Burness Global: Stories

Me hice la prueba de VIH (credit: Coimbra Sirica)

For me, the AIDS2008 conference in Mexico City this August opened in the lobby of a hotel in the Zona Rosa, where a French human rights activist — a young woman with short spiky hair — was trying unsuccessfully to communicate with a trans-gender sex worker from Mexico, a woman with shoulder-length dark hair and very big hands. I helped out for a bit, translating for them until the two had figured out where they might meet later that day to discuss how the French group could help advocate on behalf of the trans-gender group’s rights to HIV treatment and prevention services.

Chance encounters at the biannual international conference can be very funny — and immensely sad — and they often speak to the great difficulties surrounding AIDS. There is no scientific meeting that matches it for embracing the most marginalized of people.  Their representatives are in evidence, often in flamboyant glory. Yet most everyone has in common that they’ve lost people they love at some point in their lives. None of my gay friends from the 1980s is alive. (Except a dear cousin, who describes himself as uptight and Catholic, and says he thanks his parents regularly for repressing him so thoroughly they may have saved his life.)

The conference plays out in other venues as well — sometimes far from the big halls and hotel lobbies. One morning I accompanied a group of reporters to one of Mexico’s largest prisons, the Reclusório del Oriente, which holds 11,000 inmates. Several inmates were taking part in an AIDS prevention workshop, which was run in part by HIV “peer educators” — fellow prisoners.

Reclusório del Oriente (credit: Coimbra Sirica)

Prisoners told us that drug use and unprotected sex between men are common in the prison. One HIV peer educator, Guillermo, 32, said he regularly had sex with men and was HIV positive. He said that it was “normal” in prison for men to have sex with each other, regardless of whether they thought of themselves as gay.

Carlos Ortiz Perez, another of the peer educators, said he was thinking of his two young daughters when he volunteered for the prevention program. “One of them has got pregnant since I’ve been in here,” said Ortiz, 45, who said he too had grown up without a father. “She’s the one who made me want to try to help the young people in this prison.”

Guillermo said his job is to make sure his fellow inmates know how to protect themselves from infection. The warden acknowledged the use of drugs in the prison, but said he doubted there was much sex between prisoners.

“That’s a lie,” retorted Guillermo, who is serving five years on the assault charges. And if they don’t use condoms, he added, “their wives visit and take the virus home with them.”

As we walked down the cement stairs toward the exit, I saw to my left a three-story building. On its plain cement façade were engraved the words, “VISITA INTIMA.” The warden said that inmates on good behavior could stay the night with their wives in one of the rooms.

It made me think about Ortiz and Guillermo and the importance of their efforts to protect inmates and their families from HIV. They said changing their colleagues’ behaviors would never be easy.  “I talk about it only when the men are ready,” said Ortiz, who was convicted of stealing a car. “Differences in here are resolved with blows, so you want to pick the right moment.”