Tijuana's AIDS Epidemic Is a Binational Threat

On the Front Lines of Mexico's AIDS War

Angel Cabrera patrols Tijuana in search of drug users and commercial sex workers, providing them with condoms and clean needles in an effort to stop the spread of AIDS in one of the busiest land border crossings in the world.
(Video By Nancy Donaldson -- washingtonpost.com)

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As he parks, a former cabdriver in tattered, smelly clothes with an abscess on one arm approaches the car.

"I lost everything," says the man, who goes by the nickname "Rascal." "I don't have any motivation."

"Your life is your motivation," Cabrera replies in Spanish. "I know it's difficult, but it's not impossible. I know you have moments of desperation."

"Somos iguales," Cabrera tells him. We are the same.

Cabrera wants junkies such as Rascal to quit, but for now he focuses on persuading them to at least use a clean needle. It has not been easy lately as drug raids and deportations send more users to jail, where they have no access to clean needles.

"One user will share a needle with 50 others if he has to," Cabrera says. "Just imagine the epidemic that can spark."

On a visit to the concrete canal separating Tijuana and California, several men line up beside Cabrera, dropping syringes into a red biohazard box in exchange for new ones.

One of them, "El Chino," silently takes a fistful and vanishes behind a solid steel grate. Only a few minutes later, he reemerges to swap one of the new needles -- now used -- for another clean one.

For Cabrera, it is a modest victory.

Usually the work is more difficult. Cabrera and Strathdee saw promise in a 46-year-old woman named Marilu, who did not want her last name published.

For years, Marilu said, she bounced from boyfriend to husband, from Los Angeles to Tijuana, from prison to church group. She turned tricks for drug money and held a bartending job. She has given birth to six children, had two abortions and left one son, Sergio, in the care of her parents. She wears a tattoo with his name.

Hooked on heroin and methamphetamine, Marilu decided to quit after her eldest daughter, Alma, died of AIDS complications, leaving Marilu to care for Alma's HIV-positive daughter.