Diversity

06/08/2008

Originally posted on August 06th 2008.

It was like being at a gay disco. Condoms and margaritas, music, drag queens, transexuals, sex workers and every once in a while a plate with appetizers to dilute the tequila. Only that it was a party organized by the Open Society Institue of the SOROS foundation for the grantees of their program.

A musical group with harp and mandolins and guitars livened up the party, and I guess I could assume that it was the strangest party where these musicians had played, with Cambodian activists breakdancing to the rhythm of rancheras.

This conference has been a series of new discoveries. There are things about HIV-AIDS that I had never thought were important. There are also attitudes that are hard to understand about people who are at this conference: one would assume that an ally to the HIV-AIDS cause would have a broader mind when listening to sex workers speak out on their own about how they consider sex work just that... another job and not about exploitation and sex trade. One thing is one thing and another is another. But you can also find prudes here who can't understand how to deal with that situation.

For example: at the Hotel Sevilla where I am staying, they segregated the area in the dining room for conference delegates. The reason they gave? "Other guests are feeling uncomfortable with delegates for fear of catching something." This was told third hand, because I haven't even gotten close to the dining room and I haven't experienced this myself. This afternoon I feel I should go and ask to see what happened and what reasons they'll give. But what did happen is that the conference guests who faced this changed hotel. They made that decision in a city where there isn't a single room available in any hotel, so I don't think it was made lightly. [Edit: I asked around and other guests didn't feel any discrimination, so it could've been bad luck and a misinformed employee]

Now that I was walking into the Global Village, the laid back and personal area of the event, there was a protest right on the walkway. On one side, a handful of youth with signs stating that condom usage had not diminished the rates of HIV infection, but abstinence had. At the other end of the walkway, the youth groups, the sex workers and other allies where yelling out that they were responsible for their bodies, no one else, and yes to condoms and protection. The first group didn't take long to go on their way and try to find another area where they could manifest.

On the other hand, I experience my own prejudices when I see so much activism in favor for human rights for drug addicts living with HIV, or the rights of HIV positive people to have children in spite of the risk of passing it on. Their arguments are absolutely valid when stating that having this disease doesn't take away their humanity, nor their wishes, dreams and aspirations of their lives, and that they don't wish to be defined by a factor like their decision. And well, everyone, regardless of the decisions they make are human, and have rights that should be protected. And so it happens that many times people with HIV-AIDS have no access to medication for palliative care and pain management.

Still, I walk into these talks with skepticism, but I walk out convinced that they are right. Only that one never hears about these issues. Is like the problem is someone elses. Something that has become very clear about this conference is that ALL of us are at risk. ALL. Those of us who are monogamous and have a stable partner as well. Because one never knows. One believes one knows a person until one realizes that they gave you something. But at least know I know better to think that getting HIV is the end of the world. Because what I´ve seen while here are so many positive role models for positive people. So many people who work really hard for other people's rights, so that everyone can have access to life-saving medication, to health, to a decent job, free of discrimination. So many people who haven't let themselves go because of a diagnosis. People who have looked for a way out to being able to live with a condition that has yet no cure. And I can't help but admire them.