Inter Press Service - September 19, 2002
Diego Cevallos

Pilar, 35, who did not want to give her real name, is living with HIV in the city of Puebla, near Mexico City and far from her home village, the name of which she also declined to provide.

She says she cannot forgive her husband for infecting her and their young son with AIDS, and complains that she was a victim of ignorance, naivet and submission to her husband.

After finding out that she and her son tested positive for HIV, Pilar was shunned by her family and ostracized by her village. She had no other choice than to throw herself on the mercy of a distant relative in Puebla, the capital of the state of the same name, who took her in.

In Mexico, less than five percent of those living with HIV, the AIDS virus, are found in rural areas. But in the countryside and small villages, women account for 21.3 percent of the cases, compared to 14.4 percent in the cities.

Nearly 20 percent of all cases reported in rural areas are directly associated with emigration flows to the United States, which is a factor in just 6.1 percent of cases reported in urban areas, according to a study by the Secretariat (ministry) of Health.

Pilar describes her life as "wretched." Her husband Marco, who contracted HIV in the United States, died last March, and their two-year-old son died in April.

"I haven't forgiven him, because he ruined my life and left me with nothing, and even my son died because of him," said Pilar. "Damn the day he went to the United States."

Thanks to support from a private foundation, Pilar is now receiving the antiretroviral medicines she needs to delay the onset of full-blown AIDS.

She was denied access to the public health system because she has no social security. She was also turned away by the free clinics which provide care to impoverished HIV/AIDS patients, because they are operating beyond capacity.

"In the countryside, the problems suffered by women with AIDS are serious, and many who are infected do not even know it, until they fall ill or until their children or partners die," Carlos Rugerio, a delegate of the non-governmental organisation Mexican Vanguard of People Infected with HIV (VAMPAVHI), based in the state of Puebla, told IPS.

Many of the nearly one million Mexicans who try to enter the United States every year, most of them illegally, come from the rural areas of states like Puebla.

"The link between the spread of AIDS and the phenomenon of emigration to the United States has not been studied in-depth, but our experience indicates that it is a growing problem," said Rugerio.

There is much more ignorance on HIV/AIDS in the rural parts of Mexico than in the cities, and those who are infected immediately find themselves spurned by their families and neighbours, he explained.

Pilar can vouch for that. When it came out that her husband had AIDS, her small family began to be ostracized, and even suffered physical aggression.

Her close family members also began to shun her, and she and her husband decided to leave the village. By then, Pilar and her little boy had both tested positive for HIV as well.

"Marco brought back dollars, which we were happy about. But because of the AIDS, his betrayal and his lies, life became bleak and wretched," she said.

Her husband confessed to her that he had frequent sexual encounters with women on his sojourns to the United States, and that he almost never used condoms.

There is a clear link between AIDS and emigration, because Mexico shares a 3,200-km border with the United States, where there is a high rate of HIV/AIDS, said the director of the governmental Health Systems Research Centre, Mario Bronfman.

According to the statistics of the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), there are 800,000 to 900,000 people living with the disease in the United States, a country of 283 million, while 40,000 are infected annually.

Mexican men who emigrate to the United States are at high risk of contagion, because they are generally young, have strong needs for intimacy and sex, and are often living under great stress, said Bronfman.

An estimated four million undocumented Mexicans are living in the United States, some of whom are occasionally able to visit their families back home - and thus pass on diseases they might have caught to their wives or girlfriends.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says women are up to four times more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS than men in heterosexual relationships, since semen contains a higher concentration of infected cells, and because the vagina provides an ideal environment for their proliferation.

Mexico's Secretariat of Health estimates that more than 150,000 people are living with HIV in this country of 100 million, and that 11 people are infected daily.

"I hope other women do not let themselves be deceived by their husbands," said Pilar. "They must demand that their husbands use condoms, and even force them to take an AIDS test, because if they don't, their lives can be ruined like mine was," said Pilar.

VAMPAVHI's Rugerio, meanwhile, said he hoped the government would improve its AIDS prevention campaigns in rural areas, where widespread ignorance stands in the way of curbing the spread of the disease, and where people living with HIV suffer much greater discrimination than in the cities. (END/IPS/LA/HE PR/TRA-SO SW/DC/DM/02)

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