Facing Their Fears

The future of AIDS education programs may well look like the Latino Men’s Group, which meets Monday and Tuesday nights at The Wall/Las Memorias, just off Cesar Chavez Avenue in East Los Angeles.

At a typical meeting, about 30 men faced each other in a circle, confronting some of their worst fears.

Previously, those fears sent many into bouts of unsafe, anonymous sex. Instead, the men at the meeting facilitated by Richard Zaldivar, the 44-year-old executive director of the city-funded agency, confronted their fears, one at a time.

What makes the Latino Men’s Group stand out is not only that it has helped its members modify risky sexual behavior, but that it is reaching out in an ethnic group still reluctant to acknowledge AIDS.

Only 54% of Latinos have access to the new protease inhibitor drug therapies--the lowest of any ethnic or racial group, said Mark Senak, director of policy and planning at Aids Project Los Angeles. By contrast, 74% of whites have access to the new therapies.

Latinos also scored “the lowest amount of knowledge of combination therapy,” with six times more Latinos than whites having “no knowledge of protease inhibitors,” said Senak.

In addition, Dr. Peter Kerndt, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ HIV Epidemiology Program, said that cultural differences hold back discussions about safer sex. Among those barriers, he said, are “unopened discussions of sexuality, including discussions on the use of condoms. This is largely due to religious beliefs.”

This lack of discussion is intensified by social pressures to marry and the “often closeted nature of homosexuality in that population,” Kerndt said. Thus, many HIV-positive men married because of social pressures, engaging in unsafe sex on the side, he said.

Rafael Gonzalez, director of civic education for the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials, concurs.

“Many Latinos still feel uneasy around AIDS. We don’t want to talk about sexuality because this is considered disrespectful, taboo . . . But in denying this reality, we are killing ourselves.”

During a recent meeting of the three-year-old Latino Men’s Group, words such as condoms, safer sex, drug therapies” and the like were barely mentioned. Instead, the group focused on more complex notions, such as whether, for many gays, contracting HIV is a way of standing out from the crowd and gaining a sense of identity.

The meeting opened with the men reading aloud an article by Toronto activist Ian Young from the May issue of ‘Art & Understanding. Citing the work of a psychologist specializing in HIV-negative men, Young proposed that the uninfected gay man has lost his sense of identity. He lives amid the epidemic “like a dying man,” Young wrote, “disoriented, piecemeal and with no assumption of a future.”

By contrast, theorized Young, HIV “is identified with . . . homosexual intimacy.” The result “is a powerful draw toward seroconversion. The uninfected men . . . repeatedly express the view that HIV-positives live richer, more complex, more authentic lives.’

Zaldivar asks the group: Do some men get infected as a way of gaining identity? And is there a healthier way to get identity?

Her asks 27-year-old Larry Castruita how a gay man relates to his mother who feels uncomfortable with his sexual orientation. What is his obligation to her, and what is his obligation to himself?

Castruita has just invited his mother to a Mother’s Day dinner sponsored by the group.

“My mother’s very overprotective,” he said. “She even checks whether I’ve washed my hands when I go to the restroom.

“She also thinks gay behavior is not normal, that it’s a perversion. She wants me to have sex” with a female friend. “I feel very hurt, like I can’t be my true self in my family.

“A few weeks ago, I gave her an ultimatum. I told her she needs to accept the whole package, deal with my whole life. Enough of the denial. That includes letting my little brothers and sister know.”

And as part of that acknowledgment, Castruita insisted that his mother go to the dinner and meet his friends from the group. “She didn’t want to deal with it,” he said.

Homero del Pino, 25, of Silver Lake, volunteers that, “Unless I bring home grandchildren, I’ll never win mom’s approval. Once I realized I would not get her approval, it was so freeing. I was still annoyed at her, but it was freeing.”

Another member of the group,

who identified himself as Carlos, studied to become a priest but gave it up. Now Zaldivar urges him, “You need to take a stand on who you are. Do you know who you are?”

Carlos doesn’t answer.

“Are you a pervert?” Zaldivar

asked, bringing up each homophobic stereotype for a

reality check. “Are you a non-caring person?”

Still no answer.

“Are you a dirty person? Do you steal? Do you rob? Who are you?”

Carlos barely acknowledged the questions.

Finally, Zaldivar asked him, “Does God love you?”

“I think so,” came back the answer.

“You think so?” Zaldivar echoed.

“Yes,” Carlos said. “God loves me.”

His face is pale.

For many still coping with family rejection and afraid to look too closely within, the group becomes a surrogate family, the meeting rooms become their real home. On this night, the group discussion lasted a full three hours, half an hour over its limit, with only one man leaving before it ended.

Even about 11 p.m., with the next workday beckoning, more than a dozen group members went to talk some more at the nearby Denny’s.

“We’re here to be proud of who we are,” Zaldivar said. “Not to say, ‘Love me because I’m gay,’ but ‘Love me because of who I am.’ Sexuality is just a part of our total identity.”

Once a man reclaims his identity, safe sex will come naturally, said Zaldivar, who himself gave up alcohol seven years ago, turning around his life after hitting “rock bottom.”

“Many men are having sex while looking for love,” he says. “So no matter how many times we hear about safe sex, it doesn’t matter unless we’re in a place where we love ourselves. A person who doesn’t love himself is unsafe.”

The Wall/Las Memorias may be reached at (213) 264-0048.