Bay Area Reporter - January 3, 2003
Ed Walsh, Bay Area Reporter

For then 19-year-old Alejandro Freyre, it was a moment frozen in time.

It was in May 1989. The setting was a hospital in his hometown, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What would happen that day would launch him on a path to be one of the most prominent foot soldiers in the battle against AIDS in Latin America and the face of AIDS in Argentina.

After 4 months of waiting to get tested for HIV and another month waiting for the results, the time had finally come. For moral support, as he waited for the results, he was surrounded by his father and by his boyfriend Fernando. A doctor told the group that Freyre had AIDS.

"They didn't say back then that you were HIV-positive, they just said that you have AIDS," Freyre told the Bay Area Reporter in his first interview with the American media.

"I just sunk in that moment -- that I had AIDS," he recalled. "I felt very, very sad. I didn't feel happy for a very long time after that."

But what seemed like the end of the road for Freyre that day would yield a new beginning the following morning.

"That night I closed my eyes, I felt depressed only that night. But I when I woke up the next morning, I felt hungry. I felt alive."

When he sat down at the breakfast table, his family was waiting for him. Although they felt that they needed to support him, he felt that they needed his support even more. That revelation would be a road map for the rest of his life.

"The way I bought strength for myself was to build strength for others," explained Freyre.

At that time, there was just one support group for people living with HIV in Argentina. Freyre became involved in that group and eventually coordinated its meetings.

In 1995, he was admitted to a hospital suffering from AIDS-related illnesses and his doctor told him he would not survive. Instead of accepting that prognosis, Freyre said he turned the focus away from himself and towards others who were in his same position.

He accepted an invitation to appear on a television talk show and after that, invitations came in from several other very influential television talk and news programs. Since his first television appearance, Freyre said that his telephone "exploded" with calls of support and from people who were also living with AIDS. Up until that time, Freyre explained, AIDS had no face in Argentina.

Freyre recalled that when he was first diagnosed as being HIV-positive, there was virtually no education about AIDS because it was thought of as "a disease of another country." He noted that he was the first person in his circle of gay male friends who was diagnosed as being HIV positive but he knew he was the tip of the iceberg.

"I looked at my friends, and I know I fucked with them, and they were all fucking with each other," he said.

Besides being thought of as a disease of somewhere else, Freyre explained that AIDS was looked upon as a disease of gay men and called by many the Peste Rosa, or Pink Pest. Freyre lost his contract for work with an insurance company after it became known that he was HIV positive. His dentist also refused to treat him anymore.

As a result of his activism and his experience helping others with HIV and AIDS, Freyre officially began his own foundation in 1996, called the Fundacion Buenos Aires SIDA, or the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation. The foundation employs a staff of 8 or 9 full-time employees and more than thirty volunteers. It operates out of Freyre's apartment in a poor, red-light section of Buenos Aires, known for being frequented by "transvesti" prostitutes, who have become an important part of the foundation's outreach work.

The foundation hosts regular outreaches to discos frequented by young people and to schools, with the emphasis on peer to peer counseling. It also distributes free condoms, which otherwise can sell for just under a dollar each a significant sum for many. With its recent economic troubles, the median income in Argentina has plummeted from about $8,000 to $2,500. Half of Argentina's 37 million people live under the poverty level of $2. a day.

Freyre feels fortunate to have strong support from his family. He came out when he was 16. His boyfriend Fernando, also tested positive but his family was not supportive. Fernando's family didn't know he was gay until they learned he was HIV positive. Although they are no longer boyfriends, Freyre said he and Fernando have remained good friends. He noted that Fernando donated a computer to his foundation, a huge donation for the scrappy organization. Freyre plans to "marry" his current partner, Juan, in a civil ceremony next March.

Freyre's organization gets much of its funding from a grant from the German government but that funding source is due to run out in June 2003. He hopes he will be able to get enough alternative funding to keep the foundation's doors open.

Another sister AIDS foundation in Argentina, the Nexo Group, is also struggling to stay afloat. Its president, Dr. Sergio Maulen, told the B. A. R. that this year it had to move to a smaller office and temporarily cease the publication of its gay magazine, NX. They hope to start NX back soon. The proceeds from the sales of the magazine supported much of its health services. The magazine continues to be published online at www.nexo.org.

Dr. Maulen has administered HIV tests from his office since March 2000, a huge breakthrough from the bureaucratic user unfriendly public hospitals that also administer the test. Of the mostly gay men who get tested at Nexo, about 13% test positive for HIV, said Dr. Maulen

Nexo also runs a hot line staffed by health professionals and volunteers. Like the Buenos Aires AIDS foundation, Nexo targets much of its work towards prevention. Dr. Maulen explains that although the government of Argentina guarantees AIDS medication and treatment through its public hospitals, it is far behind the United States and other countries in education and prevention.

According to an estimate by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, 130,000 people were infected with HIV in Argentina in 2001. According to Foundation Huesped, another major AIDS organization in Argentina, children under 12 made up a little over 7 percent of all HIV cases in the country, the highest rate in Latin America. The children got the disease during pregnancy, delivery, or through breast feeding, according to the foundation. UNADIS/WHO estimates about 3,000 children under 15 are HIV positive, or about a third of Foundation Huesped's estimate.

Of those who test positive for HIV in Argentina, about 40% report that they became infected through heterosexual contact, 28% through IV drug use, and 23% through gay or bisexual contact.

Despite a recent billboard campaign about AIDS that the Argentine government initiated just this month, Maulen said there is still a great deal of denial about AIDS in Argentina.

"It's easy for this society to think this is a problem of others," he told the B. A. R. .

Maulen noted that the transitional government in Argentina under Peronist President Eduardo Duhalde has neither an AIDS policy nor a prevention policy. He said that a person who was assigned to oversee AIDS programs in the country has no prior history of work on AIDS.

Alejandro Freyre and the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation can be reached at buenosaires_sida@hotmail.com ,1040 Virrey Ceballos PB.5, (1077) Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina tel-fax: 011-54-11- 4305- 8269

Dr. Sergio Maulen and the Nexo Group can be reached at info@nexo.org , Sarmiento 1562 2 F, (C1022AAD) Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tel. 011-54-11-4374-4484

Both organizations are in need of monetary support and Nexo is asking for donations of unused AIDS medication.
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