fundamentalist left.
On 14 March, one more anniversary was celebrated of the appearance, in 1892, of the first issue of Patria, an old dream of Jose Marti in which Tomás Estrada Palma, Manuel Sanguily, Gonzalo de Quesada, Manuel de la Cruz, Enrique José Varona and other important figures participated, managing to fuse politics and literature. The role, at that time, of this important newspaper was clear, and the apostle — Marti — described it in his editorial: “What the enemy has to hear is nothing more than the voice of attack itself… This is Patria in the press. It’s a soldier.”
Because of this commemoration, Cuba’s first vice-president Miguel Diaz-Canel, toured the facilities of the national television information system, and afterwards congratulated all the workers on the anniversary, baptized as “Day of the Cuban Press,” and he called on them to perfect their reporting work.
A small concern seemed to upset the leader on making these declarations, in the “improvised” conversational exchange, later rectified with absolute precision: Any work of the Revolution is incomplete if it’s not in the present press.
Why the urgency to amend the supposition. Because Mr. Diaz-Canel, like any other leader, knows very well the invisible guiding hand that manages our real politik, where there is no room for these kinds of errors, they are simply deliberate negligence, or purposeful inaccuracies, that should be punished.
The unaware assert that the Cuban leaders fear the opposition; but for them the dissidence doesn’t exist, they are afraid of their own power and paranoia leads them to calibrate every accent, every word, every phrase in its multiple interpretations and every detail with maximum rigor.
In Cuba there are no secrets, but we must distinguish them. Everyone should know that for Cuban parliamentarians, the concern isn’t the time that their names appear in the news, but the location of the chair that they will occupy during the next session of the National Assembly.
If we looks closely at the image of a plenary session in the Palace of Conventions, irrespective of whether its organized by the provinces of municipalities, it will not be difficult to decipher the terror of the officials who know how their own goodwill is measured by the tapestry of their chair and how close it is to the leader.
Occupying a plastic chair, located in lowlife class, feels as secure as prostitutes felt in Moscow during the Cold War.
The leather armchairs in tropical class represent the more important and deserved reward. Space reserved for people skilled in the art of meanness. Knowing you’re in tropical class provokes a certain expectation and converts you into hungry wolves or quarrelsome sheep waiting for the slightest opportunity to tear to shreds, circumstances which can serve to climb into the beige leather armchair on the great podium of superiority. Where Diaz-Canel sits. Hence his justified tremor, knowing that if he commits a single mistake, in less than five minutes he can be in the dungeon.
As my grandmother said of someone who didn’t speak for days,”Ah son, when are you going to understand that in Cuban politics ideology is pure facade, so leave it in the hands of the idiots and the military.”
After it was closed on 2 August 2013, given the urgency to undertake discrete repairs on its constructive infrastructure, the Luis de la Puente National Center of Minimal Access Surgery (CNCMA), continues under repair today, obvious to the naked eye, and as usual, it’s the never-ending story.
In reality, given the rhythm established by the Cuban government on social issues and demands, I don’t see the hurry. Or you’ve forgotten the building in El Vedado in Havana on Linea and 12th streets, that only took 18 years to build, and today is a monument to bad taste. Let’s go, as the General said, slowly but surely.
Dr. Ramon Matos shows her documents in Brazil on seeking political asylum. Photo from Internet.
HAVANA, Cuba. — The manipulation by the official press has no limits. The report published in the Granma daily on March 17 by journalist Diana Ferreiro carries a grandiose headline: “White Scrubs for a Better World.”
In said article, it went so far as to say that the seventh delegation of Cuban doctors that left this week for Brazil “will lend international help.”
The concealment of what is really behind the presence of Cuban doctors in Brazil is grotesque. These doctors do not go “to lend international help.” They are simply health professionals hired by the Brazilian government in the “More Doctors” program through the Panamerican Health Organization (PHO).
After prior negotiation by the PHO, the Marketer of Cuban Medical Services S.A. will receive 4,300* dollars monthly for each of the 11,430 doctors who will work for a period of two years in the South American giant.
Ferreiro lies when she claims that of the 1,684 physicians of the seventh delegation, “a great part of them had finished their work in Venezuela and responded to the the new call.” Really what determined that they “step up” is that they know that, after March, they are going to earn 1,245* dollars a month in Brazil, and not the 3,000 Bolivares (the equivalent of 35 dollars monthly) that the Cuban government pays them on the Venezuelan “mission.”
The Cuban government keeps a third of the 4,200* dollars a month that the doctors who work now in Brazil receive as salary.
The official press has not said that the remaining 1,245* dollars will accrue entirely to the doctors. This was possible because of the pressure by the Brazilian authorities on the Cuban government which sees itself forced to put an end to the abusive and exploitative system of 1,000-dollar payments from which the doctors received 400 dollars a month and the remaining 600 dollars was deposited in an account which they could only access on return to Cuba after finishing their work in Brazil. The change became possible because of the notorious scandal caused by the desertion of Doctor Ramona Matos and other Cuban doctors; something that, of course, Diana Ferreiro does not mention in her article.
To that extent it can be said — although the Cuban people do not know it — that it was Brazil and not Cuba where for the first time a real increase was produced in the salaries of doctors who mostly earn 20 dollars a month on the island.
The Cuban government has seen a goldmine of hard currency income with the exportation of professional services.
The payment of the 11,430 physicians who will work in various Brazilian states, added to the 35 thousand that are in Venezuela, will mean an annual income of over 6 billion dollars.
With the 46,430 Cuban doctors in Venezuela and Brazil, the Cuban population will only have 32,192 professionals at their disposal located in 57 general hospitals, four maternal-infant hospitals, 468 poly-clinics and 11,486 Family Doctor clinics.
The Cuban health system, already plagued by deficiencies, with so few professionals that will remain in Cuba, without a doubt will worsen in the coming months.
Cubanet, March 20, 2014 / Osmar Laffita Rojas
ramsetgandhi@yahoo.com
*Translator’s note: The dollar amounts reported in this text do not perfectly track, but it has been translated faithfully from the original.
The signatures of those artists from the unforgettable book open at UNEAC headquarters match the political calls of the dictatorship to support the execution of minors who tried to emigrate to the United States by hijacking the boat across the bay to the ultramarine village of Regla. Although the passengers declared that they didn’t hurt anyone, they were deceived. They promised them that if they surrendered, nothing would happen. But the next day they were executed after a summary trial.
After that event and the logical international condemnation that it aroused, they looked for accomplices, people who would “give rope,” and just as in the film, “The Man Maisinicu,” they involved more people, besmirching their hands with manure and blood, a recurring combination of a totalitarian regime.
Now these intellectuals are called to sign for a government that assassinates its students. Neither does the fact of protesting violently, if it’s true, justify annihilation. The sad thing is that most of these signatories recognize that it’s an error of the Venezuelan government, in the figure of Nicolas Maduro, ordering repression. Those lives have a cost, of course, and those who continue signing from fear or for personal benefit will be recognized by history as being brownnosers, sycophants of the omnipotent power of the Castro brothers.
Génesis Carmona, estudiante y modelo del estado Carabobo, fue asesinada por un disparo en la cabeza durante una manifestación opositora
Genesis Carmona, a student and model from Carabobo state, was killed by a shot in the head during an opposition demonstration.
For everyone a little piece of history touches us, and consequently we gain merit or demerit.
HAVANA, Cuba. – Some “fighters” have done as Fernando, who when he decided to retire, began to think about how to increase his pension without courting trouble, because he was tired of “resolving” to feed his family. One day, on passing through the farmer’s market at Diez de Octubre and General Lee, he saw that they were selling newly hatched chicks, and he bought 20 in order to begin his brood. He had found his little business. He knew that the government sells the unrationed feed for three pesos a pound. Also, rearing poultry was nothing new for him because in his childhood in Palmira, Cienfuegos, his parents kept hens in the backyard, and he and his siblings would sell the eggs in the city.
Fernando thought that this way he would have guaranteed eggs for his own consumption and even would be able to sell some in the street. He was sure he would have no problems with the police because he had bought the animals as well as the food from the State.
But, the poor man, he forgot that he was in Cuba: A few days ago he was walking the streets selling eggs when a police officer intercepted him. As much as the poor gentleman tried to explain that he was not a reseller, the officer took him to the station where they confiscated the merchandise and imposed a fine. They told him that individuals are prohibited from selling eggs, that only the State can do it.
Fernando already has forty hens and a production of 30 eggs daily. And after that day, he only sells hidden in his home.
Eight eggs per month per person in 1965. Now the quota fell to five.
On January 2, 1965, in one of his long speeches, Fidel Castro said: “The great battle of the eggs has been won. From now on the people will be able to count on 60 million eggs each month.” With this affirmation he demonstrated his scorn for Cubans because given the then-population, that quantity in reality represented around eight eggs a month per person.
That same year, he would create the Animal Science Institute (ICA) whose main objective must have been the search for better alternatives for feeding cattle and poultry, an objective that the Institute still has not achieved 49 years after its creation.
El Carrusel, Virgen del Camino, line for eggs – Photo Gladys Linares
In reality, in Cuba before 1959, more than 85% of the farms were dedicated to raising poultry and selling eggs. It was also a rare country family that did not have a small brood whose eggs constituted a product for quick sale. Also, in Havana, at Villas and Oriente, there were big poultry production centers so the sale of live animals and eggs was no problem for the population. It is after the arrival of the revolutionary government, with the intervention in farms dedicated to poultry, that the scarcity of this food begins.
Calle Monte market – Photo Gladys Linares
Also, with the objective of increasing the poultry production, the Institute of Poultry Investigations was created in 1976. By the way, according to reports it published, in Cuba there are 10 million egg layers, although we all ask ourselves where are the eggs. The government sells by ration book five eggs a month per person, so the five additional that cost 90 cents were excluded from regulated sale. After that point, eggs have practically disappeared, and when they are sold unrationed their price is 1.10 pesos national currency.
The scarcity of this protein causes long lines, in great demand among the population not only because of its nutritional value but because it is the cheapest sold in the country. And the old people are the most affected. In the opinion of many, it would be preferable to raise the price 20 cents instead of eliminating them from the ration book.
In September of 2006 Dr. Jeovany Jiménez, exercising his revolutionary optimism, wrote a letter to the minister of Public Health to protest a ridiculous salary increase that didn’t correspond to the needs nor the expectations of the sector. The response was to disbar him from practicing medicine. Jeovany created a blog, and went to the extreme of a hunger strike. Incredibly, his right to practice medicine was returned to him.
I’m not sure if I should congratulate Jeovany, who is lovingly called “the Chinaman” by his friends. It’s true that in the entire labor history of Cuba, never before has there been such a high salary increase as will be received by public health workers as of this May. It’s clear that on this occasion it’s not about a ridiculous salary increase, because the increases in many cases double the original salary, but it’s also true that in the best of cases the increase received will be enough to buy six pounds of pork and a case of beer. Whether this is a luxury remains to be determined, starting from the esteem those professionals are held in, and what we think they truly deserve.
Over five years, Jeovany Jiménez sent a total of 20 letters, never responded to, to the Minister of Public Health and managed to collect 300 signatures in support of his request. Now they will tell him “that wasn’t the time” and that now all that remains is to show appreciation.
Now you can read your @nauta.cu email on your cellphone
“The line’s long but it’s moving fast,” someone tells me outside a Cubacel Office. After an hour and several shouts from the guard whom we crowded around at the door, I managed to enter. The clerk is bleary-eyed and warns me that I can only open a Nauta email account there, but “under no circumstances is the account configured for a mobile phone.” This provokes a little, “It doesn’t matter, I know how to do it, I already downloaded the Internet manual.” The little twist of the knife works because she asks me, curious, “Oh really… and could you help a friend of mine who doesn’t know how to do it?”
This won’t surprise my readers, we’re in Cuba where restrictions and chaos mix. Where the same entity that should help its clients ends up asking them for help. So I lent a hand with the friend and her email activation.
After gaining her trust, I was able to get a little information from the bored clerk. “I’m sure the Internet will be available soon on cellphones,” I let fall, just another comment. She clicked her tongue and offered, “Don’t get your hopes up,” turning to me from the desk. Then I attacked, “Well, if it’s the Venezuelan cable, I imagine the service will expand.” And that’s when the employee hinted to me, “This cable comes from somewhere else,” while putting her index finger near her eye as the signal for “vigilance.”
I go home, stumbling at every step because I’m looking at the cellphone screen where it shows new messages. First I write several friends and family members warning them that “this email @nauta.cu is not reliable or secure, but…” And then a long list of ideas for the uses of a mailbox that isn’t private, but that I can check any time from my own cellphone. I ask several acquaintances to sign me up for national and international news services via email. Within an hour a flood of information and opinion columns is stuffing my inbox.
I spend the following days searching out the details of the service, its limits and potential. I conclude that for sending photos it’s much cheaper than the previous method through MMS messaging. Before, the only option was to send an image, with agonizing slowness, costing 2.30 CUC ($2 USD). Now, I can do it through Flickr, TwitPic and Facebook through their email publication service, paying 0.01 CUC for each kilobyte. The average photo for the web doesn’t exceed 100 Kb.
Among its possibilities, is also the ability to maintain a flow of long texts — far beyond the 160 characters of an SMS — with Cubacel users who have already activated the service. In the first 48 hours I managed to create news feeds for other activists in several areas of Cuba. So far all the messages have arrived… even thought the Nauta contract threatens to cut off the service if it is used for “activities…against national independence and sovereignty.”
I also tested the effectiveness of the GPRS connection, needed to send and receive emails, from several provinces. In Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Camagüey and Matanzas I was able to connect without major problems. There are some stretches of road where there aren’t even signals to make calls, but the rest of the tries were successful.
It’s not all good news
Coinciding with the new email service on cellphones, there has been a noted deterioration in the sending of text messages. Hundreds of messages in recent days never reached their recipients, although the telephone company quickly charged for them, which points to an act of censorship or the collapse of the networks. I would prefer to think it’s the latter, if it weren’t for the fact that among the greatest failures were activists, opponents, independent journalists and other “uncomfortable” citizens.
On the other hand, let’s not be naive. Nauta has all the hallmarks of a carnivorous network that swallows information and processes our correspondence for monitoring purposes. Very likely there is a filter for key words and minute-by-minute observation of certain people. I don’t discard the possibility that the content of private messages will be published in the official media, should the government deem it appropriate. Nor do I rule out phishing to damage the prestige of some customers, or the use of information–such as emails published on social networks–to impersonate others.
All these possibilities need to be taken into account when using the new service, because there is no independence between the telephone company and the country’s intelligence services. So every word written, every name referenced, every opinion sent via Nauta, could end up in State Security’s archives. We need to avoid making their job easier.
After a week with Nauta, my impression is that it is a crack that is widening. Through which we can project our voices, but also through which we could be abducted. A poor imitation of the web, a handicapped internet, their service is very far from what we have demanded as 21st century citizens.
Nevertheless, I suggest using this new option and pushing its limits, like we have done with text-only messaging. Used cautiously, but with a civic conscience, this path can help us to improve the quality and quantity of information we receive and of our own presence on the social networks. Its own name already says it, if we can’t be internauts… at least we can try being nautas.
My incarceration is not enough for the dictatorship
At dawn on last March 22, we prisoners, once again, were awakened by henchmen’s boots for another search procedure. Several officers, directed again by Major Cobas, ousted us from the barracks with the intention of distancing us from our belongings. I objected and asked to remain present while they inspected my property which Cobas himself refused. I warned that I was not responsible for what they might find in my absence. The officer persisted in moving me away.
As has always happened, I was the only one of interest although they searched the rest. The majority gathered around my bed searching among books, reading each paper of the many that I posses, and setting aside those they found “interesting,” always news that brings me national and international reality and that generally is far away and different from that of government censors and authorized in their official media. They also read the back covers of the books in order to practice the look of the political police, and as on other occasions, to take them.
In the end, they only confiscated personal documents, printed news, two CDs, one with the images of the false “witness” that the Prosecution prepared against me in complicity with the police and the complainant when they came to demand 54 years in jail for me and later, thanks to those images, they had to desist. They also took another CD with the sad documentary “Gusanos” which is about the fascist action of the government against State of Sats (Estado de Sats). I suppose that if those officers had the least bit of embarrassment and humanity, they would feel shame.
The alarming thing is that they showed me an instrument that looked like a screwdriver which can be used as a punch and which they claimed to have found within a dark suitcase that I possess. I assured that it did not belong to me, and the officer who said he found it blatantly lied and claimed it was true. A prisoner interrupted to claim that it was his property because he was trying it as a shoemaker’s needle, and he sewed work boots with it; then they left laughing with absolute cynicism.
It is no secret that they are searching desperately to implicate me even more and add some crime in order again, as on prior occasions, to erase the five year maximum sentence as stipulated by the Penal Code. Or a tangible vengeance for the “Second Open Letter to Raul Castro,” which I dedicated this past February 28 on completing a “Year of Unjust Incarceration.”
As always, they are plotting something, and also as always, they will not find in me even an iota of giving in to their constant torture for the “Crime” of thinking “DIFFERENTLY.”
Yesterday, the OAS voted for much more than the silence of María Corina Machado. Yesterday the OAS sentenced her to the murderous loneliness of nasty socialism, which is the only one that germinates in America. Yesterday the OAS made itself an accomplice to a crime against morality which, like the coercive quotas of Venezuelan oil, muddies the miserable hands and tarnishes the reactionary faces of half a continent. Read the entire article here.
According to the Official Journal of the European Union, the Brazilian government decided to triple the number of Cuban collaborators in its program of popular health “More Doctors.” And to cover the increase of the Cuban medical contingent in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff updated the contract it has with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), bringing to 973.94 million reals ($ 415 million dollars) as the resources for this expansion for the next six months.
What is blatantly obvious on the Brazilian news is that the Cuban doctors expected to arrive in Brazil, are those who — given the unstable and turbulent situation facing Caracas — are preparing to flee Venezuela.
Alfredo has tried several times to get in touch with his brother. He doesn’t bother with sending an SMS because he has sent various messages on other occasions which haven’t arrived on time.
Following ETECSA informing most of its users of the new service, they can access their emails via NAUTA.cu from their mobile phones. The SMS service won’t work as it did before.
These problems with ETECSA’s service have affected all the Cuban government’s opponents, even leaving them without access to the internet. But what’s happening now is no more than possible overloading being experienced by ETECSA in carrying out what they have promised.
Does ETECSA have the ability to offer a quality service?
Another one of the services affected is MMS. In spite of the fact that it isn’t popular among Cubacel’s users because they don’t know about it. Those people who have been able to use it have found it difficult to send an MMS.
“Yesterday I sent a photo of her granddaughter to my mother and she wasn’t able to see it because the service isn’t working”, said Michel.
Is ETECSA going to get worse? Just as everything that the government touches does. Or is it just a question of getting used to a poor to middling service quality which varies from month to month?
On February 11, while a toxic product was being worked with on one of the fields of the Jose Antonio Labrador Agricultural Cooperative, produced an ammonia leak that affected several villages. At Ciro Redondo Hospital in Artemisa more than 45 patients were seen with respiratory problems, all of whom were released except for two girls who remain under observation in Comandante Pinares Hospital.
The causes of the leak are still being investigated.
