Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Part Two: LATINA WOMEN AT INCREASING RISK of HIV

HOST: IN LATINO COMMUNITIES ACROSS WESTERN NEW ENGLAND, HIV IS INCREASINGLY STRIKING WOMEN. IN MASSACHUSETTS, LATINA WOMEN ARE SEVENTEEN TIMES MORE LIKELY TO GET INFECTED THAN THEIR WHITE COUNTERPARTS. In Part Two of our week-long series, Voices of HIV, FRANCESCA RHEANNON HAS ONE WOMAN?S STORY:

Mimi is a lively woman who looks younger than her fifty two years. She came to Springfield from Puerto Rico in 1989 , in the wake of Hurricane Hugo. She met a man here and moved in with him. When he became sick, he told her he had diabetes. But he didn't. He was infected with HIV. And soon, so was she.

Ax 1 MIMI: [Spanish with voice over] It's really hard for me because when he infected me, he knew it. He had gotten tested and from one day to the next when he knew what was happening to him, he stopped using condoms. And from there the whole story began.

When her partner died of AIDS, her friends urged her to get tested:

Ax 2 MIMI: [Spanish with voice over] I went to family planning to get tested and that's where I found out. And when I found out, my whole world fell on me. It was supposed to be something confidential, but everybody found out because I was throwing tables and chairs. I went crazy.

Mimi has learned to be accepting about having HIV. But she?s still haunted that she unable to ask her partner to use a condom. That?s not uncommon among Latina women, and may have something to do with social roles Latinos learn at an early age, according to Smiley Arroyo:

Ax 3 SMILEY: A young man can have as many sexual partners they can have and that makes them feel they are a real good man. While the young woman will show her love as giving her all to him. And, if she asks for protection or anything like that, he will say, ?Are you are a prostitute??

Arroyo was an outreach worker in Holyoke who died a few weeks before this story was produced. She spent 15 years talking to sex workers and addicts in Holyoke about how to keep from getting infected with HIV:
Arroyo maintained it?s poverty, not love, that discourages condom use:

Ax 4 SMILEY: There?s another thing that people don?t talk about is survival sex. People have to have sex maybe to have a place to sleep for the night or a place to take a shower and they may not even do drugs.

Women may become sex workers just to buy diapers and milk for their kids. Arroyo?s experiences was, you can make more if you agree to unprotected sex. She became HIV positive twenty years ago and was never sure if she got the virus from a contaminated needle or wh ile being a sex worker to support her habit:

Ax 5 SMILEY: So when you?re broke in the streets and you need money, yeah, you?re going to take more money, even if you?re putting yourself at risk.

Heterosexual sex accounts for over seventy percent of HIV infections among Latina women. But the primary reason isn?t prostitution. Like Mimi, they?re getting the virus from partners who are using intravenous drugs. She also used drugs, but didn?t inject them. When she found out she was infected in 1992, she gave them up, she says, because she wanted to live for her children?s sake. Her daughter was nine when she found out about her mother?s condition. Mimi says it devastated the girl:

Ax 7 MIMI: [Spanish with voice over] She had been a model child up to then, very studious. But from the time she understood what was happening, apart from being afraid that I was going to die, she changed completely and she started doing everything I didn't want her to do. She started using drugs, she started to go out in the street, she started going out with boys, and she completely changed from the model girl she had been and became someone else.

Mimi?s church community also had a hard time accepting her condition. But after several years of enduring rejection by members of her church, she gained the support of her pastor. Other parishioners followed. She says that, thanks to God, she?s remained healthy. She also credits her good health to active involvement in her own care. She leads a healthy life style, she says, with a good diet, plenty of rest, and strong connections to church and family. And she takes her medication, "to the letter". She says, the virus has taught her to take control of her life in a way she never imagined before she knew she had HIV:

Ax 8 MIMI: [Spanish with voice over] It?s like a marriage. You are married to the virus, the virus is your husband, but in this case, you can't let your husband dominate you. You have to dominate him. And you can?t let the virus get to you, because if you do, you?re going to end up getting AIDS, which has not yet happened to me. And I hope it never will.

Mimi has risen to the challenge of HIV against enormous odds. A recent study of HIV and AIDS in Massachusetts reported that women often find out they?re infected only after they start showing symptoms of HIV-related illness. Once they do know they?re infected, women are more likely to neglect their own treatment because of family and work responsibilities. And, compared to men, they face greater stigma, with fewer social supports. And while older women like Mimi have not escaped the virus, young women may be at the highest risk of all.

HOST: OUTREACH WORKER SMILEY ARROYO PASSED AWAY EARLIER THIS FALL. VOICES OF HIV WAS PRODUCED WITH 88.5 WFCR IN AMHERST, MASSACHSUETTS. NEXT, VOICES OF HIV WILL LOOK AT WHAT SOME HOLYOKE YOUTH ARE DOING TO THE FIGHT THE VIRUS.