1981 to 1982 · Haitianspan
A new disease is given a nationality
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In the spring of 1981 American newspapers carried short reports of an illness killing gay men, which they called gay related immune deficiency. Within a year it had a new name, AIDS, many more victims and no explanation. Physicians in south Florida noticed that a number of their heterosexual patients with the disease were Haitian immigrants, and the observation hardened into a category. Haitians were listed alongside homosexuals, haemophiliacs and heroin users as a group at risk, a classification Haitians shortened bitterly to the four H's. Journalists supplied mechanisms: Vodou ceremonies involving blood, ritual scarring, whether the men had caught it from New Yorkers on holiday or given it to them. The epidemiology arrived later and pointed the other way, indicating that the virus had reached Haiti from North America and moved through the population the way it moved in African cities, by heterosexual contact. By then it made no difference. This did more damage to the Haitian economy than the scandals, the human rights reports and the boat people together.
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