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Overview
Hidden in the Blood offers American readers a glimpse of the AIDS crisis on the Mexican front. Hidden in the Blood explores the daily lives of staff and patients at a clinic where three-quarters of HIV-positive people in the region are treated. Readers will come to know these patients, who come from a soberingly wide range of social and economic backgrounds - middle-aged fathers, married couples, transvestites, truck drivers, folklore dancers, a young woman infected by a blood transfusion during plastic surgery. In readable, lucid prose, Wilson recounts the heroic efforts of the clinic staff - doctors such as Alejandro Guerrero and Russell Rodriguez and nurses like Jose Manuel Polanco - as they struggle to treat their SIDA patients while coping with their lack of some of the latest diagnostic technology. Through the stories of these brave, caring staff members, readers will find evidence to dispel the common notion that Third-World medicine is a chamber of horrors. Wilson also explores the broad social context of AIDS in the Yucatan. Hidden in the Blood tells the stories of still-closeted homosexual men profoundly worried for their own survival and privacy, a conservative hematologist who mounted the first SIDA research effort in the peninsula, and the young men and women the crisis has moved to become activists.Beyond some frightening statistics, few of us know much about AIDS outside the U.S. This book explores the daily life of staff and patients at a clinic in Mexico where three quarters of HIV-positive people in the region are treated. Wilson recounts the heroic efforts of the clinic staff as they struggle to treat the AIDS patients with only limited resources.
Synopsis
A well-informed portrait, part social critique, part memoir, of sexual mores and homosexuality in provincial Mexico.
Paul Farmer
This humane little memoir is a polished and revelatory gem.
Editorials
Paul Farmer
This humane little memoir is a polished and revelatory gem.Library Journal
Wilson, the author of several novels, including a classic, ethnographically based interpretation of the Maya in Crazy February (1974), returns to the Yucatan to offer a personal exploration of AIDS. While general publications sometimes touch on the spread of AIDS in such developing regions as Africa, almost no information appears in the popular media about Mexico. Wilson offers an engaging, fact-based portrait of individual Mexicans facing the consquences of AIDS in a clinic in the rural Yucatan; at the same time he explores the problems and potential consequences faced by medical personnel attempting to treat the disease. A well-informed portrait of sexual mores and homosexuality in provincial Mexico. Highly recommended.-Roderic A. Camp, Latin American Ctr., Tulane Univ., New OrleansBooknews
Writer and ethnographer Wilson celebrates the heroism of AIDS victims, health workers, and activists in Merida, the capital of Yucatan, Mexico, and principle city of the Mayan lowlands. He recounts the daily lives of staff and patients at a clinic that treats most of the HIV-positive patients in the region, acknowledging the lack of the latest techniques and equipment, but dispelling the notion of medicine in the third world as a chamber of horrors. No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
October 1, 1995
Publisher
Columbia University Press
Pages
168
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780231101905