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GUEST: Richard Zaldivar, Executive Director of The Wall – Las Memorias

The Wall Las Memorias project is inviting interested parties to join a trip to an AIDS hospice in Tijuana, Mexico tomorrow. People are being asked to donate food, clothes, medicine and money for Tijuana’s only ADIS Hospice, Casa Hogar Las Memorias. Just 30 miles away from San Diego, the volunteer-run facility provides care and spiritual guidance to people living with AIDS – and can only be reached by a dirt road. People from the area go to the hospice because they cannot find support or specialized services for AIDS treatment, and other seek it because they seek protections from the shame that’s often attached to the disease in Mexico. Casa Hogar La Memorias faces serious under-funding, and people on both sides of the border contribute basic supplies and funds to keep the center open. LA-based The Wall-Las Memorias project, a non-profit Latino AIDS awareness project, was crucial in re-opening the hospice in 1998 after the Mexican government shut it down for health code violations. Today, they continue their work to bring attention to the lack of services for people with AIDS in Mexico and in the US. Meanwhile, the Washington Blade is reporting that Centers for Disease Control is considering when to release new figures that indicate that up to 50 percent more people in the US are infected with HIV each year than previously reported.

For more information, visit www.thewalllasmemorias.org