Latinos ACT UP: Transnational AIDS Activism in the 1990s
González, M. Alfredo
JULY/AUGUST 2008 report: hiv/aids Latinos ACT UP: Transnational AIDS Activism in the 1990s the author (center), together with the late luis salazar (left) and luis “Popo”...
...A striking feature of the sym at the argentine posium was the diversity of the voices it brought together...
...The Latino Caucus began exploring how to support the CHA in the late months of 1990 and decided to apply international pressure...
...The consulate, we underlying premise was that the were taken to a complexity of the task demanded room on the top the will and the concerted effort of a diverse collective of stakehold floor, where the ers...
...Public health observers called our “recycling” effort dysfunctional...
...In the years following the Stonewall riots, the philosophy that fueled the lesbian and gay movement’s social and cultural critique and linked it to the struggles of women, workers, and people of color, lost sway as many settled on the path to assimilation...
...The second question was his: How democratic is Argentina if a minority group does not enjoy the right of free and legal association...
...Others covered their faces instead...
...For them, the call to action went beyond the borders of the United States, and the tensions that despair had forced many to overlook emerged grotesquely...
...The rise of Bill Clinton to power, the advent of proteaseinhibitors,andthecombinationofseveral M. Alfredo González is an anthropologist specializing in health, poverty, cities, and Latinos...
...Still, few Latinos/as were able to adopt this outlook and struggled with stigma, inadequate of historical precedent begged questions of cultural fit and political feasibility...
...Help yourself to anything you find useful, we told him, and left to meet behind closed doors in the other room...
...Others, watching HIV thrive in poverty, injustice, and oppression, dressed the wounds that the disease left on the social body...
...The Argentine press corps took frantic notes, talked into their tape recorders, and hurriedly made long-distance calls...
...We were taken to a conference room on the top floor, where the consul greeted us...
...More recently, Jesús Aguais, former member of ACT UP–Americas, founded Aid for AIDS, a nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to this type of operation...
...Querido amigo,” Menem began...
...From cardboard signs, Mafalda, the world-famous Argentine cartoon character, demanded legal recognition for CHA with an admonishing expression...
...These aide asked us to wait in a tiny room...
...In 1990, the Argentine national Court of Appeals rejected CHA’s request to secure legal recognition because, it would amount to recognizing a “hybrid third gender” and a threat to what the court referred to as established “morals and good customs...
...I hope you Only when we worked on local issues did we receive the support haven’t come to we requested, and even that ended infect us...
...after a point...
...The dearth the early 1990s...
...Its association with the anti-corporateglobalization movement re-energized it with a new framework for its analyses, new methodologies, new allies, and new horizons—driven in part by the goal of making HIV treatments available in the Global South...
...Ijoined the latino caucus of act up/ny in 1990 and remained active until 1994.2 Initially, I only attended the meetings of the caucus, and began to participate in ACT UP’s general meetings after a few months...
...A small group of Latinos working within ACT UP had begun this transnational work in the stark contrasts between the quality and length of life of people with HIv in the united states and latin america demanded solidarity...
...To make matters worse, these were delicate times: Argentina had recently joined the Desert Storm coalition...
...O ........BoletíndeACTUPAmericas...
...Three months after the action, ACT UP/NY paid a Buenos Aires newspaper for a half-page ad denouncing CHA’s plight...
...The general consul, we were told, wanted to discuss the desecration of the consulate...
...Democrats...
...HIV/AIDS activists inherited from the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements were practically absent in Latin America...
...Ourfirststepwaspublishingthe Boletín de ACT UP Americas, a Spanish-language newsletter offering HIV-related scientific, social,andpoliticalnews.Wehopedthatdisseminating this information would inspire new political strategies to confront the epidemic...
...As soon as we had sat down the he said, “I hope you haven’t come to infect us...
...We had met him four days earlier at ACT UP/NY’s work space...
...Some drugs needed refrigerated storage, and all of them had expiration dates...
...By 1996, the latino caucus and the act up– Americas committee did not exist as such...
...JULY/AUGUST 2008 report: hiv/aids Latinos ACT UP: Transnational AIDS Activism in the 1990s the author (center), together with the late luis salazar (left) and luis “Popo” santiago, protests in front of the argentine consulate in new york to demand legal recognition for Comunidad Homosexual argentina, a Buenos aires organization, in 1991...
...Thus, when ACT UP was born, the political differences between lesbians and gay men had largely been rendered trivial by HIV...
...We also reported on conferences and discussed HIV-related developments in the region’s social, cultural, and political spheres...
...This small-scale strategy is the same one that medical doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer used in 1998 to provide HIV medications to his patients in Haiti...
...Southern activists knew about general strikes and popular revolts but not much about civil disobedience, creative nonviolence, or the “subordinate expertise” of laypeople who appropriate biomedical knowledge...
...As the organization’s membership grew, it became more diverse and so did its priorities, with many people joining who could not help but see the global and historical dimensions of the pandemic...
...By the 1980s, the politics of social class was at the core of Latin American social struggles, less so the politics of difference...
...A commonthemeemerged:Financialandinformationalgaps in the region limited the quality and length of life of people with HIV, many of whom did not know about and could not pay for treatments...
...The next day, Buenos Aires newspapers trumpeted the brief exchange in New York with front-page headlines...
...After Menem’s presentation, several hands went up duringtheQ& A.Intheback,oneofusstoodupwithhishand raised and remained standing as the president gave his first reply...
...Recipients had to understand that each delivery could be the last...
...We faced an uphill battle, not only in fighting for the rights of HIV-positive people, but sometimes within our very own organization...
...Pondering these topics with the Latino Caucus led to unavoidable conclusions...
...at the “picket line,” one activist remained with 15 signs...
...When we came out, he was gone...
...Its Web site states: “At all times, we have sought to do this work in solidarity and in alliance with people living with HIV/AIDS and treatment activists in the Global South and throughout the world...
...By M. alfredo gonzález When the aids coalition to unleash Power(ACTUP)wasfoundedinNew York in 1987, it introduced a proactive stance into the United States’ AIDS crisis but also united people at opposite ends of the political spectrum...
...About 60 demonstrators showed up, of whom no more than 20 were Latinas/os...
...Many Latinos/as entered ACT UP through the Latino Caucus, but some never took part in general meetings...
...I am sure that in the Euro-American liberal imaginary, Africa elicits more guilt and fear than Latin America ever will...
...The in-flow of medical goods was uneven and the opportunities to deliver them random...
...Weeks before our consulate action,wesentCHAapacketofflyersannouncing the date, which we hoped they would reproduce and distribute widely...
...No social movement could compete with the biomedical establishment, even if immunology was still a young specialization and its body of knowledge limited...
...Its goals were to raise awareness of the challenges of access to HIV treatment in developing countries...
...Menem—who was touring the United States, promoting Argentina as an industrialized nation with all the features of a modern democracy—was to visittheSchoolofInternationalandPublicAffairsatColumbiaUniversityinNewYork.ACTUP–Americasquicklytried to mobilize a picket line at the building entrance, while in the auditorium, four activists would try to participate in the question and answer session, disrupting it if not allowed to participate.Onlyfivepeopleshowedup.Fourwentupstairs...
...Thus, the NGOs needed to administer and replenish their supplies efficiently...
...Our actions for CHA played with time and transnational space...
...define and analyze the nature of access to treatment...
...gentina...
...ThefollowingNovember,anurgentcallcamefromanArgentine activist in San Francisco...
...Our aim was to suggest that medical doctors ought to serve as health care partners, and to portray people with HIV as agents of change...
...Months’ worth of drugs and equipment already paid for went unused and caregivers disposed of them...
...ACT UP welcomed and lauded our hemispheric projects, but its refusal to join in our work conveyed thatLatin American issues belonged to us and us only...
...We boarded the elevator trying to convince each other of our achievement...
...Chagas disease, he said, was a more urgent public health priority...
...It was a rare warm, sunny February day...
...By 1981, young, well-educated gay white men, poised to take their place among the elite, were ambushed by an unforeseen foe...
...Once inside, an is the first and unavoidable step toward change...
...We had prepared for a more difficult exchange...
...Members of both groups had grown disenchanted with HIV activism under the aegis of ACT UP/NY, were very sick, or had died from AIDS...
...We had Assembly accompanied each of just sat down the goals...
...strategy...
...He wanted to do something about it...
...Eager to contribute against the disparities between the United States and the rest of the hemisphere, ACT UP–Americas collected unused medicines and paraphernalia and sent them where they were needed...
...We needed the exper tise of our fellow activists as well when he said, as their labor to achieve our goals...
...After this futile conversation ended, we handed over hundreds of letters addressed to then Argentine president Carlos Menem, and joined the demonstrators outside...
...Inourmeetings,wesharedimpressionsoftheHIV/AIDS epidemic in the Latin American countries we knew best...
...As they move forward, they skid in that diversity and reproduce at home the patterns they are committed to change in society...
...Africa did not meet such indifference among U.S.-based HIV activists, although it wasn’t until the late 1990s when the African HIV crisis received the attention it deserved...
...We invited the members of ACT UP/NY to join us and explore the possibilities of transnational activism...
...One of these activists, Jairo Pedraza, had become the North American representative to the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP...
...When we saw Ricardo strolling behind Menem, we understood the purpose of his visit and silent departure...
...Our picket line still had but one demonstrator...
...but that is another article...
...The HIV/AIDS movement lost momentum and If this attitude existed in Latin America during the membership after 1992.1 Toward the end of the decade, as first 15 years of the epidemic, it had been an individual a smaller, more radical organization, ACT/NY resurged with a global agenda...
...Three of us requested a morning meeting with the general consul but were granted one with just an adjunct consul...
...Virtu ally every sponsoring organization contributed speakers to the symposium...
...Our third, more directly political effort, was a campaign in solidarity with Comunidad Homosexual Argentina (CHA), an Argentine group founded in 1984 that presses for gay rights and access to health care for HIV-positive people...
...As the demonstrators began to chant slogans outside, the general consul insisted that we were responsible for the vandalism and that HIV infection was irrelevant in Ar .. tactics compounded and extended the discussion on the organization’s right to have legal recognition...
...A request of sup port to the conference’s General outside...
...The phrase brought a whiff of the dictatorial 1970s into the democratic 1990s...
...Nothing like this happened to him in his entire diplomatic life...
...The lexicon and methodologies that U.S...
...Lee sNIder / THe ImaGe Works NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: hiv/aids antiretroviral medications in “cocktails” as a new therapeutic services, poverty, and other health and social conditions...
...People living with HIV submitted to their doctors’ authority if they had them, hoping they had their best interests at heart...
...In March 1992, Menem reversed the court’s decision with a decree granting legal recognition to CHA...
...In the North, HIV triggered community formation from preexistinglesbianandgayenclaves.Fromtheseplatforms, people with HIV proactively and even defiantly advocated for their health care...
...and develop recommendations for collective action...
...He introduced himself as a nurse with an adolescent daughter in Argentina...
...This informal gathering of activists organized “Access to Treatment in Developing Countries,” a satellite symposium at the International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, Canada...
...Although ACT UP did not endorse po-people with HIV in their encounters with medical authorilitical parties, its membership’s loathing of Republican poli-ties, recast them as medical and public health experts and ticians and policies suggested a silent endorsement of the shaped the HIV/AIDS movement...
...A national AIDS program cannot depend on recycled unused medications, of course, but almost two decades after we first tested this strategy, it remains a viable—and unfortunately still necessary—bottom-up strategy in grassroots HIV activism...
...Nobody joined our efforts...
...The consul had good memory—in fifth grade every Argentine child gets lessons on how to prevent Chagas...
...He had talked to her recently, he said, and the COURTESY OF M. ALFREDO GONZÁLEZ JULY/AUGUST 2008 report: hiv/aids conversation left him anxious about her and her peers’ ignorance about HIV infection...
...Yet in spite of the acrimony, transformation is possible...
...For some, losing the promise of assimilation to thestigmaofHIVinfectionwasanaffront.Inanger, they dedicated their activism to establishing scientificprotocolsthatwouldmatchtheurgencyofthe epidemic...
...Argentina is over the issue of establishing legal recognition for the CHA, he said...
...strategy spread a triumphalist sentiment vis-à-vis HIV/AIDS The “take charge” response model gradually empowered in the United States...
...They praised our work and our political savvy, but we did not capture the imagination of our fellow activists...
...At that time, CHA was struggling to operate as an NGO and to support itself financially and legally...
...A handful of activists remained active as an ad hoc group working around international issues...
...Spanish-language TV networks covered the demonstration...
...ToNy savINo / THe ImaGe Works NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS...
...The group obtained the support and participation of GNP+, UNAIDS, UNDP, the World Health Organization, the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy, USAID, Glaxo Welcome, the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care, Latino Commission on AIDS, and the networks of people with HIV in Africa (NAP+), Latin America (AP+), and Asia and the Pacific Islands...
...He was not even an ACT UP member...
...in a practice left over from Argentina’s dirty war, a consulate employee took photographs of the demonstrators from the door with a telephoto lens...
...If we were not the perpetrators of the crime, he said, we were its “intellectual authors...
...Even if many of us were HIVpositive or recovering drug users, struggled with English, or were undocumented and cleaned apartments to make endsmeet,thedisparitieswewitnessedbetweentheUnited States and Latin America demanded solidarity...
...This article is dedicated to the memory of Luis Salazar...
...When Menem entered the auditorium, we recognized a man we knew as Ricardo among his security detail...
...He had given already instructions to reverse the Supreme Court’s denial...
...As the activists arrived, they received a square of pink fabric to wrap around their heads as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo do...
...Less than a week later, the Supreme Court handed down the expected negative decision...
...on the other, desperate people with secrets, seeking help amid medical and state paternalism...
...The contrast with North America’s response to the social and individual toll of HIV infection was bold: on the one hand, self-asserting and combative population...
...Many of the slogans referred to Argentine culture and history: “If Evita [Perón] were alive, she’d be a dyke...
...As an AIDS activist, he has worked in New York, where he lives, and throughout Latin America...
...They were as surprised as we were...
...He was enraged...
...CHA brought an appeal to the Supreme Court, and as it waited the court’s expected negative ruling, it began parallel discussions with the executive branch to overrule the decision with a presidential decree...
...The Latino Caucusconceivedsomeinitiativestothatend,andin1991, it created ACT UP–Americas, an open-membership committee dedicated to HIV/AIDS activism across the hemisphere...
...Their presentations reflected general consul the breadth of the call for contri butions providing numerous di greeted us, as the rections to make a dent to the HIV demonstrators pandemic and outlined multiple chanted slogans goals for change...
...Somearticlesaddresseddrugsandtherapeuticstrategies not available in Latin America in the belief that awareness JULY/AUGUST 2008 report: hiv/aids “Money for aIDs,” reads a placard at a new york rally against the Persian gulf War in october 1990...
...As people in the United States generated resistance to medications targeting HIV and opportunistic infections, their doctors switched them to newer drugs if they were available...
...For many people with HIV in Latin America, however, medication recycling remains the only way to gain access to treatment in the face of the near total disinterest of the regional power elites toward the HIV epidemic...
...It could be that during the early 1990s, ACT UP was still growing and had a wealth of local and national issues on which to spend its activist fire...
...ACT UP–Americas sent the Boletín to people and NGOs throughout Latin America, translating and rewriting medical articles to make them more accessible...
...Perhaps the innovative features of transnational activism were not apparent yet...
...Maybe it was that Latin America was too foggy a spot in the HIV activist imagination or that it is hard to empathize with people who are more familiar by their economic, sexual, and legal objectifications...
...We picked noon, February 5, 1991, to stage a demonstration in front of the Argentine consulate on West 56th Street in Manhattan...
...Pinned to a wall of the room where we waited was a map of Iraq...
...As we arrived to our meeting that morning, we found that the consulate’s facade had been defaced with graffiti in favor of CHA...
...We also started a program to collect unused medications and medical equipment in the United States and delivered them to NGOs in Latin America...
...After briefly educating him on how HIV is transmitted, we turned to the second item on his agenda: the graffiti on the building...
...In a more heterogeneous ACT UP, committees that had previously been used to quick and certain support found their judgment questioned and funding support far from guaranteed...
...A wave of expressions of surprise and indignation swept through the well-dressed first rows...
...As a community-based organization, CHA was in a privileged position to engage in HIV educationandprevention, andlegalrecognitionofthegroup would allow it to tap into available resources...
...The coalition that still spearheads these efforts, the Health Global Access Project (Health GAP), has since its inception in 1999 targeted the World Trade Organization while focusing on Africa...
...As odd as his visit was, we pointed to the file cabinets and the photocopier...
...Contemporary social movements draw a great deal of their strength from the combination of multiple voices...
Vol. 41 • July 2008 • No. 4
