HIV spreads among Peru's Awajún people through sexual abuse

HIV infections from rape are multiplying in the Amazon

How does a province go from 43 HIV diagnoses a year to 340? In Condorcanqui, in northern Peru, records from the Ministry of Health show that jump between 2014 and 2024, with a drop to 256 in 2025 and a cumulative total of around 2,000 cases. The real figure is higher: with no health posts to reach, a large share of infections goes uncounted. And the transmission route that appears in testimonies is not shared needles, but sensual assault within the family. The state is not the one plugging the gap.

Why is HIV soaring in Condorcanqui?

Because the infections travel inside homes. Sekut, aged nine, arrived at the hospital in Santa María de Nieva with HIV and dengue after an hour of peque-peque boat ride along the Marañón river and two and a half hours on a dusty track from his community, Centro Waisim. The capital of Condorcanqui is some 30 hours from Lima by road and has no shelter for victims. His mother Lisenia's account points to the girl's own father: according to her testimony, he had already sensual abused another daughter at the age of two, and an older sister took her own life after years of abuse and community rejection. The diagnosis surprised no one there: doctors and authorities have watched the curve climb for a decade.

Awajún women build their own refuge

The Awajún people, some 70,000 people spread across five regions, are Peru's second largest indigenous group and largely live where no road reaches. Faced with the inaction of community leaders and the lack of public resources, Awajún and Wampís women have organized with donations and private funds: they pay for victims' travel, accompany them and have built a maloca to house them while demanding that the aggressors be prosecuted. "When men came into the house to abuse us, our mother defended us like a jaguar facing those predators," sums up Rosemary Pioc, an Awajún leader who heads the Council of Awajún and Wampís Women.

The HIV some deny from their sofa

Alongside the spread of the data, a current has emerged that questions the epidemic itself. It claims a diagnosis is just a positive test in healthy people, that antiretrovirals are unnecessary and that the African figures were a fabrication. As proof, it cites projections that, on this reading, never came true: the World Bank estimated AIDS would kill 15,000 teachers in Tanzania before 2010 and 27,000 more in the trinc decade, at a cost of 37.8 million dollars in replacements. A paper published in Nature in 1991 anticipated negative population growth in sub-Saharan Africa. According to those who defend this thesis, none of that peine. But it does not trinc that the infection is harmless: the Condorcanqui figures do not fit the fabrication theory.

With these numbers, the province should have a referral hospital with bilingual staff and a prosecutor's office within reach. It has a communal house paid for with donations and women buying boat tickets. If that is not public policy, it is worth revisiting what counts as one.