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The Latino community is seeing an increase in teen pregnancies and HIV/AIDS cases which can only be combated with education and a new attitude towards sex.
Statistics change all the time. Yet when it comes to statistics reflecting the negative impact of an issue on a particular community, the expectation is that those statistics will improve over time.
It’s a sign that people are aware and working to fix the problem, but there are two major issues that are slowly decimating the Latino community. The statistics for both reflect this sad reality. What the statistics don’t tell us is that both of these issues deal with a topic that Latinos historically have had trouble talking about — sex.
Sex is the root cause for more young Latina teens getting pregnant and is the reason why 22 percent of the HIV/AIDS cases diagnosed in 2006 are attributed to Latinos.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy had to revise their statistics this year on the number of Latina teens getting pregnant. It increased from 51 to 53 percent.
It’s troubling because, according to the National Campaign, one quarter of all teenagers in 2025 will be Latino and what happens to them won’t just impact the greater Latino community, but by then, the nation.
In turn, researchers with the Latino Commission on AIDS found in assessing the HIV/AIDS epidemic among Latinos that “AIDS cases among Latina women continue to climb at alarming rates with no apparent slowdown.”
It appears that it does little good for health officials or school administrators or other outside groups to create educational materials and videos to help combat both issues of teen pregnancy and the spread of HIV/AIDS until the Latino community takes responsibility and understands that true education and prevention starts with changing the cultural mindset that exists towards sex.
For too long, sex has been a taboo subject in households where parents were too embarrassed to speak about it and were more than happy to let school officials answer their children’s questions.
Along the way, young girls got the notion that it’s much more attractive, cool and acceptable to have a “Baby Daddy” than to excel in school.
One friend of mine whose daughter attends public middle school in Dallas, Texas shared with me that her daughter’s classmates actually sit around “planning their pregnancies.”
A spreadsheet made available by the Dallas Independent School District showed that 17 middle schools, of which a number of them have a student body comprised mainly of Latinos, were documented to have pregnant students in the 2007-2008 school year. There was even one elementary school, with a predominant Hispanic student population, that had a pregnant student.
These are scenarios that are repeating themselves in Latino communities across the nation. Yet, where is the community outcry against it? The only ones taking notice are those officials in the health and government sectors that understand how today’s behavior impacts the stability of the future.
When it comes to HIV/AIDS, the alarm that such a disease is on an increase among Latinos should also be heard, but it’s not.
It’s accepted fact that the Latino community has so stigmatized people suffering with HIV/AIDS that an admission of having it can ostracize a person from their family and community.
Because of this attitude, those who are infected are afraid to be tested for it. Thus, begins a cycle of infecting others.
Reasons for Latino attitudes towards sex are attributed to a host of factors ranging from influences by the Catholic Church to cultural traditions. However, it doesn’t erase the fact that as a community we are not facing the consequences of archaic and lax attitudes towards sex.
As a nation, we are content to watch the statistics rise.
