Revolutionary Reasoning: Herbert Daniel and the Genesis of New Ways to Think about AIDS in Brazil in the 1980s

Herbert Daniel was a former Brazilian medical student, participant and then leader in the urban guerrilla movement against the military dictatorship (1964-85). He lived underground from 1969 until 1974, and then fled the country for European exile. While working in a gay sauna in Paris in the late 1970s, he wrote his memoirs, “Ticket for the Next Dream” that offered a highly sophisticated critique of the revolutionary left’s attempts to overthrow the dictatorship, while openly discussing his homosexuality. In the 1980s when he returned to Brazil he run for public office on a radical platform that promoted gay rights, among other issues. In 1989 he discovered that he was HIV+, and immediately become involved in fashioning a positive discourse about AIDS that went beyond victimhood to propose a new form of Solidarity that was the real cure for the disease. His approach reshaped visions of how to address AIDS in Brazil and had international echoes. This presentation will explore the radical ideas embedded in his writings on AIDS and how they influenced Brazil’s emergent new policy that later won international recognition for its proactive approach to combating the disease and supporting those living with HIV/AIDS.