AIDS Conference Puts Focus on Minority Women's Issues

More than 180 women attended the annual 2001 Women of Color Conference on HIV and AIDS Saturday in Colorado. The Colorado AIDS Project, which coordinated and sponsored the conference, reported that HIV/AIDS continues to be on the rise among Hispanic and black women. Primary factors include a lack of information, cultural taboos that make it difficult to talk about sex, and mistaken beliefs that AIDS is a homosexual disease. The conference's theme was "Uplifting the Woman -- Mind, Body and Soul."

Polly Baca, a former Colorado legislator and the first Hispanic woman to be elected to the state senate, delivered the keynote speech at the conference. She said she recalls the exact moment on June 30, 1971, when her family was forced to move to the side seats of the town church because only whites were allowed to sit in the center. "It was the pain that has driven me all my life and given me the passion within to change things," said Baca.

"When I told my parents that I was HIV positive, they completely shut the door and told me that I couldn't tell anybody," said Margaret Martinez, who contracted HIV from her husband, a diabetic who became infected after a guest at a party used his insulin needle to shoot drugs. "In the Spanish culture, our parents teach us to keep it all in the family, whether it's abuse or the virus," she said. "You think you are alone. But this conference gives me and others the chance to voice ourselves." Conference attendees were offered free massages and testing, as well as workshops meant to engage and empower.

AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women and men between the ages 25 and 44, and the second-leading cause among Hispanic women, according to the Colorado AIDS Project.

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