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AIDS Among Latinos on Rise
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The brief heterosexual detour did not produce a baby, but she did contract HIV, discovering the infection three years later when she was stricken with terrible stomach pain. Mancillas went with her father to a hospital in Tijuana.
"My English is not good, and I felt more comfortable in my own language, my own culture," she said in Spanish. The Mexican doctor told Mancillas's father that she had AIDS -- and six months to live. Neither man told her. Three days later, a nurse broke the news.
Her partner and her friends all disappeared. A priest asked her: "What kind of life have you led that God would punish you in this way?"
Still, Mancillas considers herself lucky. With the help of a California doctor, her six-month death sentence has extended to more than 11 years. More important, she noted, she is a U.S. citizen, eligible for legal protections and disability benefits.
That is not the case for Rosalia Vargas, 41. She frets daily about her undocumented status and worries about what will happen to her 5-year-old son, who is not infected, if she is deported.
She had not planned to leave her small town in the state of Veracruz. But in 1994, when an aunt needed help with a disabled child, her parents put her on a bus headed north.
Like Ruiz, Vargas was simultaneously thrilled and terrified by her new surroundings. Unchaperoned for the first time, she strolled through parks, shopped and socialized on her own. She met a man.
"He told me I was special, and I felt very flattered," she said. Soon, she was living with the charming Mexican American. But his behavior confused her.
"He used to go out in the middle of the night for no reason," she said. "Sometimes his friends came to the apartment and went in his room and closed the door."
She discovered medications in a drawer but could not decipher the English on the bottles. One day, she returned from babysitting to find him on the floor, covered in his own vomit. They rushed to a hospital, where the doctor said her drug-dealing partner had AIDS.
"I felt a cold chill. I lived with him for three years and we never used condoms," she said, tears trickling down her cheeks. "Mexican women don't even know what a condom is. All we know is if you talk about condoms, you are promiscuous."
Vargas's experience is an example of what San Francisco State University professor Hector Carrillo calls "cultural dissonance." He said: "The real challenge is that they are entering new situations or contexts."
