Your Eminence Jose H. Gomez, Coadjutor of Los Angeles
As a long time community leader and founder of The Wall-Las Memorias Project, welcome to Los Angeles, home to a community of great diversity rich in culture and beauty.
The Wall-Las Memorias Project is a nonprofit community based organization that constructed the first publicly funded AIDS monument in the nation. The AIDS monument creates a focal point to address the cultural denial, ignorance, shame and stigma that contribute to the epidemic. The organization provides education and prevention services to the community about HIV, substance abuse and community engagement in health disparities. The Wall-Las Memorias Project also provides HIV/AIDS education-prevention services to the Latino faith based community of Los Angeles County.
I write you as a practicing Catholic, a gay man, an AIDS activist and someone who prays for and dreams for the day that my church would do more to prevent AIDS.
In Los Angeles County, Latinos represent over 48% of the total population and yet Latinos represent roughly 1/3 of the county’s cumulative AIDS cases. In addition, the Office of AIDS Programs and Services state that:
• An estimated 62,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles County;
• Over 50% of new HIV infections in Los Angeles County are spread by those who have it and don’t know it.
• 7 out of 10 people living with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles County are gay or bisexual men.
• At the end of 2009 there were over 9,500 Latinos living with AIDS in Los Angeles County. This is the largest number of persons living with AIDS of any racial and ethnic group in the County.
• 70% of women with AIDS in Los Angeles County were infected with HIV through heterosexual intercourse.
As you can see, HIV/AIDS is still a major problem for our community.
Roughly 70% of our Los Angeles Latinos identify as Catholic and our church has been absent from the conversation and education-prevention efforts surrounding HIV.
Cardinal Roger Mahoney created an archdiocesan AIDS ministry. With its small group of volunteers it has worked hard to make a difference, but it has stopped short of culturally sensitive education-prevention outreach to the Latino population.
A study was commissioned by the Los Angeles County Office of AIDS Programs and Policy in 2004 and was conducted by BaumanCurry and Company and Data Trends of which both institutions are well respected in the African American and Latino community.
In that study, researchers found that very little outreach was being conducted to Latino Catholic parishioners. An example, of the AIDS Ministry’s claim that there were 25 to 30 churches that had an active AIDS ministry only three had been confirmed by the study. Another study was conducted jointly in 2009 by the Center for Latino Community of NCLR/University of California-Long Beach and The Wall-Las Memorias Project and then again those findings were confirmed.
In our Project Faith program, we outreach and provide HIV prevention-education services to numerous Latino faith-based institutions in Los Angeles County and many are Roman Catholic parishes. There is never a promotion of condom use.
It is not just the ignorance that promotes HIV. It is also the unsafe sexual behavior that promotes HIV and other STD’s. Issues such as: machismo, silence, poverty, immigration status, ignorance, social status, homophobia, substance abuse and stigma contribute to unsafe sex behaviors. Therefore, our prevention efforts must include faith and our church to have an impact in changing behaviors. The church’s social justice outreach must be more than just on the immigration issue. It must embrace the hungry, homeless, those with drug problems, the marginalized, and those who are spiritually bankrupt.
Our people are hungry for love, compassion and respect for who they are, not for what they are supposed to be. I ask you for a new and creative way of addressing HIV/AIDS; to know and accept the limitations that exist when we fail to work collaboratively as a community.
And because so many AIDS cases are due unsafe sex among gay and bisexual men, I pray that you create a place at the table for all of our brothers and sisters who want to be part of the Catholic family. There is a way to accommodate so many of our Angelinos and at the same time not ignoring the principles of the church doctrine. Accommodation!
Together we must lower AIDS in our community and bring back the marginalized Latino community back to the table.
Sincerely,
Richard L. Zaldivar
Executive Director/Founder
The Wall-Las Memorias
