Excluded Narrations and Emergen(t)cy Cultural Production: Recovering the history of Latino/a AIDS activism and protest in Philadelphia

• In Event: On Protest I: “Endemic crises and continuing protests in comparative and transnational perspective”

Abstract

This essay attempts to critically recover the on-going history of Latino/a AIDS activism and protest in Philadelphia. Despite a recent wave of interest in AIDS activism and protest during the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the United States—as evidenced by the success of the several popular books and documentary films on ACT UP, accounts of Latino/a AIDS activism and protest have been under-studied and under-noticed in both academic and popular literature. In 1989, GALAEI (Gay And Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative) was founded as a queer, activist, social justice organization to combat the AIDS epidemic and to respond to the lack of attention that was given to the ways in which AIDS impacted the Latino community in Philadelphia. Throughout of the 1990s, GALAEI created provocative posters and street art to protest the lack of support and resources in response to AIDS and to disseminate sex-positive, anti-homophobic, and anti-racist educational messages about safer-sex practices that specifically targeted Latino gay men. GALAEI also helped found a storefront HIV testing center and outreach program that continues to serve a variety of populations. GALAEI continues through today in engaging in local and transnational protest and activism on colonialism, gender, queer coalition building, immigration, and health disparities. I recount the emergent and evolving practices and cultural productions of Latino/a AIDS activists in Philadelphia and utilize queer and critical race theories to question why these cultural productions and practices have gone unnoticed.

Author

• Kevin Anthony Henderson, University of Massachusetts Amherst