When Juan Ortega (a pseudonym) went to his doctor three years ago for an HIV test, he was sure that he would not have the virus. He had been in a three- year relationship. He and his boyfriend had just finished paying off the furni- ture for their small one-bedroom apart- ment near Avenida Santa Fe, a gay cruising areain Buenos Aires. Although he did not practice safe sex, he thought AIDS was only a danger for those who went to Brazil for Carnival or who had slept with a visiting tourist. The doctor told him he was HIV-positive. While AIDS is not as common in Latin America as in Africa or the United States, activists are concerned that grossly inadequate government fund- ing for AIDS education, research and health care is creating a near-crisis in many countries in the region. The Pan American Health Organization’s De- cember report, “AIDS Surveillance in the Americas,” says a cumulative total of 59,723 AIDS cases have been re- ported in Latin America, and 24,500 people have died of the illness. (This compares to 249,234 AIDS cases and 164,884 deaths in the United States.) The countries in Latin America with the greatest number of reported AIDS cases are: Brazil (31,364), Mexico (11,034), Haiti (3,086), Argentina (2,745), Ven- ezuela (2,173), Honduras (1,976), and the Dominican Republic (1,809). The percapita AIDS rate in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Vir- gin Islands, is 167.5 per million inhab- itants. The per capita rate in a number of Latin America countries is higher than or comparable to the U.S. rate: the Ba- hamas (903.8 AIDS cases per million inhabitants), Bermuda (396.6), Hondu- ras (91.5), Belize (60.4), and Brazil (53.3). While it is impossible to make accu- rate estimates about the incidence of HIV in the population, in Brazil, Nelson Solano Vianna, a long-time activist with the Sdo Paulo organization Group to Support the Prevention of AIDS (GAPA), estimates that three million people are HIV-positive. While figures on the distribution of AIDS cases by category are somewhat questionable due to the fact that many men decline to admit homosexual con- tacts, the Pan-American Health Organi- zation calculates that in 1991 homo- sexuals and bisexuals comprised 67% of the AIDS cases in the Andean region, 56% in the Southern Cone, 25% in Central America, and 13% in the Carib- bean. In countries such as Argentina which traditionally have had a good public health-care system, the severe debt cri- sis of the 1980s resulted in dramatic cuts in social services and a move to- ward the privatization of health care. This means that people with HIV/AIDS cannot rely on the government for much assistance. Javier L. Hourcade Belloco. the projects director of CONSIDA, one of Argentina’s most effective AIDS organizations, says that the Argentine government refuses to take the issue seriously. “When the American AIDS Foundation announced in Amsterdam last yearthat it was giving six Argentine AIDS groups a total grant of $300,000 for AIDS prevention and care, the Min- ister of Health refuted the claim that Argentina was on the brink of a severe crisis,” he said. “There are only two health centers for AIDS treatment in the entire country and the conditions there are precarious to say the least.” The homophobic attitudes of gov- ernment officials and the Catholic Church are a barrier to adequate AIDS education. In Argentina, for example, the Church has pressured the govern- ment to eliminate any reference to ho- mosexuality, condoms or sexuality from the official AIDS-prevention campaign, essentially eviscerating it. In Nicaragua, the new sodomy law signedby President Chamorro will likely inhibit any refer- ence to homosexuality in that country’s AIDS education.
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