Adelante.. de Mexico

Mexico Airport, 5:30 --

I thought I'd slip in a quick departing hello and some reflections on the week, as I plan my return stateside.

I remarked to a few colleagues this week on what seemed to be a collective experience: for those of us who've been attending these conferences for many years, for some reason this conference was the most exhausting of all. I think it's because we have learned what we want to do at these conferences and so we're primed to be effective, whether it's reporting, presenting, demostrating.. and if we've been around, chances are that people link us to issues, and ask us to opine on them, or present our work, so we cram in more than humanely possible.

The result: on Wed night, I felt like i really could not leave the conference. I was simply unable to manage another long haul down the corridors. I described the Mexico conference -- well all the International AIDS Conferences -- as 'Disney World on crack -except about AIDS.' Not that it was so insane - in fact, the conference was run incredibly smoothly from my view as a participant and presenter, but the scale and the sheer number of people and the mix of cultures. When we went to leave at night, it really felt like a grown up version of waiting to get into the litttle boats to tour 'It's a Small World After All' -- complete with the many-cultures theme.

But of course the work and activity and passion was for a serious cause, and I duly took note of the big themes that jumped out for me:

-the big focus on MSM and the issue of homophobia - something UNAIDS (thank you Craig McClure) and other larger agencies are at last providing leadership to tackle. And hats off to Jorge Saavedra, head of Mexico's AIDS program, who publicly came out in front of so many thousands and gave a leadership voice and courageous face to gay men and LGPBTs in Mexico and Latin America.

-gender-based violence and women's vulnerability -- here the focus was on integrating GBV and HIV programs, and focusing on how to do that in a way that empowers women and provides HIV positive women with leadership roles in their communities.

Oh - oh.. my boarding gate has been announced.. so I will continue in another posting.

Hasta luego,

AC