Condoms Aren’t Everything

According to this Havana Times article, posters, TV and radio public service messages, press reports, and other initiatives which have supported campaigns against AIDS in Cuba are are now aiming to go beyond the approach of "condoms for everybody." Isabel Moya, director of the Department of Gender and Communication at the Jose Marti International Institute of Journalism and director of the Cuban magazine Mujeres (Women), conducted a seminar beginning in June 2009 on "best practices for the development of a perspective on types of communication tools for the prevention of HIV/AIDS."

The approach chosen by Moya was to reject "set recipes, because each social and communicational context demands it own tools for designing its mass media agenda and the form in which this is built. There exist key elements to keep in mind when dealing with the issue of HIV..., which causes AIDS." She reminded journalists that, though the current focus on the problem is expressed only in terms of health care, the spread of the virus has connections with the "prevailing culture of society, social vulnerability, access to information, and sexual practices and relations between couples." She proposed "[t]o articulate the problem’s social, scientific and experiential aspects; to use the focus of gender as a compass to show that people can be more vulnerable depending on the way in which they represent and live out their femininity or masculinity; to give voices to people with HIV and to demand the human right of respect and acceptance."

The power of media in Cuba is supported through evidence from a survey carried out by the Cuban National Statistics Office among 30,000 individuals, which showed that the media is a strategic environment for promoting changes in attitudes among the public due to having impact on the formation of concepts, the reinforcement of stereotypes and, conversely, on the acceptance of new paradigms. Of those polled, 95.6 percent had received information about HIV/AIDS through the television, 72.2 percent by the radio, 66 percent via the written press, and 65.2 percent from promotional materials.

As a result of asking journalist participants key questions on gender and the language of media, communication designers and producers worked on the development of informational tools which were analysed in a presentation to the National Center for the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDS (CNP). Because the AIDS epidemic in Cuba is predominantly affecting men who have sex with men (MSM), journalists expressed a concern that messages should promote respect for sexual diversity and work to eradicate homophobia. One journalist saw a need for media to put aside their fear of the public’s reaction to certain issues and be systematic in its messages. Moya added that the promotion of stigmatising and discriminatory responses in the face of the pandemic "has a lot to do with lacking information, the haste with which materials are produced; the frequent isolation between experts, producers and the public; and people being unaccustomed to seeking advice and working in multi-disciplinary efforts."

Though the CPN carries out programmes that include MSM, women, and Afro-Cubans, particularly religious representatives, these groups are, as stated here, not represented in public service messages or in press coverage - often missing due to attempts to avoid stigmatisation. Moya concludes that "[t]he absence of a broader multidimensional approach that expresses the social essence of the issue often leads to the use of a language that can stigmatize, or to messages of little problem-solving value, ones that pose the situation in simplistic black and white terms, when in fact the challenge is much more complex."