AIDS Among Latinos on Rise
Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, July 23, 2008
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AIDS rates in the nation’s Latino community are increasing and, with little notice, have reached what experts are calling a simmering public health crisis.
Though Hispanics make up about 14 percent of the U.S. population, they represented 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses tallied by federal officials in 2006. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Hispanics in the District have the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the country.
So far, the toll of AIDS in the nation’s largest and fastest-growing minority population has mostly been overshadowed by the epidemic among African Americans and gay white men. Yet in major U.S. cities, as many as 1 in 4 gay Hispanic men has HIV, a rate on par with sub-Saharan Africa.
Blacks still have the highest HIV rates in the country, but language difficulties, cultural barriers and, in many cases, issues of legal status make the threat in the Hispanic community unique. For those who arrived illegally, in particular, fear of arrest and deportation presents a daunting obstacle to seeking diagnosis and treatment.
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Even with the United States embroiled in a fierce debate over immigration policy, the problem of AIDS in Latinos had received scant attention from political and public health officials. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where only two of 17 approved HIV programs target Hispanic Americans, officials have added Spanish-language hotlines, confidential testing sites and other initiatives aimed at filling the gap.
“Hispanics are overrepresented in this epidemic, and we need to target our efforts to them,” CDC epidemiologist Kenneth Dominguez said in an interview.
Officials do not have a precise tally of HIV infection nationwide, because many states have not reported figures to the CDC. The 22 percent, a figure that has not been previously released, includes 33 states and Puerto Rico, but not California, where more than 37 percent of the population is Hispanic.
“You combine the economic pressures, loneliness and immigration worries, and it pushes these individuals to be a hidden population,” said Frank Galvan of the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.
The consequences, however, go well beyond the Hispanic community. If the United States does not begin to “make a dent” in the swelling crisis of HIV among Hispanics, Galvan said, “it will continue to spread to other populations.”
The nexus of AIDS and migration—the reality that viruses know no borders—will gain fresh prominence at the International AIDS Conference next month in Mexico City. It is a nexus that plays out in dramatic fashion in San Ysidro and other communities along the U.S.-Mexican border, where the tensions associated with immigration tend to exacerbate an already stigmatized illness.
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Many are “objectified” by white men who view them as exotic. They play subservient roles to partners with citizenship or money. The “triple oppressive experiences of poverty, racism and homophobia” lead many to risky behavior, Diaz said. “People are looking for respite and relief from a sense of isolation, economic deprivation and low self-esteem. Sometimes sex is the place where men find that.”
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The 45-year-old lesbian [Rosario Mancillas] epitomizes today’s increasingly common bi-national, border-straddling existence. She was born in Brownsville, Tex., but raised in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. When she got a job at a Costco store in Chula Vista, Calif., she chose to live across the border in Tijuana, where rents are cheaper and the culture more familiar.
Yet even as she adopted a more American lifestyle, Mancillas’s attitudes and beliefs were firmly rooted in her traditional Mexican upbringing. Feeling pressure to give her parents a grandchild, she investigated a sperm bank. But the prospect of insemination seemed cold and impersonal. Then a gay friend offered to try to impregnate her.
The brief heterosexual detour did not produce a baby, but she did contract HIV, discovering the infection three years later when she was stricken with terrible stomach pain. Mancillas went with her father to a hospital in Tijuana.
{snip}
This report was supported by the Project for International Health Journalism Fellowship, a part of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Media Fellowships Program.
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(Posted on July 23, 2008)
Comments
What surprises me is that Hispanics aren’t counted as white for epidemiological purposes. When it comes to crime or welfare usage, Hispanics are counted as white. Though I might have given them an idea.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:16 PM on July 23
The white man enters,once again, to do his evil on unsuspecting innocents.(minorities) Reading the newspapers and other print media in the U.S. is like listening to a broken record that plays the same part of the tune, over and over and over…..
Posted by Bobby at 6:43 PM on July 23
Hummmm evidently the latino’s have been sleeping with the blacks,,,,,,oh oh……look out now….it will spread like wildfire…and then maybe there will be the great white hope?????
Posted by lydia at 7:53 PM on July 23
It’s actually the mexicans who are the cause of this. AIDS comes from two places, basically….sodomy and intravenous drug use. It’s the mexicans who are bringing the drugs into our country.
Posted by at 8:00 PM on July 23
C’mon all you no-good white men! STOP “objectifying” Hispanic men,will ya? PS:Considering that Hispanix have a huge AIDS rate,and that they do the down-low as much as the blacks,maybe we should ALL stop exoticizing them,and just ship them HOME!!!!!!
Posted by josh at 8:09 PM on July 23
“Many [gay male Hispanics] are ‘objectified’ by white men who view them as exotic.”
Oh good lord Rafael Diaz, get a grip!
Mauro Ruiz (in the original article) is a gay Mexican man who VOLUNTARILY sought out the gay bar and bathhouse scene, and then went on to abuse meth. Let’s face it, no one forced him to do these things, so who can we blame? White men? Again?
Mainstream newspapers love to whine about how their readership is dwindling. Given the asinine liberal cliches these newspapers have spewed for decades, is this loss of readers really surprising?
I love the internet. It freed us from having to rely on elitist news sources and their mindless liberal platitudes.
Posted by Die Washington Post, Die! at 8:28 PM on July 23
I’ve tried to argue against it, saying that AIDS is just another disease. But apparently it’s different. Around 600,000 Americans have actually died of AIDS. Why do we never, ever, learn the race of those who’ve died?
Those darn televangelists… They’re right again. AIDS must be different from every other disease.
Posted by I coulda had a V-8 at 8:43 PM on July 23
Actions, including sexual actions, have consequences. If we would only stop protecting people from themselves, many of our social problems would rapidly shrink to manageable proportions. Let nature cull the herd.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 8:45 PM on July 23
Evil whites exploiting mestizos and giving them HIV…sounds like reason #452921 that racially segregating all racist Europeans would be good for non-whites.
Posted by Svigor at 9:46 PM on July 23
“Many are “objectified” by white men who view them as exotic. They play subservient roles to partners with citizenship or money.”
Where is the proof and the evidence for such an accusation? Who are the White AIDS-mongers and who are their hapless Hispanics victims? Sounds like she just asked one gay Mexican with AIDS and ran with it.
As long as you are accusing a White male of something, no matter how ludicrous, even a big paper like the Washington Post apparently has a “facts optional” policy.
Or maybe the fact that they employ “reporters” like Ceci Connolly at all is proof of their bias for inflammatory anti-White propaganda.
Posted by at 9:46 PM on July 23
When I was in prison, I noticed a curious attitude toward homosexuality among the Hispanics there. They only considered it “gay” if one was the passive partner.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 12:57 AM on July 24
“issues of legal status,, make teh problem worse”
Would that be an disingenuous way of saying these are illegal aliens who shouldn’t be here in the first place?
Posted by at 7:31 AM on July 24
When I was in prison, I noticed a curious attitude toward homosexuality among the Hispanics there. They only considered it “gay” if one was the passive partner.
Well, at least that’s not quite as bad as blacks, who only consider themselves gay if they NEVER have sex with women. (Yes, even IF they’re the passive partner.)
Posted by Brendan at 3:07 PM on July 24
“Then a gay friend offered to try to impregnate her.The brief heterosexual detour did not produce a baby, but she did contract HIV,”
What a crock. They were both bi and had sex because they were horny and no one else was around.
The mass media is as gullible as a 3 year old.
Posted by at 3:39 PM on July 24
Josh:
No group of men practice the down low lifestyle more than White men.
There are millions of undercover White homosexuals. My two ex-boyfriends can attest to this fact.
Posted by Gina at 5:44 PM on July 24
Bobby, one thing every white person should know is is that the media is the enemy of white people. That’s the most important thing you should know. Any future white successes will have to depend on the total incapacitation of the media.
Posted by sandstorm at 6:33 PM on July 24
“When I was in prison, I noticed a curious attitude toward homosexuality among the Hispanics there. They only considered it ‘gay’ if one were the passive partner.” I think this is a curious attitude too, but it’s not unusual. It was the attitude among many ancient Greeks and was a common belief in early 20th century Germany. Many of the early Nazis were fond of boys, but figured that as long as they got their wives pregnant occasionally, they weren’t homosexuals. I suspect that many masculine homosexuals today, known as “bears”, still look down on their effeminate brethren, the “twinks”. Assuredly, there are many other examples, but this is a family website.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 6:38 PM on July 24
No group of men practice the down low lifestyle more than White men.
There are millions of undercover White homosexuals. My two ex-boyfriends can attest to this fact.
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Since in the black vernacular, the down low means a male who is claims to be straight, and sleeps with women, but is also secretly having homosexual encounters on the side with males. I would first like you to produce a little more substansial evidence that this is more common in white me, than some story about 2 ex boyfriends. For instance, if this is more common among white males, then explain why Black women are 20 times more likely to contract AIDS than white women? Or why they also are many times more likely to carry other STD’s? You would also need to further produce evidence that explains why Black men are also much more likely to have HIV or AIDS. Until you do, I’m not buying it!
Posted by at 10:47 AM on July 25
I’m not buying it either, Gina. The claim that “for instance” is semantically equal to “proof” is not logically sound. You may have had two bad experiences, but that could have been the result of one or more of any of a number of things, including, but not limited to: (1) Coincidence. (2) Bad luck. (3) Some subconscious selection bias on your own part - i.e. personality traits that you like in a romantic interest may simply be more common among gay or bisexual guys. (4) Selection bias on their part - i.e. your own personality may include traits that make you attractive to gay or bisexual men. Who knows?
I’ve only made the acquaintence of one bisexual white guy in my life. He is a child-molester currently serving three-to-life with mandatory life on parole in Canyon City, Colorado. I doubt he was even a bisexual in the usual sense of the word; he seemed not to care very much what he was doing, as long as it was with someone between about 11 and 14, so pedophilia was the real driving force in his sexual makeup. He had it most of the way under control until he started using drugs in approximately early 2002.
His December 2004 felony conviction for sexual assault on a child and indecent exposure was part of a plea deal that got him a deferred sentence. He lasted less than two years before violating his deferral by being caught in a vice squad raid at someone’s house with $500 in cash, $9000 worth of Exstasy, a .45” and a Tech-9.
I think people were meant to be honest, and someone living a double life like your ex-boyfriends or my ex-housesitter is likely to be messed up in quite few other respects; ways which should be obvious to any reasonably perceptive observer. Our time under the same roof lasted only eight weeks; six weeks before my arrest in 2000, during which time he seemed fine, and two weeks after my release in 2003 before I threw him out, during which time h was obviously so far ‘round the bend that he couldn’t even see the bend from where he was. Even if he had not been stealing from me during my absence, there was obviously something very seriously wrong with him, and since I was on probation at the time, I did not want that around me or in my home.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 1:35 PM on July 25
Hogwash. There are many latinos that are promiscuous and share needles (drugs and tats).
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 12:38 AM on July 28
No group of men practice the down low lifestyle more than White men.
There are millions of undercover White homosexuals. My two ex-boyfriends can attest to this fact.
Posted by Gina at 5:44 PM on July 24
Not true. Just living in Los Angeles as I do is an eye-opener as to the astounding level of homosexuality among black and brown men. The “straight” ones, including gangbangers see it as “ok” when a woman isn’t around to take of their needs. Utterly amazing. On the other hand, just drive through any “openly gay” area and latinos and blacks make up an inordinate percentage of the gay males strutting their stuff. This is why the black and brown communities are riddled with AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Posted by In So Cal Now at 7:29 PM on July 28
The fact is that Gina is correct.
White men are by far the group that most practices the down low lifestyle.
Erich Gliebe former president of National Alliance has mentioned this. In fact , he said that there were so many undercover homosexuals in his organizations, that they had to do a massive purge.
David Brock in his book Blinded By The Right discussed the fact that there numerous White men, especially conservative ones, on the down low, and engage in rampant homosexual activity.
Jim McGreevey former governor of New Jersey was on the Oprah Winfrey show and mentioned how he would go to bathouses in various cities and have anonymous sex with strangers and he mentioend the fact that 95% of the partners he had were White and more than 90% of the patrons of these clubs were White.
I live in a town in the southeast where there was recently a huge sex scandal that was exposed. Twenty Four men were arrested for having sex in public parks. All of the men were White, 22 of the men were married and 20 of them had families. It was disgusting. One of the men committed suicide.
Closer to home, my own daughter was married to a lawyer for five years. She never suspected that her then husband was homosexual until she came home one afternoon in 2001 and caught him in bed with a 22 year old boy. It devastated her to the point that she had to undergo therapy. She recently remarried in 2006. We are all still angry at the anguish that he put Kathy,(my daughter) my wife and all of us through. The fact is simply that the majority of gay and homosexual men are White.
Gina, I feel for you and I hope that you are able to regain trust in the millions of decent, hardworking and yes, heterosexual White men out there who do exist.
You deserve better.
Posted by Paul at 1:28 PM on August 1
Quite frankly, I think it is the mainstream media that is promoting homosexuality among our White males. Just look at the advertisements one sees in magazines and newspapers.
For example, look at male models today. They look androgonous and like waifs and wimpy beanpoles! In the 1980s and early 1990s, male models looked rugged, attractive, intelligent human beings. This is definitely not the case anymore.
There is a larger conspiracy behind this.
Posted by John at 9:53 PM on August 1
I was reading some literature about George Lincoln Rockwell and it stated that many of his young nazi recruits were “former homosexuals” who previously engaged in the gay lifestyle. This was shocking for me to read.
Given some of the other comments posted on this topic in regards to David Brock and Erich Gliebe, I wonder how many gays are involved in that movement.
Posted by George at 2:06 AM on August 2