Switzerland. The Adventures of Don Juan Latex in Switzerland

Switzerland. Low Profile and Early Warning

By Sofi Ospina (Swiss Govt Projet Migrants)

Latin-American immigration in Switzerland is recent. In the 70s, it was composed primarily of political refugees and students. This changed in the mid-80s. The economic and social crisis in Latin America forced a new group of people to emigrate. Unlike the earlier wave, a large part of this group is clandestine and illegal. A good proportion of this group are women.

Unlike other working-class immigrant communities with a long history of settlement in Switzerland (i.e. Italians, Spanish, Portuguese), the Latin American community has no community-based networks. The few existing structures are centered around activities in the country of origin at the expense of activities in the host society. Without a basis for mobilisation at the local level, these associations do not constitute an appropriate channel for prevention activity.

Where, then, might we hope to meet this community ? The strategy of Projet Migrants has been to go to the places where the community lives and works. Three such spaces have been identified. First, fiestas and dances, spaces for social encounters and exchanges among people from different Latin American countries and social class. Second, the public parks frequented by women who work as nannies and child-minders — one of the few jobs accessible to women migrants. And most recently, the project has moved to the football fields, to reach Latin American aficionados of the sport (See Box).

Mediators

The six organizers of Projet Migrants are each assigned to work with one or more communities (1). Bi-weekly meetings allow for a constant rethinking of preventive strategies. The Latin-American organizer (this writer) is, in turn, responsible for 16 mediators (14 women and 2 men). This working group meets every 3 months to share its working experiences. These meetings have made it possible to coordinate campaigns at the national level.

For 4 years, Latin American mediators have organized prevention activities in several Swiss cities. Most of the mediators are women, and women seem to engage more willingly in this kind of social and voluntary work. In addition, many of them were organizers in their countries of origin. However, it must also be said that no particular effort has been made to recruit male mediators.

On the whole, the community knows who the mediators are. Among our work group, some people have been here for a long time, others are recent arrivals. As the organizer of the Latin American project, I am often stopped in the street and asked why I was not present at such-and-such an event. Sometimes it is difficult to respond to everyone’s needs.

There are mediators who work from a number of different locations within the Latin American community. Others function only within one or two associations. For example, one of the mediators works in a nightclub, an important site for the negotiation of sexual relations, to say the least.

She distributes condoms and makes a point of talking about safe sex when she chats with clients. It turns out she had already done this sort of work in hotels in the Dominican Republic.

But a woman who distributes condoms must be extremely careful in her approach and very clear about her role. Some men do not understand that she is not a prostitute.

Collaborations

The project has also collaborated on activities with institutions in countries of origin, namely embassies, language schools, cultural centers and unions. We also have contacts in a number of countries of origins, but that kind of work should really be done by the Swiss development aid office. Our project is concerned primarily with the health of migrants in Switzerland.

Collaborative work with the churches — even if they have so far gotten nowhere with the Catholic Church — has been done by the Spanish community organizer. Latin Americans mingle with other Spanish-speakers during Spanish-language Mass. Some priests and pastors now openly address the question of AIDS, condoms and drug use. We are also working at the moment on an information campaign to be included in catechism.

Most of our activities are aimed at the general population of the community. We feel that, for example, an information booth during a fiesta or dance will also reach gay or bi-sexual men and other groups. They too are a part of this "general population"(2).

It is difficult to bring together people to meet in certain places. For example, we thought that people would not come to Groupe Sida Genève (GSG), which led us to choose a center for immigrant health as a place for our meetings.

I think that a large part of the community is wary of spaces overtly tied to legal and official institutions, even if we establish a real relation of trust with a total respect for confidentiality.

The other difficulty is quite simply that women, for example, have needs which are much more urgent than learning about HIV/AIDS : documents, work, social contacts, personal problems related to adaptation to the host country.

What’s ahead

The continual changes of the Latin-American community obliges us to continually rethink our prevention work. For example, information distributed to women in the parks must expand and reach out to those who work exclusively as domestic help. Training classes for women mediators must become even more accessible for those women who need it the most. Finally, at present we don’t have enough male mediators : we need to continue to recruit and train them. Football — the main leisure activity for Latin American men — must become a new center of activity.

(1) The project’s organizers, spread throughout Switzerland’s big cities are : Milagros Cristóbal (Spanish), Hüsseyin Demirkan (Turks and Kurds), Sofi Ospina (Latin Americans and other small ethnic groups), Eunice Carvallho (Portuguese), Umberto Castra (Italians) and Afrim Kurtani (former Yugoslavia, specially Kosovo and Bosnia).

(2) "Aide Suisse contre le sida" (Swiss Aid against AIDS) is developing projects directed towards women prostitutes. In Switzerland, organized prostitution accounts for the migration of many Third World and, more recently, Eastern European women. See the report of the Centre of Information for Third World Women, La traite du malheur. Le marché des femmes en Suisse. Editions Caritas. Lucerne 1992

Zoom : a government-funded, government-run project

The Swiss Public Health Office (OFSP) set up its "Projets Migrants" (Migrants project to prevent AIDS in the foreign communities in Switzerland) in 1991 (1). Its efforts concentrated on mobilizing and implicating foreign communities in elaborating HIV/AIDS prevention measures. It aims to respect the linguistic, cultural and sociological particularities of each community. It is the only programme of its kind in Europe which is entirely state-funded and state-run.

The pilot phase of the project dealt exclusively with the larger and long-settled Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish communities. Later it was extended to Latin Americans, Africans, Italians and former Yugoslavians. Since the beginning of this year, "Projets Migrants" deals with all health-related issues in addition to HIV/AIDS.

Early on, Projet Migrants chose to maintain a low public profile. This tactical and strategic choice was made possible by the relative programmatic autonomy of Swiss public health administration. Once a lump-sum budget has been voted on by the Federal Council (one of the two chambers of Parliament), the director of the OFSP is solely responsible for deciding on the nature and scope of action. Today, the project’s annual budget is around a million Swiss francs (between 10 and 15% of the total Swiss AIDS prevention budget).

A core group of sociologists and doctors worked with OFSP to develop the "Projet Migrants." They initiated projects based on three working principles. These principles have nothing to do with either the scale or the scope of the epidemic. The first is the right to "health for all." A social group (migrants) can only protect itself once it is informed of risks. The right to information is, therefore, the second working principle. Third, the project realized that its success depended on its capacity to involve migrants directly in the project.

But how does Projet Migrants coexist with the extensive Swiss arsenal of repression aimed at refugees and immigrants (2) ? The emphasis on prevention activities has allowed this question to remain unanswered. The capacity of the Projet Migrants to respond to issues of foreigners social rights, deportation of PWAs, or access to health care for the most marginal and least protected (including the undocumented) seems far less evident. This is by no means specific to Switzerland, and we will return to these issues in future issues of Migrants against AIDS.

In this article, Sofi Ospina, a founding member of the Projet Migrants, analyses her in the heart of the tiny Latin-American community.

(1) See the final report by Divider, Milagros Cristòbal, Hüseyin Demirkan, and Sofi Ospina for the Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish communities (1991-92) and the monitoring report by François Fleury and Mary Haour-Knipe (Institut universitaire de médecine sociale et préventive, Lausanne). The 1993-95 edition is forthcoming, beginning 1996.

(2) See Anatomy of a defeat, after the measures of constraints (Les dossiers du collectif du 12 juin, n° 1, Geneva, December 1994) and the Amnesty International report on racist and police violence in Switzerland (AI Document 43/02/94).

From Public Parks to Football Fields

Don Juan Latex Booths. It was important to sensitize fiesta organizers as to the important role they could play in Latin American community AIDS prevention. Once convinced, they hosted Don Juan Latex, itinerant information booths. At least 80 Latin American public dances were thus covered by the "Projet Migrants". Some 12 000 Latin-Americans received the Don Juan Latex calendar and condoms. The size of a credit card, the calendar promotes the use of condoms and safer sex, and provides contact numbers for Spanish-speaking AIDS telephone hotlines. Today, Don Juan Latex is well-known by the entire Latin American community, from Geneva to Zurich.

The Parks Project. One of the mediators who regularly worked in the Don Juan Latex booth observed that many Latin America women working as child-minders went to the park in the afternoons. She herself was working as a child-minder at that time. Her proposal for outreach in the parks was financed immediately. Since 1992, four Latin American mediators (of different nationalities) are sent every Summer to the park. They discuss AIDS/HIV prevention quite openly, and find that discussion often extends to other important concerns. At least 800 women have received both information and condoms. If we have succeeded in gaining the confidence of these women, it is above all because we are also Latin American women and have been in similar situations.

Training courses. Given the significant number of women in the community and their precarious status in the host society, the priority was to develop training courses for women. In all, 60 Latin-American women participated in 7 different training courses.

AIDS/HIV information days. Two days of information on prevention and care for people living with AIDS/HIV were organized in Geneva and Zurich. On these days, trilingual (French, German and Spanish) information booths were set up. But it was the diverse theatrical, dance and musical (including a DJ and a salsa band) activities which brought people to the event. An exhibition of children’s drawings about AIDS was also organized and Latin American food was served. Some 1 400 people participated. Profits went to the Swiss fund for solidarity with people living with AIDS.

Football tournaments. Projet Migrants sponsored two Geneva-based tournaments of the American Cup of Football, which brings together 13 amateur Latin American football teams. One team wore Don Juan Latex t-shirts. The best goalie won the Don Juan Latex prize. Players and spectators alike left with Don Juan Latex condoms.

Telephone hotlines. 2 Spanish-speaking telephone hotlines respond to calls 2 hours a week in Geneva and Basel. These hotlines allow for the making of contacts : many of the calls come from people with problems and specific demands (1).

(1) On the telephone hotlines of "Projet Migrants", see "Analyse des appels parvenus aux permanences téléphoniques en langues étrangères concernant le sida et de leur impact sur les activités préventives futures", de Didier Burgi, Université de Lausanne, août 1995.