In the USA, we’re very fortunate to have come far in our fight against AIDS. In the Yucatan region of Mexico, this is far from the case.  This deadly disease still destroys families in a manner we haven’t experienced since the 1980’s.  Those contracting HIV are fired from their jobs, often banished from their families, thrown out into the street or even sent to live with the pigs, and finally, doomed to poverty and death. Wealth and prominence are no protection from this treatment. And most babies born with HIV die.

In the Mayan villages of the Yucatan, no one speaks of the disease, much less how to avoid contracting it.  The charity hospital in the city of Merida serves the entire Yucatan region and has one emergency room bed dedicated to HIV.  If that bed is taken, the next ill patient with HIV may literally be left outside to die before care is provided.

These are the experiences witnessed in early 2006 by Dr. Gordon Crofoot, a long-time Houston HIV specialist while visiting Merida and its surrounding villages. Summoned by an expat friend, John Truax, who had discovered the frightening impact of AIDS in this area, Gordon was shocked to find not only a serious health threat, but a need for action to prevent what had already become a deadly crisis from becoming a cultural disaster.

The friends visited a shelter for AIDS patients in a nearby village and found ill children living alongside their parents; many times the entire family was infected with the AIDS virus.  In other cases, young fathers had survived long enough to see their wives and children die, their own chance of survival minimal.  The drugs given to these people are not the newer, easier to take and more effective drugs used in the U. S. which significantly decrease side affects and improve quality of life.  The drugs which are standard of care in the US are often hard to access or not available in the Yucatan.

The living conditions they witnessed in the shelter were horrifying, with open sewers and toxic running water and virtually no money to buy food, much less provide adequate housing or healthcare.

These residents of the shelter come from all walks of life and socioeconomic classes, with once prominent attorneys and other formerly wealthy Mexicans living aside poor young Mayan families—or what is left of the families.  Mothers live in the shelter to tend their dying sons who no one else will take care of because the stigma of AIDS is so strong among these communities.  And those sons are the lucky ones.

Ignorance of what it means to be infected with this virus translates to fear.  And among the Maya, ignorance of the disease itself often translates to infection and ultimately, death.

Along with John and a few American friends who have made their home in the beautiful city of Merida, Gordon realized that they must get involved.  They found money to repair the sewer and fix the water system, then found money to guarantee food for the shelter for at least a couple of years.  This led to the formation of Brazos Abiertos, Inc. to turn the tide of the spread of HIV in the Yucatan through education, free anonymous HIV testing, and access to quality health care in the form of a free clinic—to be only the third non government nonprofit free HIV clinic in all of Mexico.