Saludos Compañer@s in the fight against HIV/AIDS

On behalf of Unid@s Dandole Cara Al Sida of Puerto Rico, we would like to express our sincere gratitude for your support to all of us that struggle day by day here on the island with the HIV/AIDS crisis with which we live in Puerto Rico today. We want to say “GRACIAS” to each and every participating organizations and individuals in the call/fax manifestation to the office of Mr. Micheal Leavitt, US Secretary of Health on October 15^th on Puerto Rico’s behalf.  It was very timely and helpful to have all of you engage Mr. Leavitt on National Latino AIDS Awareness Day given that his office has virtually ignored all of our previous attempts to reach out to him.  In the face of years of neglect and denial by the U.S. Department of Health and HRSA of our ongoing crisis, your deeds helped make our plight in Puerto Rico impossible to ignore.

We can only imagine how difficult it must be to comprehend the degree of apathy, indifference, nepotism and apparent mismanagement of funds here in Puerto Rico that the Federal Government continues to ignore, as our people living with HIV/AIDS continue suffering the consequences.  Our people continue on waiting list for medication, our community organizations continue reducing services or closing for lack of payment.  Our HIV/AIDS healthcare delivery system is in disarray and we have little hope in our local administrators to implement the necessary improvements.

Over the years, Puerto Ricans here on the island have reached consensus on our political reality, that we are a territory of the United States. We struggle every day to de-politicize what is in fact a human tragedy.  Our colonial reality renders us voiceless to the federal government and its institutions in spite of the fact that we are U.S. Citizens. Yesterday you gave voice to the voiceless. You helped express (again) what we have been saying for some time in a myriad of forums. In the U.S. mainland James Albino (NMAC), Dennis De Leon (Latino Commission on AIDS) and Rosa Colon (UDCAS-NY) speak for us, because they are in constant communication with us, acknowledging that Puerto Rico UDCAS has to be directly involved in all dialogues and decisions that impact on our future. 

Again, we thank you and look forward to our continued and future collaborations.

Yours in Struggle,

(Signatures on file)