Councilman Elias Diaz is creating a space in his town that he didn’t have for himself…

Watch this episode of +Talk now. Transcript below.

Elias
I’m at a stage in my life where I’m able to create a space for others that I didn’t have for myself, growing up in this town.

Karl
Welcome to Plus Talk on Plus Life where we’re all about turning positive into a plus. Today I’m joined by Councilman Elias Diaz from Texas, who does an amazing amount of work in the HIV space. Good to see you, councilman, or should I call you cover Model?

Elias
Good to see you, Karl, it’s a pleasure to be here today.

Karl
Congratulations on that cover. You are on the cover of this month’s Pause Magazine. When you look over your shoulder, and you look back at your life and where you’re sitting today, and you sort of reflect on things, what does it mean to be on the cover of this magazine and your journey so far?

Elias
You know, I think so much of what I do is about coming full circle. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m able to create a space for others that I didn’t have for myself, growing up in this town. I actually spent my adult life in L.A., I moved from here when I was 18, I was super anxious to just get out of this town, I couldn’t get outta here fast enough, because I had grown up in a really oppressive environment, I had grown up with violence, I had grown up with emotional abuse. I had grown up with all these stressors that I was just, I really wanted to get outta here and find a place to be me. And so, I moved to L.A., and while I was in L.A., I kind of was all over the place, that town ate me up alive. In a way, it was highlighting all of these maladaptive coping mechanisms that I had picked up early on in life. But for the longest, I felt like if I came back to Eagle Pass, that it was like somehow failure, that I was failing myself. And when I first got here, and I saw new buildings, I saw new things, right? So I grew up in a rural town, Eagle Pass. As much as the town had changed, and the face of the town had changed a little bit, the town was quite the same when it came to anti-LGBTQ stigma, when it came to HIV stigma and education, a lot of this stuff that I was looking around at, it was still the same. And so I started this nonprofit, right? And it addresses a little bit about what I was telling you about. Overall, it’s been a fulfilling experience, because I get to bring all of my adult life back from L.A. right? Like all the lessons learned. And be able to pay that forward in this community.

Karl
Yeah, I read that you had said that fear had been kind of your primary partner for the longest time. You said that, you know, you had spent the majority of your adult life playing roulette every time you had a sexual encounter. So I know you’re HIV negative, talk to me about that fear that you had, ’cause it seems that it all centered around contracting HIV, and what was the moment, or when was the moment where you stopped being fearful?

Elias
So I remember the first time that I felt it, I became sexually active when I was 16. Very shortly after, I think it must have been months afterwards, I had met this person that I was madly in love with at the time, and he had, my friends had told me like, hey, his partner, his previous partner, he died of AIDS, so you should be careful. And I remember those words, and being framed in that sentence that way, it felt like a punch in the gut. And at the time, I didn’t know where to get tested here in Eagle Pass, I didn’t know who to ask. I wasn’t out to my parents yet, I didn’t know anything about, like, it felt like such an isolating experience. The few gay friends that I did have, they weren’t supportive of me being in this relationship, and actually, my partner at the time, he wasn’t a person living with HIV. So just the simple association, my friends didn’t endorse me being in this relationship. And as it moved on through my life, I realized that, sorry, I speak of it as, you know, fear was my primary partner. Every time, every single time that I had sex with someone, I was afraid, I was, is this the time that I’m going to get it? Is this the time that I’m going to acquire HIV? Like, what will happen to me? And even beyond that, I feel like that fear, it’s been this existential crisis in the gay community. And so, beyond the fear of, you know, what might happen to my sexual health, it’s the stigma, right? It’s the social fear of, you know, how am I going to be able to relate to someone? And I was reflecting on that this morning, the early stages of the epidemic, and I can’t imagine, I’m a 35-year-old man, so I can’t imagine what those early years felt like.

Karl
So was that the moment for you, though, where you turned that around and you stopped being fearful, and you went, okay, if I’m gonna get on PrEP or whatever, was PrEP the catalyst for that? Or what was the shift? Because to your point, you know, we’ve grown up being told that HIV/AIDS is the big scary Grim Reaper that’s gonna come and get you, and if you get it, it means you’re a drug addict, a pervert, a sex offender, and all these things.

Elias
So I had met a guy, we were hooking up, we hooked up several times throughout the weekend. And when he left my house, he went to go get an HIV test. And so, he calls me from the testing location, and he says, “Hey, I need you to come, I need you to know that I just tested positive.” And I remember at the time, I was so concerned for him that I didn’t really think about what was going on with me. So I very naturally said, like, “Do you need help? Like, “Do you need me to come get you, do you need me to be there?” And he said, “Yes, if you could, please come.” So I show up to the testing location, he was hunched over, like, just completely demoralized, completely void of any positive emotion. Like, he just looked completely broken. And I go up to him and I just, I give him a big hug. And his response to me, like, I had already seen this, I had seen this in so many different ways, but his response was, “I thought that nobody was going to ever want to touch me again.” And it just really made me connect. I was like, you know, “I’m here, I’m here for you.” That thought hadn’t crossed my head that I didn’t want to touch him, right? But it was then that I realized, I’m like this, whether we are living with HIV or not living with HIV, we’re living with it regardless, it’s still in our lives, it’s that fear that has been ever present in my life. Like, I’m no different than him. You know, I was no different than him then, and I’m no different than him now. Because in a way, every single relationship that we get in, it’s still there.

Karl
So talk to me about the stigma, specifically, that you come across in parts of the country, like where you live in Texas, especially, especially when it comes to the Latin community. What are some of the biggest challenges you face when you’re trying to educate or speak to people who think, “I’m not gay, I don’t do drugs, HIV doesn’t affect me”?

Elias
So, it’s so much, like, it is particularly in Hispanic communities, particularly impoverished Hispanic communities, right? I live in a part of the country where 29% of us are uninsured, the majority of people live in poverty, you find power wherever you can take it, right? And so, as it shows up, this idea that, you know, HIV cannot possibly touch me. And so, I think that that lack of conversation, the fact that we don’t fully understand that, you know, that it can also be transmitted through IV drug use, and that it does happen in heterosexual communities. I mean, there’s so much ignorance, and the commitment to silence, that’s the thing in the Hispanic community, we commit to our silence, we commit to our suffering in silence, and that’s part of the reason why I’m so bold with it. Only now I’ve been very open now about, you know, not being a person living with HIV. I never make that distinction, and the reason why I find it important to make that distinction now, is because as I’m, you know, getting different opportunities and different notoriety, I wanna be so mindful of the fact that there’s such few and limited spaces for people that are living with HIV that I would never want to take away from that, right? And that the only reason why I am speaking up about this, is because there’s no one doing this in my area, there’s nobody that feels safe enough to be like, yes, I want to be the face of HIV, right? And so, this is not something that I sought out for, this is not something that I would’ve wanted, it’s just something that happened. But until I can find somebody in my community, or around my community, that can talk about this as boldly as I do, I’m gonna keep doing this.

Karl
Yeah, well we appreciate that, and you know, it’s important, we appreciate the allies in all of this. You know, I think the conversations we have here, especially here at Plus Life, you know, Plus Life isn’t just for people living with HIV, it’s just as important for people who aren’t living with HIV, and I would say even more important for people who think HIV doesn’t affect them. And that’s why your voice is so important in all of this, that’s why they put you on the cover of the magazine, right? I wish we had more time, Elias, but that is all the time we’ve got. Thank you so much for all the great work you do, and thank you for tuning in. If you want more information about Councilman Elias Diaz’s great work, check out our website pluslifemedia.com, and be sure to follow us across social media platforms, we are @pluslifemedia. Until next time, be nice to one another, wash your hands, whistle while you work, whatever you wanna do. I’ll see you soon, bye bye.