ABSTRACT
Latino communities disproportionately have been affected-and devastatedby HIV/AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic in th United States (Arend, 2005; Díaz, 1998; Greene et al., 2003; Román, 1998; Yep, 1992). The severity of these effects is directly related to individual and group locations in current U.S. race, class, gender, and sexuality hierarchies (Ford & Yep, 2003; Minkler, 1998; Robert & House, 2000). For example, people at the bottom of these hierarchies (e.g., poor, transgender women of color) lack access to medical and social services, have fewer social, cultural, and political resources, and die younger and more quickly once they contract HIV when compared to individuals at higher locations in these hierarchies (e.g., white, middle-class gay men) (Arend, 2005; Nemoto et al., 2005). Latinas/os living with HIV/AIDS frequently experience some combination of racial and gender discrimination, poverty, homophobia, and AIDS-phobia and discrimination, often from within and outside of their own communities (Díaz, 1998; Román, 1998; Roque Ramírez, 2005). Calling our attention to the daily realities of Latino gay and bisexual men with HIV/AIDS, Alice Villalobos (as cited in Román, 1998, p. 184) writes:
[These men] are usually forced to live within the homophobic Latino/a community because of poverty and oppression. Not only are they rejected by their own people, but they also have to deal with a white, Anglo culture that categorizes them as second-class citizens merely because of the color of their skin.
