Several thousand miles due south of Toronto, where activists and professionals in the field of HIV/AIDS are spending the week sharing strategies and setting priorities, the pandemic continues to follow its increasingly predictable course across Latin America. In its July 28 issue, Science magazine published a series of articles under the heading "The Overlooked Epidemic" that shed light on how HIV/AIDS is accelerating across the region. According to UNAIDS head Peter Piot, Central America is quickly becoming Latin America's HIV/AIDS hotspot.

It's not surprising, considering Central America's history of brutal dictatorships (many of which were financed by the United States), subsequent conflict (uhm, also largely financed by the United States), and natural disasters-all of which conspired to destroy infrastructures, weaken public services, and strain communities' collective and individual resources. Add the cold shower that is globalization in the global South and the economic migration (and corresponding spike in the sex trade) that generally tends to accompany it, on top of unequal power relations between men and women and an influential Catholic hierarchy that views honest HIV prevention messages as taboo topics, and it's not difficult to imagine how HIV/AIDS is already beginning to change the landscape of countless Central American lives.

Although the epidemics vary from country to country, several trends are beginning to emerge. One example: as infection rates climb, young people and women (in particular married women) become increasingly vulnerable. Indigenous women in Mexico are also particularly at risk: this morning, an email report from a Mexican NGO informed me that despite Mexico's official age of majority (23 for men and women), half of 15-year-old girls living in indigenous zones are already married with at least one child. Social and cultural norms tend to come with a fairly high threshold for male infidelity and it's not hard to imagine how difficult it is for a 15-year-old girl to negotiate condom use with her husband-if she can even get her hands on a condom, that is…so marriage becomes a recipe for risk.

Here in Nicaragua, HIV/AIDS is still a catastrophe waiting to happen-official statistics indicate that 1,668 Nicaraguans are currently living with HIV/AIDS (though the real number is probably higher)-compared to 60,000-65,000 in nearby Honduras, where the average person spends only four and a half years of his or her life in the education system. In Nicaragua, as in many other parts of the world, women (and especially married women) are an oft-overlooked risk group whose lack of control over their sexual and reproductive lives makes them disproportionately vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. But unlike Honduras, Nicaragua also has a vocal feminist movement and a strong history of progressive social and political organizing. NGOs are currently rallying to stop the epidemic in its tracks, while at the same time working to challenge stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. To catch a glimpse of how Nicaraguans are coming to terms with the epidemic in their daily lives, click below and watch a slice of reality that sweeping statistics can't hope to capture…

video (c) Puntos de Encuentro, Managua, Nicaragua