ACT UP, Haitian Migrants, and Alternative Memories of HIV/AIDS
2012; Routledge; Volume: 98; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00335630.2011.638659
ISSN1479-5779
Autores Tópico(s)Migration and Labor Dynamics
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments She wishes to thank Chuck Morris, Sara McKinnon, Sarah Schulman, and the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division for help in preparing this essay Notes 1. “Lucha contra” is Spanish for “struggle against,” and “koupab” is Haitian Creole for “guilty.” 2. DIVA TV/AIDS Community Television, Haitian INS Demonstration (#2), Video 01230-A, October 30, 1992, from New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, AIDS Activist Videotape Collection, 1985–2000. See also DIVA TV/AIDS Community Television, David Wojnarowicz Political Funeral, Video 00876, July 29, 1992. 3. DIVA TV and the role of media activism in facilitating the goals of AIDS activists have been widely addressed. See, e.g.: Ann Cvetkovich, “Video, AIDS, and Activism,” in Art, Activism, & Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage, ed. Grant H. Kester (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 182–98; Roger Hallas, Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Lucas Hildebrand, “Retroactivism,” GLQ 12 (2006): 303–17; Alexandra Juhasz, “WAVE in the Media Environment: Camcorder Activism and the Making of HIV TV,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 10 (1992): 134–51. 4. Only a few scholars have addressed the HIV detention, see: Rebecca Kidder, “Administrative Discretion Gone Awry: The Reintroduction of the Public Charge Exclusion for HIV-Positive Refugees and Asylees,” The Yale Law Journal 106 (1996): 389–422; Harold Hongju Koh, “The ‘Haiti Paradigm’ in United States Human Rights Policy,” The Yale Law Journal 103 (1994): 2391–435; Elizabeth Mary McCormick, “HIV-Infected Haitian Refugees: An Argument against Exclusion,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 7 (1993): 149–72. 5. This paper focuses only on the work of ACT UP NY, which I refer to as ACT UP. 6. A key exception: Merle English, “Rally Hits Haitian HIV ‘Prison Camp,’” New York Newsday, September 23, 1992, 28. 7. E.g., Peter F. Cohen, Love and Anger: Essays on AIDS, Activism, and Politics (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Press, 1998); Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). 8. Philip J. Hilts, “Haitian Doctors Uncover Clue to Mystery of Deadly AIDS,” Washington Post, October 23, 1983, A12. 9. Paul Farmer, AIDS & Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); See also: The Uses of Haiti, 2nd ed. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2003); Cindy Patton, Inventing AIDS (New York: Routledge, 1990). Several reports in the mainstream and gay press, as well as in medical journals, linked Haiti and HIV/AIDS, often in very problematic ways. See for example: Lawrence K. Altman, “The Doctor's World; The Confusing Haitian Connection to AIDS,” New York Times, August 16 1983; Anne-christine d'Adesky, “New Haitan AIDS/ASFV Link,” New York Native 1986, June 9; James E. D'Eramo, “Is African Swine Fever Virus the Cause?,” New York Native 1983; Robin Marantz Henig, “AIDS a Disease's Deadly Odyssey,” New York Times, February 6 1983; Hilts, “Haitian Doctors,” A12; Sheldon H. Landesman, “The Haitian Connection: AIDS in Persons of Haitian Origin,” New York Native 1983; Jean-Robert Leonidas and Nicole Hyppolite, “Haiti and the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome,” Annals of Internal Medicine 98 (1983): 1020–21; Peter Moses and John Moses, “Haiti and the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,” Annals of Internal Medicine 99 (1983): 565; Charles L. Ortleb, “Pigs in Belle Glade Test Positive for Antibodies to HTLV-III,” New York Native 1986, 8; Jane Teas, “Could AIDS Agent be a New Variant of African Swine Fever Virus?,” Lancet 321 (1983): 923. More recently, the “Haitian connection” has been reintroduced by an evolutionary biologist from the University of Arizona. See: “HIV First Came to the US in 1969,” Gay People's Chronicle, November 2 2007. 10. Farmer, AIDS & Accusation. 11. For a brief review of Haiti's political situation since 1957, see: “‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier Returns to Haiti from Exile,” BBC News, January 17, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11943820. 12. Brunson McKinley, “US Policy on Haitian Refugees,” US Department of State Dispatch, June 15, 1992, 472–4. 13. “US Senate Votes to Bar Immigrants with HIV,” The London Independent, February 19, 1993, 11. Candidate Clinton promised to lift the HIV ban, and as President he attempted to get Congress to do so. In February 1993, the Senate voted 76–23 to uphold the ban. 14. These groups included The Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project, the San Francisco Lawyers Committee, and the Yale Law School's Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic. See Kaplan and Wilder's November 30, 1992 letter to ACT UP (Reel 27, Box 37, Folder 1). 15. Thomas L. Friedman, “US to Release 158 Haitian Detainees,” New York Times, June 10, 1993; Larry Rohter, “Long Exodus Nears End for HIV-infected Refugees from Haiti,” New York Times, June 13, 1993. Activists who visited Guantánamo also reported these conditions in various venues featured on the DIVA TV episodes. 16. Lynne Duke, “US Ordered to Free HIV-infected Haitians; Judge Cites ‘Abuse of Discretion’ Regarding Refugees at Guantanamo,” Washington Post, June 9, 1993. 17. In the archives, there is a flyer indicating a demonstration on Tuesday, September 22, 1992 at the US District Court, Brooklyn Federal Courthouse (Reel 27, Box 37, Folder 6). However, there is no additional documentation for this event. 18. Minutes of the ACT UP NY Coordinating Committee Meeting of March 29, 1992. ACT UP Archives, Microfilmed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison Memorial Library, Reel 27, Box 36, Folder 2. I have phrased this in passive voice, because in the minutes, it indicates that ACT UP was asked, but it does not indicate by whom. In her Oral History Project interview, Betty Williams indicates that the Center for Constitutional Rights made the initial request for ACT UP's help. 19. DIVA TV/AIDS Community Television, Guantanamo: Senate HIV Ban, Video 01235, February 23, 1993, from New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, AIDS Activist Videotape Collection, 1985–2000. 20. DIVA TV clearly worked with very little budget, and so hardly any activists are named in the videos. I have begun the work of connecting names and images in order to provide a fuller account, in a future writing, about ACT UP's Haitian work. 21. DIVA TV/AIDS Community Television, Guantanamo: Haitians Quarantined by the USA, Video 01234, 1993, from New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, AIDS Activist Videotape Collection, 1985–2000. 22. DIVA TV/AIDS Community Television, Guantanamo: Senate HIV Ban, Video 01235. 23. Betty Williams, interview by Sarah Schulman, ACT UP Oral History Project, Interview #099, New York, August 23, 2008, http://www.actuporalhistory.org/interviews/interviews_17.html#bwilliams. 24. Anne-Christine d'Adesky, interview by Sarah Schulman, ACT UP Oral History Project, Interview #016, San Francisco, CA, April 15, 2003, http://www.actuporalhistory.org/interviews/interviews_03.html#adesky. 25. Alexandra Juhasz, “Video Remains: Nostalgia, Technology, and Queer Archive Activism,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12 (2006): 320. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKarma R. ChávezKarma R. Chávez is Assistant Professor of rhetoric in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin—Madison
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