Jessica Peck
23 أكتوبر 2025
9:00 ص
Session summary
This paper explores how rising populist regimes in Latin America are reshaping the landscape of HIV services, disproportionately impacting LGBTQI+ communities. Amid economic austerity and shifting political priorities, funding for HIV prevention and treatment programs has been slashed, often under ideological agendas that marginalize queer and trans lives. Focusing on Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro and Mexico under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, this study investigates how these leaders have deprioritized HIV services through both budget cuts and the erasure of LGBTQI+ narratives from public health campaigns. While Brazil has seen a direct rollback of federal support and anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric from political leaders, Mexico presents a more complex picture where economic populism coexists with uneven engagement on queer health. Through analysis of policy documents, media discourse, and activist responses, this paper argues that HIV care is not just a public health issue, but a political battle with lived impacts of these shifts, particularly on trans women and gay men, the paper highlights how health becomes a site where power, populism, and queer survival intersect and where resistance is urgent.
Biography
Born in the US and living in the UK, Jess (she/her) is a Human Rights Researcher at ReportOUT. She has a BA in International Studies with a focus on global health and human rights as well as an MA in Human Rights with a focus in bioterrorism. Professionally, she enjoys learning about different cultures, studying different diseases, and learning how to help communities around the world. In her spare time, she enjoys playing video games, reading, and spending time outside. She describes herself as a cisgendered woman and speaks English (native) and French (intermediate).
