La Ropa Sucia se Lava en Casa. Dirty Clothes are Washed in the House.
nclrights.orgGrowing up, I was taught there are things you don’t talk about. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, I learned that subjects not meant for polite conversation were many and varied.
Topics such as mental health, sexual orientation, and familial hardships were off the table. It is a generational silence, passed down from generation to generation, transported across borders and finding new soil in the United States.
It is a silence that kills. One example of where this silence has profoundly impacted Latine communities is the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.
In 2015, 9,798 HIV infections were recorded amongst Latine communities in the United States. In 2020, when numbers nationwide were shown to be decreasing, numbers amongst Latine individuals were still high, with over 8,000 people reporting infections.
