Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Pedro Zamora

Queer Ancestor Spotlight
Written By White Rose Witching

Pedro Zamora was a Cuban-American AIDS educator and television personality who was a pioneer in humanizing the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s. He was a cast member on The Real World: San Francisco and was one of the first openly gay men with AIDS to be portrayed in popular media.

Pedro Zamora and I (COPYRIGHT HOLDER) in 1993

Pedro Zamora and I (COPYRIGHT HOLDER) in 1993

Pedro was born just outside Havana, Cuba in 1972 and came to the United States with his parents as part of the Mariel Boat Lift when he was eight. His family settled in Miami, Florida. When Pedro was fourteen his father found out about his boyfriend but was accepting of is sons homosexuality. When he was seventeen he found out his was HIV-positive after donating blood at a Red Cross blood drive and receiving a letter stating his blood tested “reactive.”

At this time HIV/AIDS was severely stigmatized and misunderstood and there were very few treatment regimens available. Pedro was determined to graduate from high school before he died, a goal which he accomplished. After graduating he became involved with a Miami-based HIV/AIDS resource center called Body Positive where he learned more about the disease and would go one to become a full-time AIDS educator.

Pedro became a national figure after the Wall Street Journal wrote a front-page article about his advocacy. This lead to interviews on talk shows and testifying before the United States Congress urging more explicit HIV/AIDS education. In 1993 he attended the Lesbian and Gay March on Washington where he met another AIDS educator, Sean Sasser, who would eventually become his partner. Sean would also be how Pedro would become part of the The Real World.

Sean learned that producers for the MTV reality tv series were looking to cast someone who was HIV-positive and encouraged Pedro to submit an audition tape. The producers initially informed the cast members that one of the housemates was HIV-positive but did not say who, and after everyone had been introduced Pedro shared his positive status as well as a scrapbook charting his work as an AIDS educator. Overall, Pedro got along with most of the housemates. He took time to educate them on the reality of living as an HIV-positive person and as an out gay man. There was one housemate, David “Puck” Rainey, who was openly antagonistic towards him and mocked his Cuban accent and his same-sex relationship with Sean. When Pedro announced he was moving out of the house the rest of the housemates unanimously agreed to evict Rainey instead.

The filming of The Real World was bittersweet. During the course of the season Sean proposed to Pedro and they exchanged vows in the first same-sex commitment ceremony on television. Pedro’s health, however, also began to decline at an accelerating rate.

Filming ended in mid-June 1994 with the first episode of the season airing shortly thereafter. By mid-August Pedro had been admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital in California where he was diagnosed with toxoplasmosis and progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. In early September he was flown to a hospital in Miami to be closer to his family. He died November 11, 1994.

White Rose Witching
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