Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida

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Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida (also known as PCPV and Proyecto) was a queer Latina/o HIV prevention agency located in the Mission District of San Francisco that provided community-based healthcare. Three inter-related components distinguish its unique comtributions to LGBT organizing and AIDS advocacy: its commitment to multi-gender organizing; its sex positive programming and its principals of harm reduction. It existed from 1993-2005, having emerged from the organization CURAS (Community Responding to AIDS/SIDA) and targeted those underserved by existing HIV prevention resources: transgender Latinas, queer Latino/a immigrants, neighborhood sex-workers, and disenfranchised Latino/a youth. Committed to radical forms of community-building, their approach to health education addressed multiple vectors of difference including age, language, class, immigrant status and gender. Their dynamic approach to community engagement, education and outreach was informed by Paulo Freire, the Birmingham School, ACT-UP and el movimiento de liberación gay in Mexico City. It’s approach, programming, and materials was characterized by multi-lingualism, neologisms, bold social marketing, and enacted cultural fluency.^[1] Organized as a constellation of community agents committed to creative care-taking and activist intervention, Proyecto served as a springboard for many notable queer Latina/o artists, activists, academics and allies. The distinctive tone of its mission statement, drafted by Chicano playwright Ricardo Bracho, captures the multi-lingual flavor and political urgency of the group's radical vision. It begins: "Proyecto ContraSIDA is coming to you--you joto, you macha, you vestida, you queer, you femme, you girls and boys and boygirls and girlboys de ambiente, con la fé and fearlessness that we can combat AIDS, determine our own destinos, and love ourselves and each other con dignidad, humor, y lujeria."^[1]

PCPV's model of innovative community engagement attracted the attention of several scholars, many of whom had formal and informal ties to the organization. University of California, Berkeley professor Juana María Rodríguez devotes a chapter of her book Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces^[1] to the organization, focusing on its inventive use of linguistic and visual practices, and delineating how PCPV organizing practices challenged existing identity-based models of community engagement. The oral historian Horacio Roque Ramirez documents the lives of numerous members of the Proyecto family in his book Queer Latino San Francisco: An Oral History, 1960s-1990s, and outlines the related cultural and social movements that contributed to its formation. ^[2]

Several healthcare advocates also noted the importance of the Proyecto’s approach to community well-being and HIV prevention, stressing the impact of its "bottom-up" approach and its ability to reach and serve marginalized communities. ^[3][4][5]After PCPV closed, several of its staff and volunteers went on to create El/La Para Translatinas^[6] an organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for transgender Latinas.