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chapter one Social-class Origins and Trajectories Social-class origins determine our life chances (McDonough and Berglund 2003; Feinstein 1993). It shapes our education, occupation, health status, migration, and life style. Latino GBTs who experience poverty also experience low levels of self-esteem and social support, and high levels of HIV and sexual risk behaviors (Díaz and Ayala 2001; Ramirez-Valles and Díaz 2005). I grew up in something between a poor and a working-class family. At times we had nothing to eat but beans and potatoes. But my mother supported our education; she never asked us, or pushed us, to work or to leave school for a job. My mother raised us pretty much on her own, with sporadic financial support from my father and my grandfather. We were six siblings, five bothers and one sister. I remained keenly aware of the social-class structures around me as I finished college and slowly climbed up to middle-class status. The women’s health organization I was working for was run by a wealthy woman. The board of directors was made up of members of the elite families of Ciudad Juárez.The staff was a mix of middle-class professionals and working-class professionals, such as social workers and accountants. The people we were working for were very poor. They lived in the poorest areas of Mexico; in the outskirts of metropolitan areas, mostly. There, I began to feel uncomfortable with my social-class position and that of the people we worked for. Although I developed good relationships with some of them, I did not like revealing my social-class status. Many times, I felt we were using them. I thought that I could not do anything to change the world they lived in; that my job held little meaning, if any, for them. I would feel“middle-class guilt,”while detesting the charitable attitude of the middle class. This guilt was about the contrasts between classes; between what I had and what they did not have. To this date, I’m still conflicted. With Marco, Oscar, José, and the other compañeros it was a little different . Our work against AIDS was not based on job relationships or on a professional-client relationship. We came and worked together as friends and compañeros. Our class differences were not significant and, even if they were, I did not see them as an obstacle. I did not feel as conflicted as I had with the women in the women’s health organization. I was aware of the differences between most of the guys and me, especially in terms of education and income. I felt connected with them, while conscious that I was different from most of them; our life paths perhaps would not have crossed if it were not for AIDS. My purpose in this chapter is to present examples in the form of vignettes of the social-class origins of these compañeros. Although I cannot establish any causal connection between the social class in which they were born and the events in their youth or adulthood, I propose that social-class origins did shape some of their life circumstances. That is, the social-class location of the families in which the activists were raised was one factor, if not the most significant, among several, shaping their life courses. For instance, some of the men who grew up in a poor or working-class environment began working early in their childhood or youth, did not go to college, and emigrated (either with their families or by themselves) to the United States. As adults, some of them also experienced homelessness and unemployment. Only in very few instances are these Latino GBTs able to change the course set by the social class into which they were born. The improvement some of them have made in their social-class standing, however, has been due to their own resiliency or to random events. I see social class as an individual’s location in the relations of production (Wright et al. 1982; Liberatos et al. 1988). There are three productive assets that largely determine social-class position: the actual means of production (e.g., capital, technology), authority within organizational structures, and credentials—for example, education and skills (Wright et al. 1982). Analytically, it is difficult to separate social class from factors such as race and migration. In the United States, in particular, social class and race are frequently connected. In the...

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