ACT UP, Haitian Migrants, and Alternative Memories of HIV/AIDS

The slogans, the effigy, and the disruption of public space reflect tactics for which AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is commonly remembered, but the occasion is somewhat unique. These protests and actions challenged the Bush and Clinton administrations' policy on HIV-positive Haitian migrants fleeing political repression in Haiti after the ousting of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991. First Bush and then Clinton detained nearly 300 political refugees at "Camp Bulkely" on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, some for nearly two years, simply because the US government said they tested positive for HIV and the government had issued a ban on HIV-positive migration to the United States in 1987. The sheer existence of this modern-day concentration camp has received very little scholarly attention, and the activism that took place in US cities, including ACT UP New York's role in denouncing the ongoing detention, has been essentially forgotten. Considering the common memory of ACT UP as a group comprised of and concerned with white gay men, and interested only in reforming medical and health policy, and further considering the ways in which poor people of color's struggles with HIV/AIDS in the United States are often recalled secondarily to those who are white and more affluent, remembering ACT UP's work on Haiti has profound implications for the memory of past AIDS and queer activism and the possibilities for AIDS and queer coalition building in the present and future. In this article, the author talks about ACT UP, Haitian migrants, and alternative memories of HIV/AIDS. (Contains 25 notes.)