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in Denial as AIDS Ravages Caribbean 5/03 3 Publication of book: 'Musing under the Moon: Voices and Images of Dominican Lesbians' 6/06 4 CCNY’S Dominican Archives Wins Top Award For Excellence In Documenting New York State History 10/07 5 An Open Door: Gay Dominicans Seek More Visibility 3/08
May 18, 2003 1 by David
Gonzalez But a health worker confirms what others only whisper: he is dying from AIDS, one of about half a million people with H.I.V. in the Caribbean, where the infection rate is the highest outside Africa. While the sheer scale of Africa's epidemic has tended to overshadow the problem here, health experts and political leaders warn of the potential for devastation in a region of small, image-conscious countries that depend on a limited pool of labor and resources, as well as tourism. Some 40,000 adults and children in the Caribbean are believed to have died of the disease in 2001 alone. It is already the leading cause of death among young men. "The overall threat is very simple; it is affecting the most productive population in the most productive age group," said Patricio Marquez, a principal health specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank, which is financing a regional response to the disease. "There is the risk that an entire generation could be wiped out." The epidemic's full extent is obscured by fear, denial, limited treatment and a lack of public health resources. What is certain, however, is that a social and economic catastrophe is imperiling many countries as infections steadily climb and AIDS spreads in the general population. Some estimates say 2.4 percent of the Caribbean's adult population is infected with human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS, though rates vary widely. The World Bank estimates that in some urban areas as much as 12 percent of adults carry the virus. While Haiti, with an infection rate of more than 6 percent, has gained attention as the region's hardest-hit country, the disease is by no means confined there, officials said. "It has been compared to a volcano that doesn't stop erupting," Rafael Mazin, a regional adviser on H.I.V. prevention and care for the Pan American Health Organization, said of the epidemic. "It's there. It's there. It's there." The persistent growth in infections has underscored both the special dangers and challenges that AIDS holds for the region. Migration between islands - and to the United States - is common and helps spread the disease. But the possible isolation of islands under separate governments and different languages remains a huge obstacle to cooperation. "Being an island is in a sense a figurative way to think about how things have been planned in an insular fashion," said Dr. Arletty Pinel, Latin America portfolio director at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Political leaders have strongly spoken for prevention, casting AIDS as a development threat that they are trying to confront in order to avoid another Africa-style tragedy. If not, they will end up diverting scant resources to hospitals and clinics that are often hopelessly outmatched by the task of treating the disease. Antiretroviral drugs for those already infected are almost nonexistent. Money, and often political will, is short. Programs that are effective find themselves quickly overrun. A state-of-the-art treatment program started last year in Barbados, for example, has now drawn more than 600 patients from all over the region. International donors, meanwhile, have mostly ignored the Caribbean in favor of poorer African nations. Money is now beginning to flow in, including some of the $15 billion pledged by President Bush and earmarked for Haiti and Guyana, another of the region's worst cases. But some leaders, while welcoming the decision, said the effort was insufficient. "Singling out those two we don't believe is the right approach," said Dr. Denzil Douglas, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, who is considered among the region's most knowledgeable leaders about AIDS. "Because of the mobility of people within the Caribbean region," he said, "it is to some extent a demonstration of not understanding the nature of the epidemic." Indeed, although Hispaniola - the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic - accounts for more than 80 percent of Caribbean AIDS cases, the Bush plan provides nothing for Dominican programs. Dominican officials said any fight against the virus must include joint programs with their Haitian counterparts. "The epidemic in Haiti is a reality, and it is out of control," said Luis Emilio Montalvo, director of the Presidential Commission on AIDS in the Dominican Republic. "It is the poorest country in the hemisphere with AIDS. And we are neighbors." Faced with that threat, Dominican officials have begun to confront the epidemic in ways that donors and policy experts hope could provide a model for the region. In many ways, the country shows both the challenges and advances in the Caribbean. Dominican officials boast that a recent survey shows infections are 1 percent of the population, or half of what was originally estimated, a decrease they attribute to education and prevention campaigns. But the country needs to tackle the danger posed by migration from Haiti, as well as discrimination, denial and insufficient financing. "I'm not saying all the barriers have been overcome," Mr. Marquez said. "But it is being discussed in the open and seen as something that requires national attention, because of the risk that it could undermine the whole society and have economic repercussions." A Point of Entry In a place called Peligro - Danger - the rapid-fire sounds of Creole, the language of Haiti, are more common than Spanish inside the houses of men who earn about $2 for each ton of sugar cane they slash. These bateyes, communities of sugar cane workers of Haitian descent, are among the epidemic's hot spots. "The bateyes have been the point of entry for the disease," said Dr. JosÈ Alberto Roman, who works with H.I.V.-positive women in a nonprofit clinic in the nearby southeast coastal town of La Romana and supported by Columbia University. "When I first came here in the 1987, it was rare. Not anymore. Now it is something terrible." But the epidemic is terrible not merely in its presence, but also in the ignorance that surrounds it and in the near total absence of resources to stem the spread of a disease that does not respect borders. As it has in their native country, AIDS has ravaged the bateyes, where superstition, poverty and prejudice conspire against hope. The brother of one AIDS patient recently told Sister Anne Liam Lees, a nun who runs several health and nutrition projects, that the man had died from a spell cast by a creditor. "It's very difficult to confront reality if you do not think this disease exists," Sister Anne said. "Even if you told someone they were H.I.V. positive, they would not believe it. They would just go off and have sex with the first person they saw." Although several people in Peligro are dying from AIDS, neighbors insist that they do not have a clue. In the neighboring community of Batey 105, residents who are volunteer health educators insist that no one is infected with the virus, a dubious claim. Hygiene is abysmal in Batey 105, where there is not even a single latrine. One health volunteer attributed an outbreak of fevers to a cold breeze, and many people are sick from diarrhea. Public health workers sometimes come by to hand out antimalaria medicines, when they have them. If Sandy Senatic Feliz, a volunteer health promoter, is a front-line fighter against AIDS, then her arsenal is woefully inadequate. Every few months, she said, she is given a couple of dozen condoms. She still has five left from her last supply run about half a year ago. "We haven't had any infections here," she insisted. Sister Anne doubts that, because there is often a lot of traffic in and out of the bateyes, as many men go looking for construction or other jobs after the cane-cutting season ends. When they return ill, and die, she said, their widows often are forced to pair off with another man to secure a place to live. "He comes back and spreads the virus without even knowing," she said. "Then she has to find another man because she cannot live alone in the batey. The houses are for the workers in the industry, and a single woman does not work in the industry." Working the Clubs A syncopated twang blasts through the open-air bar of Jhonnys Patio, as couples embrace and twirl under a flashing rainbow of lights. There is a forced festiveness to the scene, a payday party where men - single and married alike - dance and drink with prostitutes surrounded by murals of nudes. According to government estimates, as many as 80,000 people earn a living as sex workers in the country, and 4.5 to 13 percent of them may be infected. In Puerto Plata, a north coast resort town, sex is for sale at places from upscale clubs to car washes. The nonprofit Center for Human Solidarity and Promotion, or Ceprosh, is one of the country's most successful anti-H.I.V. programs and was founded in Puerto Plata in 1989, to help H.I.V.-positive people find new work, and to provide health care and enlist sex workers to teach each other and their clients about protected sex. Harder to reach are the bisexual gigolos or female massagists who cater to tourists but refuse to consider themselves prostitutes and resist prevention efforts. The tourist industry has been shy to confront the disease openly for fear of tarnishing its image. But the Punta Cana Group, which developed popular resorts on the island's eastern tip, recently signed an accord with the government - the first of its kind in the Caribbean - to finance H.I.V. awareness programs, as well as to help improve local health facilities. Other innovative public and private efforts are emerging as well, like that of Ceprosh, whose workers do not use a classroom or clinical terms but take their program to bars and nightclubs using the attitude and language of the street. At Jhonnys, several woman strut past while an emcee asks which one is clean. Another woman, part of the troupe, strides up to say looks are deceiving. "How do you keep clean?" she asks rhetorically. "With a condom. Remember, no party without a birthday hat!" The prostitutes laugh, and even their clients chuckle. The crowd applauds as the women drift out, distributing pamphlets and comic books with graphic depictions of how to prevent AIDS and other infections. The bar owners - some of whom charge the prostitutes a percentage for cruising for clients - welcome these skits. "It's good for business, and the client is happier," said JosÈ Antonio Acosta, the owner of El Consulado. "You know the problem, so it's good to cooperate." Women who work the clubs said they almost always used condoms with their clients, but they said sexism prevented them from persuading their husbands or pimps to do the same. Most women in the clubs sell themselves to help rear their children. Some work for pimps who have sex with several women, while others have husbands who have affairs. Antonio de Moya, an epidemiologist at the Dominican government's AIDS commission, said such relations underscored a cultural contradiction common in the Caribbean, where using a condom with your mistress can be considered the same as being faithful to your wife. "The paradox of our culture is we have resolved Hamlet's dilemma," Mr. de Moya said. "For us it is to be and not to be. The culture is disjointed. We should be talking about fidelity or prostitution, not both." The women who work in the industry say condom use is perhaps the best and only hope to slow the epidemic, even if programs like those favored by President Bush emphasize abstinence and fidelity as well. Josselina Reyes, a quick-witted woman who became a prostitute three years ago when her husband left her and a newborn child, said those options were fantasies. "Abstinence and fidelity do not exist," she said, laughing. "Neither abstinence nor fidelity will make me any money. Only using a condom." More Patients, but Few Tools Two solemn relatives prop up a skeletal young man as he shuffles past Dr. Ivelisse Garris's office in the country's only public clinic offering comprehensive services for AIDS patients. Dr. Garris, a compassionate but overworked physician, frowned. "That patient never should have been sent here," she groused, referring to the man. "In an ideal world he would have been treated closer to his home." The problem, as on most other islands, is that hospitals and doctors lack the will or the resources to treat H.I.V.-positive patients, bouncing them from clinic to clinic. But the patients keep coming. Even Dr. Garris's clinic in the capital, Santo Domingo, is hardly enough for the 2,000 patients on its rolls, and it is open only on afternoons. The clinic is not more than a warren of rooms on a second floor that is reached only by stairs, making it a daunting climb for weakened patients. Support-group members, some of whom have lived with the virus for more than a decade, meet regularly to encourage one another. Almost none of them, however, are receiving medication. It was only last year that the government started providing antiretroviral drugs at all, and then only after six patients brought a suit against the government in the Organization of American States' human rights court to make the drugs available. This year, the Global Fund has approved a $48 million grant to the country, which officials said would allow them to provide medicines for 6,000 people and set up treatment centers. Advocates and aid officials are hopeful that the money will drive what they feel could be a model program. But for now, medications remain unavailable in many places. Sixty patients at the social security hospital in Santo Domingo - financed by the government, employers and workers - have gone for two months without medications, increasing the risk of drug-resistant viral mutations. "There is no integrated attention in this country," said Felipa Garcia, director of the country's association for H.I.V.-positive people. "People go to hospitals and don't get the medicines they need. They might get tranquilizers or antibiotics, but that is not real care." Doctors complain that they have not had deliveries of critical medicines in a program to prevent mother-to-child H.I.V. transmission, a large part of the epidemic's spread. Worse yet, some doctors, fearful of infection, have refused to perform Caesarean sections on H.I.V.-positive women, even though the procedure is crucial to reducing the risk of transmission to the child. In Puerto Plata, fear of a personal crisis fills the waiting room at the public hospital each morning as pregnant women await the results of mandatory AIDS tests. Every week, a couple of people test positive, prompting denials and anger, doctors said. On this morning, a woman tethered to an intravenous unit squirmed in her chair, loudly protesting the suggestion that she was H.I.V. positive. Dr. Sonia RamÌrez ushered her into a consultation room. "I'm ready for whatever," she said defiantly, insisting that she was not infected. Dr. RamÌrez gently repeated the test result. She pushed a slip of paper with it across the desk. The woman tore it into small pieces. "I do not want my mother-in-law to know," the woman said. "My husband said you can live with this virus." A few blocks away, several dozen members of an H.I.V. and AIDS support group were proving that that was so. Even given the lack of understanding from employers, and sometimes family and friends, increasingly they and many others are dealing openly with the disease and its effects, waiting for medicines and government resources to catch up. Not that long ago, they would have been written off for dead. Now, they spoke about the future as a possibility, not a fantasy. Some have small businesses. Others are rearing children. "This does not take away your dreams," said Elis Consuelo Collado, 31, who received a diagnosis 18 months ago. "You understand life continues." October
23, 2005 by Seth Kugel The word carnival is said to come from the Latin "carne vale," a farewell to meat, which explains why it was traditionally celebrated in the three days before Lent, ending with Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, festivities preceding Ash Wednesday. But in
the Dominican Republic it has become more closely associated with
Independence Day. In La Vega, Carnaval is a decidedly multigenerational
event. While local partygoers in their teens and 20's rule the streets
and the
clubs - witness
the beer-swilling,
high-decibel gathering Friday night at the Parque de los Estudiantes,
a pocket park at a busy intersection - their parents and grandparents
are equally
enthusiastic participants in the celebrations. During my visit last
February, on the final
weekend of the celebrations, one of the best dancers around was Lisa
Fernanda Tapia, shaking her hips as she stood on the outskirts of
a huge street party
late into a Saturday night. The next day, she turned 4.
June 2006
October 15, 2007 4 “We are just exhilarated that the New York State Archives has acknowledged all the hard work that the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute has put into this groundbreaking initiative,” said Dr. Ramona Hernández, Director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. Dr. People “come from as far as Germany and Norway and as close as New Jersey to learn about the history of people of Dominican ancestry in the United States, and particularly in New York City,” Dr. Hernández added. She praised Mr. Gracia Peña, a key figure in its creation, for developing it into a “world-class repository." “Don Gracia Peña has worked tirelessly since Day One in launching, sustaining and developing the Archives and its staff into an institutional outlet that has earned the respect and appreciation of professional archivists in both the U.S. and overseas,” Dr. Mr. Gracia Peña said the Archives’ mission is to identify, appraise, access, process, preserve and provide access to archival materials that document the contributions and experience of the Dominican community in this country. “It supplements and compliments the efforts of the Dominican Studies Institute’s library and research programs, greatly enriching the supply of primary source materials that it makes available to scholars, students and faculty in the area of Dominican studies,” he added. Previous Bernhardt winners include the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University , the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College and the Marist College Archives and Special Collections. For more information about the Dominican Archives at City College , please visit: http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/ci/dsi/archives.cfm . About The City College of New York For 160 years, The City College of New York has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. Over 14,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of Architecture , the School of Education , the Grove School of Engineering and the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education. March 24, 2008 5 by Michael K. Lavers, Mid-Atlantic Regional Editor "I come here for peace," he said. "There are many women who are lesbians and many men who are gay who can meet each other." Parque Duarte has become the de facto hub for the capital’s LGBT residents as they slowly become more visible. Homophobia remains pervasive throughout much of the Dominican Republic, but cosmopolitan Santo Domingo attracts LGBT Dominicans from across the country because its residents tend to be more tolerant of homosexuality than others who live in the countryside. "Gay people from across the country come to live in the capital," journalist Glaen Parls Rosario said as he drank a beer with friends in Parque Duarte. "They are less abused and there is less resistance to the movement." Santo Domingo activists have organized a variety of low key LGBT conferences and even pride marches in recent years, but the city’s gay bars and clubs draw locals and tourists alike on any given weekend. Television personality Chachita Rubio, who also performed at La Escuelita in New York, opened Cha along Santo Domingo’s dramatic oceanfront in February 2007. And hundreds of LGBT Dominicans pack the crowded dance floor each weekend as DJs spin merengue, salsa, American and Latino pop, hip hop, reggaeton and local drag queens, often wearing elaborate costumes, take to the stage. Santo Domingo resident David Baez, his boyfriend Miguel and their friends are regular patrons. He acknowledged many older gay Dominicans remain in the closet because of homophobia or conservative attitudes towards homosexuality from within their families, but Diaz, 25, added he feels these attitudes continue to change. "At the beginning, a lot of people judged us, but society is more accepting now," he said while having coffee inside a coffee shop along Santo Domingo’s pedestrian-only shopping district near the Colonial Zone. "If people see you walking and holding hands, there is no problem. People may see you, but they won’t judge you. You can do what you want." Dominicans in New York moderate societal homophobia Puerto Plata native Alberto Fermin, who is a club promoter in traditionally Dominican-dominated Washington Heights in upper Manhattan, agreed. He suggested the large Dominican diaspora that began to settle in New York in the 1960s have helped to temper homophobic attitudes in his homeland. "People are being more open than before," he said. "People feel free to go down there and to be themselves." Blogger Anthony Montgomery moved to Santo Domingo from New York in January 2004. He manages a gay-friendly hotel in the Colonial Zone. Montgomery echoed Fermin’s assessment while adding many LGBT Dominicans he meets either deny their sexuality or simply remain in the closet. "I actually feel much more comfortable being gay here than in the States, but it’s still very homophobic and hard to be out," Montgomery said. "There are no [prominent] gay Dominicans. There are rumors about prominent gay people in the government, but there is no one who’s going to come out and say I’m gay." Church remains hostile towards LGBT Dominicans Activists have attempted to pressure the Dominican government to enact pro-LGBT legislation, but the Roman Catholic Church and Cardinal Jesús López Rodríguez in particular remain outspoken opponents of any attempts to expand right to LGBT Dominicans or to even give them a more prominent role in society. He described gay men as "maricones" or faggots in an editorial published in a leading Dominican newspaper last October. And Rodríguez criticized gay American and European tourists in the Colonial Zone in an April "Take all of them away," he told the news agency. "We cannot allow that this place, the historical center of Santo Domingo, to be converted into the patrimony of foreign and Dominican degenerates." Rodríguez and other church officials and religious organizations have pressured local police to impose curfews that curtail the hours the capital’s bars and clubs can remain open. The Spanish-owned Arena closed in March 2007 after police ordered it shut down following a raid that reportedly found two 17-year-old boys in the club. HIV emerges as a new threat Increasing HIV and AIDS rates in the Dominican Republic is another problem facing the country. The Presidential Council on AIDS (COPRESIDA), a commission former President Hipólito Mejia created in 2001 to combat the epidemic, estimates nearly 80,000 people in the Dominican Republic live with HIV and AIDS and heterosexual sex accounts for 81 percent of all infections. COPRESIDA has launched a variety of initiatives in recent years aimed at reducing these rates of infection and extending anti retroviral drugs and other treatments to Dominicans living with the virus, but Amigos Siempre Amigos in Santo Domingo seeks to reduce the number of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses among men who have sex with men through education, condom distribution and other outreach initiatives. ASA founder Leonardo Sánchez could not be reached for comment, but Gay & Lesbian Dominican Empowerment Organization (GALDE) founder Francisco Lazala told EDGE in an interview from his Manhattan office his organization regularly sends condoms and other resources to the capital. COPRESIDA’s Web site contains links to ASA, other Dominican and international LGBT and AIDS organizations, but Lazala maintains President Leonel Fernández and his administration needs to extend more resources to combat the epidemic among LGBT Dominicans and MSM. "It’s really, really bad," he said. "They don’t have adequate services for anybody." Baez conceded HIV and AIDS remains a threat, but he quickly quipped LGBT Dominican themselves often cause their own problems. "There are a lot of people who don’t accept themselves and go against each other," Baez said. He remains proud, however, of the progress he contends his country has made as it becomes more tolerant of LGBT people. "This country is like any other country," Baez said. "You can find good people and bad people." Further Information: |
