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AIDS Workers Strive to Educate Hispanics About Disease

AIDS workers strive e to educate Hispanics about disease Hidden camera means trouble trouble By ANITA SNOW Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) - Guillermo Garcia spends his Sunday nights among the Latin American men sipping beer and listening to female impersonators croon Spanish love songs in the gay bars of Jackson Heights. Armed with Spanish-language brochures and condoms, the 29- year-old Venezuelan quietly tells men from Colombia, from Argentina, from Cuba about the dangers of unprotected sex, and of SIDA - the Spanish acrynom for AIDS. Elsewhere in the city, health workers drive a Winnebago into drug-ravaged neighborhoods to give immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic condoms and bleach kits for sterilizing needles. And on the West Coast, in Ventura County, Calif., Roberto Rojas carries condoms and the message of safe sex to the dusty camps of Mexican farm workers. These are some of the frontline warriors in the battle to educate Spanish speakers in the United States about a disease claiming more Hispanics each year. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimate that there are thousands of AIDS educators like Garcia and Rojas across the country who travel into urban barrios, suburban neighborhoods and migrant farm camps where Hispanics live. 'Labor of love' "For them, it is a labor of love to get the word out, to reach these hard-to-reach people," said Bill Parra, deputy director of the CDC's Office of HIV-AIDS. "As far as I am concerned, they are SI DA 1 AT N &* Associated Press Spanish and English tells safe-sex Church, which insists upon abstinence for single people and fidelity within marriage. course, we know that in the real world it's different," Rojas said. "There is a lot of promiscuity among some of these men." Against condoms The church also prohibits use of artificial birth control methods, including condoms. "These men are, not accustomed to using family planning,' Rojas said of the migrants he works with. "And it's hard to convince them to use condoms." Machismo - traditional male dominance - is another problem. In a macho world, homosexuality is frowned upon. Thus, many Hispanic men who have sex with other men insist that they are not gay as long as they are the dominant partner. "The one in the passive position is considered the gay person; the dominant partner is the macho," Rojas said. "The problem is that our men do not realize that even though they are doing the penetrating, they are at risk." Bisexual activity - either among themselves or with male prostitutes - is common among workers who leave wives or girlfriends behind in Mexico to follow the crops in the United States, said Rojas.. Sex with female prostitutes also is common, he said. And if male dominance is a problem in trying to get people to change their behavior, so is female submissiveness. "If a woman insists that the man use a condom, he could start accusing her of things," Rojas said. "Like, 'Where have you been? What have you done?' Julio and Marisol Such macho indignation was the focus of the first installment of the saga of Julio and Marisol, a couple whose dilemma over safe sex is told comic strip-style, in both Spanish and English, in TROY, Mich. (AP) - A man was charged with videotaping women with a camera hidden under a table and in a bathroom. Michael J. Wilson, a 43-yearold technical writer at Electronic Data Systems Corp., was arraigned on eavesdropping charges and freed on bail. The charge carries up to two years in prison and a $2,000 fine. Police said Wilson videotaped people using a bathroom for both SUBWAY MESSAGE: Poster in saga of Julio and Marisol. Cultural barrier But the most daunting barrier may be cultural, AIDS education workers say. The chief victims of AIDS in the United States have been homosexual men and intravenous drug users. AIDS workers recommend abstinence, monogamy or the use of latex condoms to guard against sexual transmission of the virus, and that needles or syringes be used only once or sterilized with bleach to bar against intravenous transmission. Sex remains a taboo subject for many Hispanics, said Rojas, a health educator for Clinicas del Camino Real, a group of nonprofit public medical clinics in Ventura County. Most Hispanics grew up as members of the Roman Catholic heroes." Spanish-language public service TV, radio and newspaper announcements are designed to reach a big chunk of the nation's 24 million Hispanics. But the outreach workers focus on those most at risk immigrants who know little about the virus, people use intravenous drugs, men who have sex with men. "It really is a battle," said Garcia, an educator with the Hispanic AIDS Forum, a nonprofit in New York that I has a agency staff of 40 and operates on an annual budget of $2 million. "I don't want to keep seeing my people die," he said. Disease spreading While the number of new AIDS cases among many U.S. groups has leveled off, the disease continues to spread among Hispanics, jumping from 4,816 new cases of full-blown AIDS in 1990 to 8,285 new cases last year, according to the CDC. By the end of 1992, 41,172 Hispanics in the United States - or about 16 percent of the people known to have AIDS nationwide - had been diagnosed with the disease, it said. In New York City alone, 12,724 Hispanics had been diagnosed with AIDS by the end of 1992, or abort, 31 percent of all Hispanics AIDS in this country. outreach workers face tremendous barriers in educating Hispanics, and in helping them change risky behavior. Many Hispanics, especially recent immigrants, do not know English or do not know it well. And many of the immigrants are poor and do not have access to adequate health care or information. New York City's subways. "Julio and Marisol's Decision" is part of the New York City Health Department's AIDS awareness campaign targeting Hispanics. In the first installment, Julio storms out after a weeping Marisol refuses to have sex without a condom. "I love you, but not enough to die for you," she says. Help for women Miguelina Maldonado, Hispanic AIDS Forum's executive director, said such education campaigns are helpful, "but they don't address the skills needed to carry out risk-reduction behavior.' Along with visits to gay bars and to New York's drug-devastated South Bronx, the forum teaches Hispanic women how to insist on safe sex. Through "De Mujer a Mujer (Woman to Woman)," the women en meet weekly for four to six weeks. "We attempt to help the women develop a support group and learn how to protect themselves," Maldonado said. "Our approach, in all our programs, is to teach empowerment.' men and woman at William Beaumont Hospital. A plumber found the camera under a sink in February. Wilson also is accused of videotaping women crossing and uncrossing their legs under a table at a Feb. 10 meeting of the International Association of Business Communicators. Police found tape from the luncheon in the camera the plumber turned in.

Article from 11 Apr 1993The Miami Herald(Miami, FL)

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