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Gays march in Haiti for first time
AP, 12.01.2008
(St. Marc, Haiti) A dozen men in T-shirts declaring “I am gay” and “I am living with HIV/AIDS” have marched with hundreds of other demonstrators through a Haitian city in what organizers called the Caribbean nation’s first openly gay march.
The march, held a day ahead of World AIDS Day in the western city of St. Marc, called for better prevention and treatment in a country long plagued by the virus.
Organizers said they hoped the march will break barriers to reach more HIV-positive people and gay men with programs that have helped decrease the country’s infection rate by two-thirds in the last decade.
“They suffer double the stigma and double the discrimination,” said Esther Boucicault Stanislas, a leading activist known as the first person in Haiti to publicly declare that she was HIV-positive after her husband died of AIDS in the early 1990s.
About 500 participants that included health ministry officials and workers with United Nations programs followed a speaker-truck through the dusty city, chanting and carrying banners en route to the mayor’s office. No officials received them.
AIDS awareness marches have taken place before in Haiti, but Boucicault and organizers with New York-based AIDS service organization Housing Works called this one the first march to include an openly gay group in Haiti.
The nation of 9 million remains the most affected by HIV in the Caribbean, itself the region with the highest infection rate outside Sub-Saharan Africa.
Haiti has long fought stigmatization and discrimination after its migrants were some of the first AIDS cases identified in the United States. Unfounded beliefs that Haitians caused the epidemic helped decimate the country’s tourism industry.
The country has since been a success story, with its HIV infection rate falling from 5.9 percent in 1996 to 2.2 percent today - due in part to programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has given Haiti more than $320 million since 2004. The deaths of people with HIV also contributed to the decline.
But gay men remain at risk because they hide from social programs due to prejudice and harassment, despite making up one-tenth of reported HIV cases in the Caribbean, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS reported.
In socially conservative Haiti, discrimination runs especially deep.
Debate over Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis’ nomination earlier this year centered almost entirely on rumors that she was a lesbian, with lawmakers standing up one after another to denounce her as immoral. She was approved for the post only after agreeing to read a statement on Haitian radio that the rumors were defamatory and untrue.
On Sunday, opposition was muted to the small contingent wearing white T-shirts bearing the word “masisi” - a Haitian Creole slur for gay men that the marchers celebrated and chanted as their own.
Gays march in Haiti for first time
AP, 12.01.2008
(St. Marc, Haiti) A dozen men in T-shirts declaring “I am gay” and “I am living with HIV/AIDS” have marched with hundreds of other demonstrators through a Haitian city in what organizers called the Caribbean nation’s first openly gay march.
The march, held a day ahead of World AIDS Day in the western city of St. Marc, called for better prevention and treatment in a country long plagued by the virus.
Organizers said they hoped the march will break barriers to reach more HIV-positive people and gay men with programs that have helped decrease the country’s infection rate by two-thirds in the last decade.
“They suffer double the stigma and double the discrimination,” said Esther Boucicault Stanislas, a leading activist known as the first person in Haiti to publicly declare that she was HIV-positive after her husband died of AIDS in the early 1990s.
About 500 participants that included health ministry officials and workers with United Nations programs followed a speaker-truck through the dusty city, chanting and carrying banners en route to the mayor’s office. No officials received them.
AIDS awareness marches have taken place before in Haiti, but Boucicault and organizers with New York-based AIDS service organization Housing Works called this one the first march to include an openly gay group in Haiti.
The nation of 9 million remains the most affected by HIV in the Caribbean, itself the region with the highest infection rate outside Sub-Saharan Africa.
Haiti has long fought stigmatization and discrimination after its migrants were some of the first AIDS cases identified in the United States. Unfounded beliefs that Haitians caused the epidemic helped decimate the country’s tourism industry.
The country has since been a success story, with its HIV infection rate falling from 5.9 percent in 1996 to 2.2 percent today - due in part to programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has given Haiti more than $320 million since 2004. The deaths of people with HIV also contributed to the decline.
But gay men remain at risk because they hide from social programs due to prejudice and harassment, despite making up one-tenth of reported HIV cases in the Caribbean, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS reported.
In socially conservative Haiti, discrimination runs especially deep.
Debate over Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis’ nomination earlier this year centered almost entirely on rumors that she was a lesbian, with lawmakers standing up one after another to denounce her as immoral. She was approved for the post only after agreeing to read a statement on Haitian radio that the rumors were defamatory and untrue.
On Sunday, opposition was muted to the small contingent wearing white T-shirts bearing the word “masisi” - a Haitian Creole slur for gay men that the marchers celebrated and chanted as their own.
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True Life: Gay and Haitian
Zac was ten years old when his 16 year-old half brother moved into his home. His half brother would insist on a “wrestling match”, which eventually ended in series of horrific experiences that would haunt Zac for all of his life.
He struggled at first, unsure of what was happening. Zac was a kid; it felt good, which is a thought he would torture himself over for many years. Could he have somehow stopped being molested by his brother?
Zac’s half-brother didn’t only sexually abuse him, after each assault he would receive a violent beating. “I think he was embarrassed,” Zac says. “So after he would finish, he would beat the hell out of me — punch and kick me. One time there was so much blood that it splattered on the wall.” Zac adds, “He would not only beat me up...he would choke me...even when he would be doing it.”
No one knew. Those bruises were from school or fights with people in the neighborhood. He didn’t feel empowered enough to speak up. Zac’s half brother threatened to tell his mother and say that Zac was the one who touched him, which wasn’t true. He was scared to tell his mother on his own, unsure of how she would react to her son being a victim of sexual abuse. As a young black Haitian boy no one ever explained sexual abuse. No one told him if someone touched you, you must tell. He was taught to be a man as a little boy and men are never victims.
The abuse continued on and off for the next five years, until his half brother moved.
I asked, only because I knew people would wonder, if this experience “made him gay”. He gave a strong, “No.” Zac recalled those feelings years before. “My other brother, he would be outside playing soccer, getting into his fights and I’d never wanted to play soccer. I always wanted to play house.” He adds, “I knew I was different. My neighbor, he would come home during lunch, take off his shirt and put it on the line outside. I would go and sniff the shirt, smelling his body and cologne…it did something to me. Around that time I didn’t even know what gay was.”
There are many insecurities in Zac’s life, especially being a dark-skinned child in Haiti. “I took after my father so everybody on my mother’s side is a couple shades lighter. If I was in the sun more during the week my mother would come home and say, ‘You didn’t take a shower today!’ or ‘You didn’t wash your face well today!’—because I was so dark.” He painfully says what scars him to this day is a comment from his younger sister who was only seven at the time, “She said, ‘I’d rather die then be as dark as you, I’d rather be dead.’”
In Zac’s mind, he felt ugly on the exterior and interior. The secrets he carried held so much shame.
Haiti is extremely homophobic but, quite ironically; those who practice Vodun/Voodoo, and not Catholicism or Christianity, are not as homophobic. According to Zac, “Haitians who practice Voodoo are more accepting of sexuality because they say men that are gay are more receptive to spirits and they have more ability. The more ability you have, they think the more spiritual you are and the more connected you are." Voodoo is looked down upon even in Haiti and in many cases reserved for the darkest and the poorest. “If Haiti was 95% Voodoo and not Catholic or Christian there would be 95% less homophobia.”
His predator was married with three kids (all girls), but now in the process of divorce because he physically abused his wife. Zac doesn’t know if he lives a secret life of homosexuality, but he doesn't want to know.
Zac has moved on the best way he could. He is a comfortable gay man in his thirties, but knows there is no real option to ever be honest with his family. He keeps this secret from his sisters, brothers and mother.
It’s the shame that meets him in his dreams and manifests in his daily life. “From then till now, I still dream about him…my ex looks just like him…what he did to me is what I like sexually…I still feel like I should’ve stopped it.”
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