Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 13:00:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Rex Wockner <rwockner@netcom.com>
Subject: WOCKNER/AIDS GROUPS PLAY BALL OVER BORDER FENCE


         AIDS GROUPS PLAY VOLLEYBALL OVER BORDER FENCE
                        by Rex Wockner

BORDER FIELD STATE PARK, Calif. -- AIDS groups from San Diego and
Tijuana played a game of volleyball on World AIDS Day using the
infamous border fence as the net.

	The novel idea resulted in heavy local media coverage of
World AIDS Day events.

	 Participants on the U.S. side were in Border Field State
Park while the Mexicans played from Playas de Tijuana (Tijuana
Beach), an ocean-front neighborhood known for its bullring.
Remote Border Field State Park sees few visitors -- it is
unsightly, polluted (by Mexican sewage), open only four days a
week and accessible only by dirt road. The nearest border
crossing point is several miles east so the players could only
peer at each other through the fence.

	The U.S. team was organized by the HIV/STD Committee of the
California/Baja California Binational Health Council, an arm of
the United States-Mexico Border Health Association. The Mexican
group was pulled together by the gay-community-based Organizacion
SIDA Tijuana (OST) and COMUSIDA, the Municipal AIDS Committee.

	The Americans brought along a theater troupe and the
Mexicans brought a rock band.

	The volleyball game "represent[ed] the transmission of
HIV/AIDS in this border region," organizers said.

	Officially, San Diego has many more AIDS cases than Tijuana
but Tijuana's numbers are known to be inaccurate. The cities are
similar in size -- over 1.1 million residents each. But the
situation for persons infected with HIV is far graver on the
Mexican side of the fence.

	"One of our biggest concerns on the Mexican side is that we
do not have laws protecting the rights of people with AIDS," said
OST founder Emilio Velasquez, who thought up the volleyball
gimic. "It makes it a disease that is hidden away from
epidemiological reports. The numbers you see on this side of the
border are not realistic because people are in hiding and in fear
of losing their jobs and housing.

	"Discrimination is rampant," Velasquez said. "You have to be
tested to get a job, to get married, to go to schools. And nobody
is doing anything to fight it. ... There's no budget for AIDS for
this whole state even though we have the highest per capita rate
in all of Mexico. The state AIDS office consists of a desk in
[the state capital of] Mexicali. That's it. ... The PAN, because
of their moral right-wing conservative attitudes, couldn't care
less."

	PAN is the National Action Party, the most conservative of
Mexico's three main political parties. It is in power both in
Tijuana and Baja California state. The less-conservative but more
corrupt PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party, governs
nationally.

	A further problem is that few Tijuanans can afford anti-HIV
drugs. The current "cocktails" that halt HIV replication cost up
to $20,000 a year.

	For seven years, the gay clinic ACOSIDA has distributed free
AIDS drugs that are brought to Tijuana from the bedsides of
people who die in San Diego hospitals. But even that pipeline is
drying up now that the new protease-inhibitor-based combination
therapies have reduced AIDS deaths in San Diego.



	Leftover or unneeded AIDS medications can be shipped to 
Alejandro Garcia, Paseo del Pedregal 1980, Playas de Tijuana,
B.C., Mexico -- or delivered directly to the clinic Thursday
evenings between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Its address is 8324 10th
Street, downtown. That's one and one-half blocks east of
Revolution Avenue. For more information, phone
011-52-66-80-99-63.

                            -end-

{EDITORS: ACCENT MARKS: e in Mexico, a in Velasquez, i in Garcia}


-----------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 1996 Rex Wockner. All rights reserved. Do not
publish, broadcast, or cybertransport without permission.
-----------------------------------------------------------