Behind the hero's mask

Jose: "I learned everything about life from the streets".

Jose Araujo, an internationally adored Brazilian HIV/Aids activist,
has covered his own harsh and bitter personal history on the streets
of Sao Paulo with compassion and hope

By JEFFERY SNG

Who is this small-built, tanned, bespectacled stranger with close
cropped crew-cut hair and sporting a bright orange T-shirt
addressing the crowd of HIV/Aids activists from Thailand's leading
Aids organisations, I wondered. There was something about him, apart
from the absorbing and inspiring story he was telling, which made
one want to know more about him.

Mr Jose Araujo, the hero of Brazil's successful campaign to secure
the right of access to medication for people living with HIV/Aids
(PLWHA) in Brazil and the idol of the global movement of PLWHA, was
in Bangkok last week, where he spoke with the Network of Thai People
Living with HIV/Aids, the Life and Hope Club, the Saraburi Aids
Education Centre and other individual human rights advocates.

"Several hundred HIV-infected Brazilians sued the government for the
right of access to medication and won," the Brazilian speaker said,
in Portuguese, to the workshop full of HIV-infected participants,
activists and foreign observers.

The 2-day workshop was organised by the Francois Xavier Bagnoud
Foundation (FXB Thailand) to promote the globalisation of the
movement in support of the basic rights of PLWHA. FXB is a Swiss-
based humanitarian organisation operating in 17 countries including
Thailand. FXB has become one of the leading organisations working on
Aids issues affecting women, children and orphans in Thailand.

In the eyes of Brazil's largely Catholic PLWHA, said Jose, the
government decision to make Brazil a signatory to the International
Patent Rights Law in 1995 was a great sin. As a signatory, Brazil
lost the right to import Aids medication from low-cost producer
countries like India. Brazil also was prevented from producing most
types of generic Aids medication after 1995.

"As a result PLWHA in Brazil could not obtain access to Aids
medication for the simple reason that most of the patented
medication marketed by the giant multi-national pharmaceutical
companies was too expensive for poor people to afford," thundered
Jose.

When people with Aids in Brazil found that they could not get
medication they sued the government. And they won. "Because the
courts decided in favour of the people, the Brazilian government had
to pay for the import of expensive patented medicines and distribute
them to PLWHA," said Jose.

Thus, the Brazilian courts made the government pay for the sins of
depriving people of their basic human right of access to medication
at reasonable cost.

Over 40 people hung on the words of the passionate speaker, who
spoke in delicious Portuguese with a Brazilian accent.

To assist the HIV-infected participants, activists and foreign
observers in comprehending Mr Araujo, the Brazilian Embassy offered
its invaluable good offices by sending Mr Puchong Dejarkhom, an
embassy linguist fluent in 7 languages, to handle the triangular
intermediation between Portuguese, English and Thai. The multi-
lingual engagement served to enrich the sharing of ideas and
cultural experiences among the participants.

Throughout, the intense discussion about the politics of Aids and
its related technical and legal issues, the nagging question
remained. Who is this interesting Brazilian behind the hero's mask?
In Thailand, little is known about Jose Araujo.

I could not resist the temptation to pry open his past and his
hero's mask with personal questions, which perhaps were sometimes
intrusive and sometimes annoying. I asked him about his thoughts,
his feelings, his childhood, his dreams and his ambitions.

He answered most of my questions with a refreshing candor and even
allowed himself to enjoy being led into an intellectual dance. He
offered to share with me some of his early childhood memories which
he customarily seldom spoke of.

"Perhaps, it is because they were unhappy memories," Jose reflected.

Homeless in Sao Paulo

Life had not been kind and gentle to Jose. He was abandoned by his
parents two months after he was born and raised by his grandmother
in Valparaiso, a very poor village 500 kilometres from the big city
of Sao Paulo. The year was 1957.

Jose had no memories of his parents. He remembered his grandmother
as an illiterate, simple woman. "She gave me a special love. It was
a harsh love," added Jose.

They lived in grinding poverty where there was no room for gentle
and affectionate niceties. She beat him severely when he was naughty
and said cutting things to a child who already felt unwanted. "You
are so bad that is why your parents left you," his grandmother used
to say.

"But I know that she loved me. Often she did not eat so that I
could, because there was not enough food," said Jose. "She also
expressed her love by telling me stories," he added. His
grandmother's bedtime stories became one of his most treasured
memories of her.

But life in Valparaiso was too harsh. When he was 12 years old, in
1969, he ran away from home. But he did not find a better life. He
ended up in the streets of the great city of Sao Paulo.

At that time Sao Paulo was larger than Bangkok today, with 11
million people. Those were turbulent times in Brazil, when the Cold
War struggle between East and West was reflected in the streets of
Sao Paulo and urban guerrillas plied their hit-and-run tactics,
against the security forces in the urban concrete jungles of
Brazil's mega cities.

Jose did not go to school. The streets of Sao Paulo became his
school of life. "I learned everything about life from the streets,"
said Jose.

He was treated to a glimpse of Hobbes' vision in the lawless streets
of Sao Paulo, where life can be "nasty, brutish and short." He saw a
man drive a plastic pen deep into another man's ear because he would
not not leave the first man's primitive street shelter. Jose said he
recoiled from the experience and vowed to reject brutal violence as
a means to settle conflicts.

'You cannot live alone...'

Jose witnessed the human capacity for sacrifice and compassion as
well as brutality in the streets.

"In the streets you cannot live alone. Children live in groups to
share shelter and protect one another," said Jose. In Sao Paulo, he
joined a gang of street children and lived by stealing food, clothes
and shoes for survival.

There he learned how to work and live in groups, how to lead and how
to fight for his place. He said he actually felt nostalgic, and
grateful for the streets of Sao Paulo for preparing him to become in
later life the street-smart national leader of the movement of
Brazilian PLWHA.

I tried to take in the whole of this man, in my mind's eye, as he
continued to tell his story, and I could not conceal my admiration
for his elegant humanity in the face of all he had gone through.

This Brazilian hero with a battered body and indomitable spirit is
idolised by Aids-afflicted fans around the world, somewhat in the
manner of Sylvester Stallone's legendary film character "Rocky".
Bashed up in the ring of life, Jose had lost all his teeth through
tooth decay and poverty when he was a homeless boy eking a
precarious survival in the pitiless streets of Sao Paulo's concrete
jungle.

He has only one kidney left. His liver is wracked by the deadly HIV
virus. Yet life has not lowered him to his knees. His glowing
energy, capacity to love and his impulsive generosity touch the
hearts of everyone around him.

As I learned about his life I could not help thinking that here is
the stuff that saints are made of. Who but a saint would donate his
kidney to a friend so that he could marry? Jose was happy to have
one kidney less so that his friend could live happily ever after
with his beloved sweetheart.

Later he offered to donate a part of his liver to save the life of
another friend only to discover that he had contracted HIV.

"The revelation that I had Aids struck me like a death sentence,"
recounted Jose. At that time HIV/Aids had just been discovered as a
new deadly disease. ARVs (antiretroviral medications) had not been
invented yet. "So if you had Aids, you died. It was as simple as
that," said Jose.

He sank into utter despair. Fear of social stigmatisation also
contributed to his sense of desolation. He withdrew into himself. He
lived like a hermit and avoided social contacts.

Five years passed and he found himself still alive even though he
was told his number was up because he had HIV.

Hope returned and he began to come out of his shell. "I decided to
join a group of people living with Aids," he said. He felt things
begin to change. Suddenly, he was in a group again, helping one
another, fighting together, saving one another, just like good old
times in the streets of Sao Paulo. He was in his element.

He resolved to dedicate himself to helping people like himself. He
soon found that he had a natural talent for public speaking and
organising. It was as if his trials and tribulations in the streets
of Sao Paulo was all part of a divine plan to specially prepare him
for his new vocation in HIV/Aids advocacy.

The print media, the voice media and the image media all came to
love the homeless street kid from Sao Paulo, who had risen to become
a leader of Brazil's PLWHA.

"The rest is history," said Jose, rising from the table, signalling
an end to the conversation. It was time for him to take his
medication. As I shook his hand, I felt I had cut through the walls
which tend to hide a person's heart, and when I walked out of the
room I felt like I had found a long-lost friend.

BioDATA

Name: Jose Araujo

Birthdate: August 7, 1957

Education: Self taught

Work Experience: President of the Committee to the National Aids
Council of Brazil (1995-1998)

Founder of Aids Rights Activism

Present Positions: Member of the National Research and Ethics Board
of Brazil

Country Director of the Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB)

Mr Araujo has been a guest speaker at many global forums, including
the World Meeting of People Living with HIV/Aids in Mexico in 1993,
the Geneva World Aids Conference in 1998, and the Barcelona World
Aids Conference in 2002.

Awards: THEO Award for community work in 2001

Citizens Homage, Osaka City Government.

Marital status: Single

Bangkok Post (Sunday of October 2nd)