Thanks to Lucie Lecomte for sending the link to this Cubanet.org report: Pescadores habaneros, entre el cólera y la cólera. [Havana fishers, caught between cholera and cholera] Most of the report describes various people around Havana who've been stopped from fishing and even had their equipment seized. The reason is in this excerpt, with my translation:
Horacio Marrero, de 34 años, residente en la barriada de Puentes Grandes, en el municipio Playa, expuso: “Pescaba en el río Itabo. Se presentaron dos policías. Me dijeron que estaba prohibido pescar. Les respondí que pescaba allí desde niño, que no sabía cuándo ni por qué habían prohibido pescar. Pues eso ya se acabó, me respondieron los guardias, ni en ríos, ni en presas, ni en las costas de mar se puede pescar. Hay mucha contaminación en las aguas y riesgos de contraer cólera. Los peces pueden estar contaminados, y trasmitir la enfermedad”.
Horacio Marrero, 34, a resident of Puentes Grandes in Playa municipality, said: "I was fishing in the Itabo River. Two police officers appeared. They told me fishing was forbidden. I told them I'd been fishing there since I was kid, and I didn't know when or why they'd forbidden fishing. Well, that's all over, they told me, no fishing in rivers, reservoirs, or on the coast. There's a lot of contamination in the water and a risk of catching cholera. The fish could be contaminated and transmit the disease."The cops had a point. Not long after cholera first reached the Dominican Republic, it caused a spectacular outbreak among guests at a wedding party held at a big resort. The outbreak was traced to lobsters bought in a coastal town near the Haitian border.
