Social Representations on HIV / AIDS in Miskito Indigenous Women in Puerto Cabezas, North Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua

Abstract

 

This research focuses its efforts on delving into the circumstances and ways in which Miskito women with HIV and AIDS survive this infection in a region historically affected by social exclusion and geographic isolation that makes it particularly vulnerable to the pandemic. It is proposed to go to the social imaginary and from there, discuss under what conditions HIV and AIDS are affecting indigenous women socially, economically, spiritually and culturally. This study's epistemic framework is decolonial feminism from which conditions of violence and structural inequalities, invisibility, subordination, exclusions and asymmetries of power are analyzed. Consequently, it is an investigation that attempts to analyze the structural conditions that cause Miskito women with HIV and AIDS to be rejected and expelled from their spaces and communities by a system characterized by patriarchal relationships that forces them to leave their home and community to separate themselves from discrimination, stigma and social prejudice. The research, rigorously guided by national norms and laws on the promotion, protection and defense of human rights against HIV and AIDS (Law 820), seeks to “reconstruct” reality as observed by the study actors , registering with singularity, the own experiences told by Miskito women with HIV. In this way, the study preserves principles of autonomy, privacy, informed consent and confidentiality of the interviews and the interviewees.