ABSTRACT
HIV/AIDS is recognized as an increasingly major problem in the Caribbean. According to the Caribbean Task Force for HIV or AIDS, it is estimated that HIV is the leading cause of death amongst the 1544 year age group. Furthermore it is claimed that cultural and behavioural patterns, such as having sex at an early age, as well as taboos related to sex and sexuality, gender inequalities, lack of confidentiality, stigmatization and economic need, are some of the factors that greatly influence vulnerability to HIV and AIDS in the Caribbean. This chapter demonstrates how the HIV body has been used to challenge socio-cultural paradigms that govern and regulate male sexual cultures in the Caribbean. Le president shows the dismantling of Caribbean masculinity, through a rather didactic text, in which the mechanism whereby masculinity operates in Haiti is disavowed once the film's protagonist discovers that he is HIV positive. Overall, the main route of HIV transmission in the Caribbean is heterosexual sex.
