At the turn of the twentieth century, the at the time well accepted Malthusian theory that civilization was inevitably going to collapse due to rapidly growing populations, resulted in the great European powers scrambling to seize control of Africa and its sweet sweet resources. Yes, this is something that is just going to keep coming up again and again. Anyways, the whole process pretty much upended the traditional way of life of many African societies. After all, establishing mines, railroads, and plantations took a lot of labor, and you can probably bet who ended up doing most of it whether they wanted to or not. As a result of this sudden fervor to build things, large camps formed, mostly of men, which of course in turn attracted in women willing to sell a certain commodity, which of course led to rampant STD outbreaks. It also led to a significant demand for meat, which outstripped local domesticated supplies to the point that bushmeat hunting became a lucrative industry, bushmeat being pretty much any animal one was able to shoot.
Well, it’s hard to say exactly what happened next, but the basic working theory is that these bushmeat hunters continually came into contact with the blood of primates to the point that eventually some chimp disease made the jump over to people in the Congo River basin. This brand new disease then made its way from camp to camp up and down the river system, spread via prostitutes and those who enjoyed their services. You can probably guess the name of this little wonder by now, but I’m going to say it anyways. We’re talking about fricking HIV. Anyways, for the next several decades HIV remained a fairly secluded little virus, killing off the occasional prostitute and cheap laborer, which the powers that be didn’t give a shit about, and mostly staying under the radar since people didn’t die of HIV, but rather other diseases that walked in the open door after HIV killed off its host’s immune system.
Overall, HIV was a rather local affair, just one of countless unknown tropical diseases killing off a few hundred people here and there. However, that began to rapidly change in the 1960’s when the old European powers, exceedingly short on cash, began the process of decolonization, by which I mean they pretty much jumped ship, flipping off their former colonies as they went. Fueled by Cold War politics and the fact that the gobbledy-gook of new countries had borders that had nothing to do with the people actually living within them, large parts of Africa descended into a chaotic mess of dictators, coups, and just in general shittiness. Amongst the casualties of this period was the healthcare infrastructure of many nations, including widespread immunization and antibiotic programs. As a result, STD’s like syphilis became more rampant, leading to HIV beginning to become more widespread for reasons best explained by just saying genital sores and leaving it at that.
Here’s a fun thing about political and socio-economic chaos. It tends to get people moving around a lot. Here’s another fun thing, it really doesn’t result in people having any less sex. As the 1960’s turned into the 1970’s, HIV slowly but surely spread across central Africa, mostly amongst the poor urban working class, where it largely went unnoticed, again, due to the virus itself not actually killing people and nobody in any position of power really giving a shit what specific thing was killing a bunch of poor people in third world countries at a time when so many different things were killing them anyways. What aid African countries did get from the two battling behemoths that were the U.S. and the Soviet Union mostly revolved around propping up or overthrowing tin pot dictators who supported one side or the other, and not actually, you know, making things better. After all, why should either super power really give a damn about something that wasn’t really their problem?
Well, that all changed when the crazy dictator of Haiti, a man lovingly called Papa Doc, kicked up his crazy to another notch and started killing off all the intellectual types in his country in the 1960’s. Not really being down with such things, most of the aforementioned intellectuals fled the country, many migrating to central Africa where there was a high demand for teachers who could speak French. While working as teachers, some of these Haitians contracted HIV, which they then brought back home to Haiti with them around 1967. This sparked a small epidemic in the country, which similar to what was happening in Africa, went largely unnoticed due to Papa Doc being a crazy son of a bitch and nobody giving a shit if poor people were finding a new novel way to die. Of course, the poor people themselves weren’t all that down with it, which is probably why a number of them immigrated to the United States during this period, one of whom brought along a little extra passenger. And that my friends, is how HIV founds its way to the United States.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Activist_Phyllis_Schafly_wearing_a_%22Stop_ERA%22_badge,_demonstrating_with_other_women_against_the_Equal_Rights_Amendment_in_front_of_the_White_House,_Washington,_D.C._(42219314092).jpg