Marcos Cueto

Professor, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz

2019 to 2020
Research Fellow

A History of Global AIDS and Health Activism in Brazil

Since the early 1990s, Brazilian health activists played an important role in the global history of AIDS thanks to their radical promotion of tolerance for sexual minorities, their pressure to maintain comprehensive and humanitarian official preventive policies and their participation in debates on whether antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) were commodities or public goods. My investigation seeks to contribute to the emerging field of Global Health History by examining how Brazilian activists helped to shape, and were shaped by global anti-AIDS activities and knowledge. This investigation will help to problematize the notion that global health was solely defined in developed countries. I will also examine the role played by American philanthropy in an anti-AIDS coalition of Brazilian health officers, activists and scientists.