Among U.S. Latino men who have sex with men, HIV/AIDS remains an urgent health concern. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Latinas/os accounted for more than one-fifth of all new HIV infections in 2010 despite representing only 16% of the U.S. population; most resulted from male-to-male sexual contact. The gravity of these numbers is compounded by the fact that in 2012, after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, nearly one-third of all Latinas/os under 65 lacked health insurance. Despite these statistics, the primary story about HIV/AIDS now told in the United States is what sociologist Claire Laurier Decoteau calls the aftermath narrative. In response, this talk examines what the gay Chicano writer Gil Cuadros, whose book City of God depicts queer and Chicana/o communities living with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles during the late 1980s and early 1990s, teaches us in the era of the so-called aftermath. Cuadros offers contemporary readers a fierce critique of the political communities – including those constructed by Chicano nationalism and white gay homonormativity – that leave queer Latinos with HIV/AIDS unprotected. Challenging health care inequities and interrogating dominant understandings of “healthy” sexuality, the work of Gil Cuadros remains profoundly relevant at a time when comprehensive health care access for young, queer Latino men remains tenuous.

About the Speaker:

Julie Avril Minich is assistant professor of English and Mexican American & Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses in Latina/o studies, disability studies, and feminist/LGBT studies. Minich is the author of Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico (Temple University Press, 2014), which won the 2013-2014 MLA Prize in Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in GLQ, Modern Fiction Studies, MELUS, and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. She is currently working on a new book about Latina/o literature, compulsory able-bodiedness, and racialized health disparities, tentatively titled Enforceable Care: Health, Justice, and Latina/o Expressive Culture.

Organized by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, co-sponsored by Border Collective Workshop, Latina/o Studies, Initiative on Disability Studies.