Tania Díaz Castro, UPECI
HAVANA, November (www.cubanet.org) For some months now, the aromatic
Vietnamese ‘Lion’ balsam has been available behind columns and in
darkened doorways in Havana at 10 pesos a tin.
Two years ago the official Cuban press reported the balsam was being
produced in Pinar del Río province as part of a Cuban-Vietnamese
collaboration project. The goal was to produce 10,000 eight-gram units to
promote Medicuba abroad and to distribute domestically. The balsam was to be
produced in liquid form and as an aerosol. So far, it’s only available in
tins and in the black market.
The problems in producing the balsam might be caused by an inability to grow
the plant from which it is extracted and to the fact that the Vietnamese only
guaranteed the raw material for the first year.
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