Being Hispanic, gay and HIV-positive sits heavily on Anthony Perez’s shoulders.
During a routine check-up 15 years ago while living in Houston, Perez found out he was HIV-positive.
It devastated him and his family of Mexican origin, who are attached to traditional precepts and were reluctant to accept same-sex relationships.
“I remember when I tested positive, I fell to the ground, literally, like they do in the movies,” said Perez, a 35-year-old marketing executive who now lives in Dallas.
“I was shocked, and honestly, I didn’t even think I had it. I thought my life was over. I remember crying inconsolably. Honestly, I thought it was a death sentence,” said Perez.
The reactions of his two older brothers were equally devastating.
“Latino men are ‘macho men.’ They were very disappointed,” he said. “I remember my brother crying when I told him, he just took it pretty hard. I remember him telling me he thought I’d be different. I think he had higher expectations of me, so it was hard for me to hear that, to let him down.”
Latinos are more vulnerable
The current HIV trend worries advocates, who are fighting to educate the Hispanic community about how to prevent the disease and to promote medical treatment for those who have already contracted it.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dallas and Tarrant were among the five Texas counties with the most new HIV diagnoses in 2021.
Hispanic or Latino men between the ages of 25 and 34 who had sexual contact with other men accounted for most of the cases.
Dallas County also saw a 30% increase in new HIV cases for men and a 6.5% increase for women among all ethnic groups in 2021.
Texas recorded 4,400 new HIV diagnoses in 2023, which is the second-highest number of cases in the country after Florida.
Dallas and Harris counties had the highest rates of new HIV diagnoses in Texas in 2023, according to the CDC.
According to AIDSVu statistics, in 2022, a little more than a third of new HIV cases detected in Dallas were Hispanic people. In Dallas County, 658 Latinos per 100,000 inhabitants are HIV-positive.
Nationwide, Hispanic people account for 29% of new HIV cases.
The African American community continues to be the most affected, with 44% of new cases in Dallas, while white patients represent 25%.
Lack of communication
Juan Contreras, director of advocacy for Somos LOUD Dallas, a Latino Outreach organization founded in 2013 to fight HIV/AIDS, said the recurrence of HIV among Latinos has a lot to do with the fact that heads of households in Hispanic families don’t know how to talk about the subject with their children.
“I think from at least in my generation, I think those conversations are definitely hard to have with at least father figures for the most part,” said Contreras, 32, who is also president of Texas Latino Pride.
“I do see a trend of younger generations being more open about it, being more okay with it. So I definitely see a sign of hope,” Contreras said.
One of Contreras’ most essential jobs is trying to convince young Latinos in Dallas to get tested for HIV.
“There’s nothing wrong with knowing your status. There’s nothing wrong with taking care of your health and wanting to get tested because you knew that last weekend you were at a party and you may have been a little bit too friendly and got carried away,” Contreras said.
“There’s definitely measures of prevention that can be used nowadays that we didn’t have back then, there’s a lot more resources available. There’s a lot of information that can easily be looked up online nowadays,” Contreras said.
Jacob Reyes, news and rapid response coordinator for GLAAD, said great efforts are being made to promote HIV prevention in the Hispanic community.
“What’s important to know is that there is a vital community here, specifically in Dallas and Fort Worth, that focuses on increasing HIV prevention and awareness, specifically in the Latino community,” Reyes said.
Reyes explained that his organization, which shares stories from the LGBTQ community to promote acceptance, uses social media and direct interaction with the Latino community to talk about HIV.
Reyes cited the most recent HIV stigma report, which states that only 34% of Gen Z, people born between 1997 and 2012, are knowledgeable about HIV.
“With current treatments, we have seen the mortality rate drop dramatically compared to 40 years ago when the HIV pandemic exploded and people were dying at very high rates,” Reyes said. “I think that now that ways have been found to contain the disease and treat it, HIV has reached a certain level of indifference by the younger generation.”
The stigma
Even though 43 years have passed since the HIV/AIDS pandemic was officially declared, the stigma of having HIV in the Latino community is still brutal.
According to a study by GLAAD, 86% of Americans believe HIV mainly impacts LGBTQ people even though anyone can contract HIV, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
For gay Latinos who have HIV, it is particularly difficult to walk through life with those three labels.
“It’s very challenging and hard. I mean, I’m all three, and it’s a lot. You are stigmatized because you are all those three,” Perez said.
Just as there are clinics disguised as thrift stores, there are also clinics whose facades display the multicolored flag representing the LGBTQ community.
“We have to start changing the narrative,” said JP Cano, director of prevention at Help Center for LGBT Health & Wellness, a sexual health clinic that offers testing, medical treatment and educational campaigns to prevent HIV.
“We have gay pride flags outside our clinic because we want people to feel respected and proud that they take care of their sexual health and that they belong to the LGBT community. That changes the narrative of exclusion a lot,” Cano said.
Cano, a registered nurse, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. When he arrived in Dallas, he began studying nursing and graduated with a bachelor of science in nursing from the University of Texas in Arlington.
With years of experience caring for the sexual health of Latinos in the LGBTQ community and with full knowledge of the culture that prevails in Hispanic families, Cano has a good sense of why Hispanics are more likely to contract HIV.
“We have a very deep-rooted stigma as Latinos about what HIV is. I’m telling you this coming from a family where you don’t really talk about sex, and that happens with most of our Latino families,” Cano said.
Encouraging people with HIV to move across the care continuum quickly is critically important to ending the HIV epidemic. In Dallas, there is a robust support system.
“We’ve been around for more than 25 years, and we’ve been at the forefront of prevention. We continue to expand our services at no cost to the public,” Cano said.
The clinics test not only for HIV but other sexually transmitted diseases as well, and patients with HIV are offered PrEP, which helps prevent transmission, improving their quality of life.
“It’s important that the conversation about safe sex continues,” Cano said.
“Latino families need to learn more about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV in general, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
