THE LATINA/O CAUCUS OF ACT UP NEW YORK 

The Latina/o Caucus was a working group of ACT UP New York that was most active between 1990 and 1994. Latinx communities were among the hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic and the founding members of the Latina/o Caucus proposed an autonomous faction to effectively address HIV/AIDS in NYC’s Latinx communities. Meetings were held in Spanish and attracted a diverse membership from inside the organization, as well as new and established activists from neighborhoods at the epicenter of the epidemic such as the South Bronx and El Barrio. They hailed from different corners of the U.S. and Latin America and had roots and networks all over the continent. The Latina/o Caucus coalesced around a myriad of issues that are still relevant today: racial and economic healthcare disparities, AIDS and immigration, antiracism and anticolonialism, religion, harm reduction and intravenous drug use, community media, and global HIV/AIDS activist solidarity.  

The Latina/o Caucus’ legacy is remarkable yet overlooked. It was successful in generating visibility and dialogue about HIV/AIDS among the city’s Latinx media and political class. It created a direct-action movement in Puerto Rico that had a long-lasting impact on the island’s LGBTQ community. It translated and distributed life-saving information about treatment and developed one of the first AIDS medication recycling programs in the Western Hemisphere. And its members went on to lay the foundation for many of New York’s AIDS organizations.

The ACT UP Latina/o Caucus Archive is meant to be a resource for community activists, artists, journalists, historians, educators and most importantly, youth. It is also an ongoing collective memory project that is dynamic and flawed. The materials come from personal collections that have been made public for the first time, as well as the ACT UP NY records from the New York Public Library.  The archive can be explored through themes such as Equal Access, NYC Latino Communities, Transnational Activism, Familia, and Actions. It can also be sorted through by media type including photos, statements and posters. Finally, each object has been tagged with names of the author, activists involved and the person whose collection the document belongs to. 

All of the materials were either personally entrusted to Julian de Mayo by the Latina/o Caucus, or sourced from the ACT UP’s Records at the New York Public Library.