1966-00-00: (An Infected Person Brings AIDS to Haiti From Africa, the Disease That Would Devastate the Haitian Population and Lead to the Stigmatization of H…

1966-00-00: (An Infected Person Brings AIDS to Haiti From Africa, the Disease That Would Devastate the Haitian Population and Lead to the Stigmatization of Haitians as Carriers of the Epidemic): In 1966, most likely, an infected person brought the human immunodeficiency virus to Haiti from Africa, though the precise date and mechanism of transmission remain debated. Haiti would become one of the first countries outside Africa to experience a significant AIDS epidemic, and the association of the disease with Haitians would compound the nation’s already devastating international stigma. In 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control officially identified AIDS, Haitians were listed as one of the high-risk groups alongside homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users, a classification that collapsed an entire nation’s identity into a disease category. The stigmatization damaged Haiti’s tourism industry, already fragile, and added a medical crisis to the political, economic, and social catastrophes that defined the Duvalier era. In the same year, Graham Greene published The Comedians, a novel set in Duvalier’s Haiti that brought international attention to the regime’s brutality. The novel was made into a major motion picture in 1967.