Miami Herald - Sunday, June 02, 2002
Andrea Elliott, aelliott@herald.com

"You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone, and we can live together," she said.

For nine years, the bargain has held: Pinkus takes her medication and her virus -- HIV -- has not turned into AIDS.

In that time, the Hollywood pharmacy technician also became the first Hispanic woman to routinely talk publicly about her condition in South Florida, where Latina heterosexuals are increasingly at risk for HIV and AIDS.

"This is a woman who came out and put a face on this disease long before anyone else in our community did. Until today, we have a hard time getting people to step forward," said Luis Penelas, executive director of the Miami AIDS prevention and outreach organization Union Positiva, co-founded by Pinkus five years ago.

A COMMON STORY

Pinkus, 49, of Venezuela, is among 17,138 Hispanics living in Florida with HIV/AIDS, 16.3 percent of whom are women, according to the Florida Department of Health.

She is president of Union Positiva's board of directors and active in AIDS education. She has told her story in support groups, educational videos, panel discussions and conferences nationwide.

It's a sadly common story among Hispanic women with the virus -- Pinkus contracted it from her husband, who died of AIDS in 1994.

"The majority of the women in the Hispanic community who are HIV positive are through heterosexual contact," said Dr. Michael Kolber, associate chief of infectious diseases at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Kolber has led AIDS research projects in Florida's migrant communities.

Nationwide, nearly half of all AIDS cases affecting Hispanic women stem from heterosexual contact, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Hispanic women compose 19 percent of the nation's 145,220 AIDS cases among Hispanics, but in 2000 alone, accounted for 23 percent of new cases reported, according to the CDC.

Part of the problem is silence, Pinkus said.

"I think the taboo is still in talking about sex, and because HIV is a sexually transmitted disease, they don't want to talk about it, either," she said. "There's still a lot of rejection in the community, the fear of losing your job."

Pinkus sued for discrimination after she lost her job at a Miami shoe manufacturer when they learned of her husband's disease in 1994. (They settled out of court.)

Pinkus met her second husband, Robert De Jesus, at a popular Miami bar in December 1990.

"He was very handsome," said Pinkus, who had divorced her first husband with whom she has a 21-year-old son.

When the two became intimate, Pinkus wasn't thinking about safe sex.

"He didn't look sick. There is no face for HIV or AIDS," Pinkus said.

Two years later, as De Jesus' ex-girlfriend lay dying of AIDS in a Puerto Rican hospital, he began to tire easily.

"He was one of the thousands of stubborn men who didn't like going to doctors," Pinkus said. Finally, when he developed thrush -- a fungus that causes white eruptions in the mouth and throat -- De Jesus saw a doctor.

The diagnosis was full-blown AIDS.

MACHISMO CULTURE

"I went home and we cried together and I told him not to worry, that we're going to fight it," said Pinkus, who was worried she might also be infected.

Pinkus tested positive for HIV six months later, in December 1993.

De Jesus died the next March. To this day, Pinkus does not know how much her husband knew of his ex-girlfriend's condition in Puerto Rico.

The woman's family confirmed she had died of AIDS a month after De Jesus' diagnosis. When he and the woman had lived together in the early 1980s, she would visit the grave of her former boyfriend, who had also died of AIDS, Pinkus said.

Pinkus takes her cocktail of medications three times daily, rests, and eats well. Her only symptoms so far: sinus allergies and several colds a year.

"I learned to respect this virus because I have seen what it can do to you," she said. "Even today, I've seen people go from very healthy to very sick and dying because they do not take their medication."

Pinkus would like to find another life partner, one who is already HIV positive for her "peace of mind," she said.

For now, she wants to help other Hispanic women become assertive and move past the machismo of their culture, where men often refuse to wear condoms, Pinkus said.

"The Hispanic woman is used to leaving all the decisions up to her husband," she said. "They have to learn to take control of their own lives and make their own decisions for themselves."

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