Jehovah’s witness arrested in Manzanillo for selling drugs resolved the shortage

Manzanillo (Granma)/The case of Kleisy Suárez, recently detained for the possession and marketing of medicines – both imported as national manufacturing – has shocked Manzanillo, in the province of Granma. Father of two girls, a degree in Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation and witness of Jehovah, is known in the municipality for his affable character and his sense of solidarity in the business.

At home – located on Cocal Street, between Tívoli and Concordia – the police confiscated an important volume of medicines and other health supplies that were promoted on social networks and then sold at home.

Initially, Suarez only had medications sent by his relatives from the United States. Then he nourished the first aid kit with others of national production whose origin is under investigation. It sold antibiotics, antiparasitic, analgesics, anti -inflammatories, antihistamines, drugs for blood pressure, heart disease, eyelets and ointments, as well as syringes and material for sutures, all in fault.

The sales prices set by Suárez were governed by informal rates, although in their case they used to be below other similar offers.

Suárez’s arrest divides the opinions of the chaanilleros. The shortage has caused even whole premises to become informal pharmacies. This is the case of a restaurant that became last year in The best assorted apothecary of the municipality. Although many have suffered in their own flesh the runaway prices of resellers and hoarders, others admit that without informal pharmacies they could not get their medications.

“If it were for me, that they collect them and send them to agriculture, so that they know what it is to work,” says Ismael, 73, who has a radical point of view on the business of illegal sale of drugs . “It’s time for them to get hard with criminals, because these people have the people exploited. Prices by the clouds, one without a kilo in their pocket and they give the sweet life.”

For his part, Georgina, a housewife, also maintains a critical attitude since his religious ethics. “I know that boy and I really didn’t know what was happening. More than once I bought him outside’s medicines. Others gave them to me,” he says. “We shared faith in the work and grace of Jehovah, although we congregated in places different.

“I don’t think he did what he did for greed but out of necessity,” says José, an acquaintance of Suarez who lives in his own neighborhood. Suarez worked in a rehabilitation room. His salary, he explains, did not give him to keep his wife and his daughters and decided to start selling what his relatives sent him.

“His ruling was to start selling state pills instead of continuing with what they sent him, but believe me it is a difficult situation,” he adds. “I knew him from here, from the cast ICP – south of Manzanillo. I understand that he moved a while ago. I never had to buy anything because my nephews send me the things I need. Of course, those who do not have that possibility have to solve otherwise. ”

For José, the history of Suárez has some fatality and any of the multiple illegal businesses of Manzanillo – and from all over Cuba – he could have fallen: “That boy is one more and it was his turn to lose.”

No one in the town forgot, adds José, who during the Coronavirus pandemic – even before – the state authorized the sending of medicines from the non -profit foreigner. There was some consent, even by the authorities, with the fact that part of those packages, with all types of drugs-not only against COVID-19-will end up in the stash of informal merchants.

“However sick one is, nobody consumes so many daily medications,” he says. “Thanks to that, people resolved because the State did not have how to meet the demand for medicines and less in the midst of the epidemiological crisis. That I know that sale was never legal, but if people disappear it will see it worse because there is still no way to supply pharmacies or the basics. And hospitals are the same. There you have to take from the medicine to the syringe to put it on because they never have anything. ”

Alfredo, another chaanillero, resists addressing the issue, but ends up admitting his relationship with the detainee. “It gives me work to talk about this, because I have always been a man integrated into the revolution. What is wrong, is wrong, and say that I almost had a warehouse of health things in the house. However, I have to admit that more than once I got a trouble, especially with medications for both me and my old woman. ”

Thanks to Suarez, Alfredo got the precious “American pills” he needed. It was a surprise, he adds, to find out on the Internet that he also sold national drugs. In spite of everything, he has the best opinion of him. “In his eyes he was seen that he was not a bad person. Not ostentatious. In the networks there is much of that without knowing it. If it is true what they published, I cannot say that he was not mistaken. Nor do I doubt that there is even envy from other vendors. There are people who sell more expensive, from here and there, and nothing happens to them. ”

“The Aytana Alama, who published the police operation on medicines, should also investigate and publish corruption From abovewhich is where those resources should be well saved, “emphasizes Alfredo without ambiguity.

Facebook profiles and Telegram channels have echoed the arrest of Suárez in recent days. Comments indicate irritation due to lack of medicines in pharmacies and claim that there is no impunity for sellers, but neither for those who, from privileged positions, divert huge amounts of products.

However, more than shortage in state pharmacies, the fact that medications in the informal market also scarce – where everyone usually buys their prices – also scarce, and raise their prices, already inaccessible to many.

“People forget that in quarantine during the pandemic we had to make queues in pharmacies for days and nights, without knowing at least if the medications you needed would enter,” recalls Hortensia, an old woman with varicose veins on her legs.

At that time, he says, the tail of the tail or the work of the COLEROand it was almost like paying medicine overpricing. To whom he dared to queue in person, he was waiting for him for a morning of push -ups and ill -treatment.

Hortensia Consume Venatón and other drugs sold by the so -called card. More than once he returned home empty because there was nothing in the pharmacy or the medicines were so few that he could not buy them. He is not alone, he says. “There are also problems with the treatments for asthmatic, epileptics, for nerves, for the eyes … there are bland old people like me who ended the queues worse than they arrive.

On the activity of Suárez and other medication vendors, he does not doubt: “Whenever I can pay, I do it and assure my treatment.”

Kleisy Suárez’s situation is a national alarm and a pending account with those who depend on a stable supply of medicines. He did not generate the crisis nor is he who stole from stores and deposits, medications, medical supplies or other products or raw materials under his responsibility. Many in Manzanillo fear that they make him an atoning goat, without solving the substantive problem of drug scarcity.