Cuba鈥檚 last self-infected HIV punk friki
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LIKE many young punks, Gerson Govea saw himself as a misfit. But few embraced the role as self-destructively as this Cuban rocker: he deliberately infected himself with HIV.
He is considered the last of the most hardcore members of the “frikis,” or “freaks,” as the island’s unique breed of hippy-punk dropouts is known.
Beyond the rum, free love and forbidden rock ‘n’ roll music, they took their rebellion a stage further by infecting themselves in order to get into the relative safety and comfort of a state AIDS clinic.
“I found a friend who gave me his (infected) blood,” recalls Govea, 42. “I extracted it myself and injected it into me.”
That was 17 years ago. He has since seen friends die of AIDS and his wife Yohandra Cardoso, 44, lose both her legs to the disease.
Meanwhile Govea, still standing but in fragile health, is rocking his way into middle age. Sleeping in parks, listening to music and taking drugs, the “frikis” would not have been such an unusual sight in many world cities.
But their lifestyle was a particularly bold statement in Cuba, where rock music was outlawed during the Cold War and drug-taking severely policed.
“They shared everything: women, men, food and pills,” said Jorge Perez, a doctor and the former director of an AIDS sanatorium in Havana.
Cuba plunged into poverty after the allied government in the Soviet Union fell in 1989, and as the AIDS pandemic unfolded. Amid such misery, a state-run AIDS clinic was a haven.
“It was the best of all possible worlds for them,” says Maria Gattorno, director of the Cuban Rock Agency, a state music promotion body.
“They had everything guaranteed there. They had medicine and great food and were looked after.”
Govea says he infected himself so that he could get in a clinic and avoid the police harassment he suffered for being a “friki.” Others infected themselves “so that they could be with the person they liked” who already had the disease, he says.
Cuba’s first case of AIDS was in a soldier returning from Africa. Just over 3,800 people died of AIDS in Cuba between 1986 and 2015, according to the government. Some 20,000 were living with HIV at the last count.
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