Rockin out for World AIDS Day

December 1 was World AIDS Day. It's a day where organizations all over the world take the opportunity to educate people about AIDS and HIV: what it is, what causes it, what doesn't cause it, and how to avoid it. Latin America doesn't have as big a problem as other developing countries, which puts it in a reasonable position to hopefully keep it that way.

In La Paz, there is an outdoor ampitheather fairly close to where I'm staying. Advertisements in the newspaper showed that a bunch of bands were playing, so I decided to go check it out. It's always intersting to see if these events really do much to raise awareness or if they are just an excuse for a free concert.

By the time the show started, the ampitheather was about halfway full, which, considering the fact that it started raining before the first band took the stage, was pretty impressive. Volunteers were handing out condoms and educational literature on the way in. It was a fairly diverse crowd - probably the majority were teenagers, but I did see some older women bringing their kids, which I thought was pretty cool.

Most of the people around me were part of a couple, which meant I had to deal with far too much kissing and couples draping themselves all over each other. Not to sound like an 8 year old on the playground (eewww cooties!), but it's something about the culture that I really do not like much. But since it was raining, my umbrella made a very nice gringa-soltera protective bubble around me, so I could block it out. ;-)

By the time the first band - Veneno - started playing, the crowd was restless and most of the distributed condoms has been blown up into balloons and launched into other areas of the audience. The first band was very popular, a combination of cumbia, reggaeton, and maybe some ska. They were definitely fun to watch. It did get a little tiresome, when in between each song, there was a recording of that deep, radio advertisement announcer voice saying "Veneno...." Every time.

In between bands, there were two screens on either side of the stage that played clips of testimonials from people living with HIV, and educational information about how it is transmitted, or not transmitted. For example, "It is 0% possible to transmit HIV by shaking someone's hand..." Then the organizers introduced the Bolivian Army, whose members were going to perform an educational skit - or sociodrama. There were big boos from the crowd for that, but some people sort of seemed to pay attention once they started. I just got a kick out of seeing army guys dressed up as white blood cells, viruses, condoms, and syringes acting out the whole HIV process.

I left about halfway through the second band - Calle 4 - even though I really liked them. But it was pouring down rain at that point, and I had a long day at work and needed to get home. When I left, it was around 9:30, and despite the rain, people were still coming in. I'm told that the other two bands - Azul Azul and Dezaire - are both pretty good. I'll have to catch them another time.