Jacobo Schifter

Jacobo Schifter, PhD, is the Regional Director of ILPES (the Latin American Health and Prevention Institute), an AIDS-prevention program financed by the Netherlands' government. One of the most prolific writers in Latin America, Dr. Schifter wrote books on the Costa Rican civil war, U.S.-Costa Rican relations, and Costa Rican anti-Semitism before shifting his interests when AIDS started to affect the Central American region. He then established the first regional institute to fight the epidemic...See more

Jacobo Schifter, PhD, is the Regional Director of ILPES (the Latin American Health and Prevention Institute), an AIDS-prevention program financed by the Netherlands' government. One of the most prolific writers in Latin America, Dr. Schifter wrote books on the Costa Rican civil war, U.S.-Costa Rican relations, and Costa Rican anti-Semitism before shifting his interests when AIDS started to affect the Central American region. He then established the first regional institute to fight the epidemic and created dozens of innovative programs, such as AIDS hotlines and AIDS-prevention workshops for Latin gays, prisoners, street children, Indians, male sex workers, and other minority groups. Dr. Schifter also started to publish controversial books on AIDS, including The Formation of a Counterculture: AIDS and Homosexuality ill Costa Rica (1989), Men Who Love Men (1992), Eyes l1zat Do Not See: Psychial1y and Homophobia (1997), Lila's House (1998), From Toads to Queens (Haworth, 1999), and Macho Love (Haworth, 1999). These books have become best-sellers in the region and have also played a part in changing many Latin governments' discriminatory policies against people with AIDS. See less