&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pedro Julio Serrano HIV: The Puerto Rican Activist Who Ran for Office Openly HIV-Positive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Pedro Julio Serrano has spent more than three decades turning his experience of living with HIV into a life of advocacy, visibility, and public service. Diagnosed with HIV at just 19, he chose not to remain silent at a time when HIV stigma and homophobia were deeply entrenched in Puerto Rico.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 1998, he made history by becoming the first openly gay and HIV-positive person to run for public office in Puerto Rico, openly challenging the prejudice surrounding both his identity and his diagnosis. From that groundbreaking campaign to his work fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, HIV awareness, and social justice, Serrano has continued to use his voice to make space for others to live openly and without shame.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2016%20%E2%80%93%20Pedro%20Julio%20Serrano%20The%20Puerto%20Rican%20Activist%20Who%20Made%20History%20by%20Refusing%20to%20Hide%20Goodbye%20HIV%2002.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 16 &amp;ndash; Pedro Julio Serrano The Puerto Rican Activist Who Made History by Refusing to Hide Goodbye HIV 02.jpg (98 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Julio_Serrano&quot;&gt;Pedro Julio Serrano - Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Note Under the Windshield Wiper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It was 1998. Pedro Julio Serrano was 24 years old and running for the Puerto Rican House of Representatives when he walked back to his blue Oldsmobile and found a piece of paper tucked under the windscreen wiper.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;CU&amp;Iacute;DATE, PATO.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Take care of yourself, faggot.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He spent a few seconds reading it. Then he noticed that the car&#39;s hood was not fully closed. A friend came to check and found that someone had cut the brake lines. The incident was a serious act of intimidation that could have put his life at risk.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He kept running anyway.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Pedro Julio Serrano did not just run for public office as an openly gay man. He also ran as an openly HIV-positive man. In a society where homophobia and HIV stigma were deeply entrenched, that decision came at a cost. But it also became the foundation for decades of advocacy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;//www.youtube.com/embed/VHcjXab-5og&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; height=&quot;314&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;allowfullscreen&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Watch Pedro Julio Serrano recount this exact experience of political intimidation and having his brake lines cut in an exclusive interview.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Born in Ponce, Raised to Fight&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Pedro Julio Serrano was born on 2 October 1974 in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and grew up in the coastal neighbourhood of Isla Verde in San Juan. From an early age, justice was not an abstract concept for him &amp;mdash; it was personal and practical.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At 13, he organised a march against drugs in his community. At 16, with the first Gulf War underway, he organised a march in favour of peace. By the time he arrived at the University of Puerto Rico&#39;s R&amp;iacute;o Piedras campus to study communications, his sense of social purpose was already well formed.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What came next &amp;mdash; an HIV diagnosis, a political campaign, a car with cut brake lines, and a lifetime of advocacy &amp;mdash; was the continuation of a story that had always been heading somewhere important.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2016%20%E2%80%93%20Pedro%20Julio%20Serrano%20The%20Puerto%20Rican%20Activist%20Who%20Made%20History%20by%20Refusing%20to%20Hide%20Goodbye%20HIV%2003.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 16 &amp;ndash; Pedro Julio Serrano The Puerto Rican Activist Who Made History by Refusing to Hide Goodbye HIV 03.jpg (108 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://alchetron.com/Pedro-Julio-Serrano&quot;&gt;Alchetron&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Diagnosis That Could Have Stopped Everything&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 1994, Pedro Julio Serrano received the results of an HIV test: positive. He was 19 at the time. He has said that he acquired HIV during his first sexual relationship.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At the time, HIV was surrounded by fear, misinformation, homophobia and moral judgement. Rather than retreating, Serrano began speaking. He started giving talks in schools about safe sex and HIV prevention &amp;mdash; a young man barely out of his teens, standing in front of other young people and speaking openly about HIV at a time when silence was far more common.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2016%20%E2%80%93%20Pedro%20Julio%20Serrano%20The%20Puerto%20Rican%20Activist%20Who%20Made%20History%20by%20Refusing%20to%20Hide%20Goodbye%20HIV%2005.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 16 &amp;ndash; Pedro Julio Serrano The Puerto Rican Activist Who Made History by Refusing to Hide Goodbye HIV 05.jpg (131 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nprdpinc.org/es/historical-honoree/pedro-julio-serrano&quot;&gt;NPRDP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It was not an easy thing to do. In Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s, HIV was still largely understood through a lens of stigma and homophobia. It was often associated with drug use and gay men, while people living with HIV could face fear, discrimination, and moral judgement. The idea that a young, relatively healthy-looking man might be HIV-positive and that he might talk about it openly in a school was genuinely radical.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He did it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making History in 1998&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;During 1997, Serrano attended a hearing and witnessed something that clarified everything for him. He saw the power of visibility &amp;mdash; what it meant for LGBT people and people living with HIV to stand up in public and be counted. He decided to run for political office.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 1998, he announced his candidacy for the Puerto Rico House of Representatives with the Partido Nuevo Progresista. He did not do it quietly. He announced his homosexuality publicly. He announced his HIV-positive status publicly.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He became the first openly gay and HIV-positive person to run for public office in Puerto Rican history.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The response from some quarters was brutal. There was a note on his windshield. Then there were the cut brake lines. He also faced homophobic hostility throughout the campaign.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He ran with the Partido Nuevo Progresista, which he has since described as a homophobic political party. He did not win the seat. But the act of running &amp;mdash; openly, defiantly, as himself &amp;mdash; changed Puerto Rican political history in ways that outlasted the election result.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2016%20%E2%80%93%20Pedro%20Julio%20Serrano%20The%20Puerto%20Rican%20Activist%20Who%20Made%20History%20by%20Refusing%20to%20Hide%20Goodbye%20HIV%2004.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 16 &amp;ndash; Pedro Julio Serrano The Puerto Rican Activist Who Made History by Refusing to Hide Goodbye HIV 04.jpg (116 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://internewsservice.com/2022/11/23/p-rico-pedro-julio-serrano-se-suma-a-voces-de-alerta-sobre-cambios-en-provision-de-medicamentos-para-personas-que-viven-con-vih/&quot;&gt;Inter News Service&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From Politics to Lifelong Advocacy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After the 1998 campaign, Serrano left electoral politics behind. But he did not leave public life.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 2003, he founded Puerto Rico Para Tod@s &amp;mdash; Puerto Rico for Everyone &amp;mdash; a non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting for the equal rights and inclusion of LGBTQ communities and for social justice for all people in Puerto Rico. It grew into a prominent organisation providing news, information, and advocacy around social justice in Puerto Rico and beyond.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He later moved to New York City, where he worked as communications manager for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a prominent LGBTQ advocacy organisation in the United States. He has served as an advisor to former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and former San Juan Mayor Carmen Yul&amp;iacute;n Cruz. He has also served as executive director of Programa Vida and Cl&amp;iacute;nica Transalud of the Municipality of San Juan.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cms.goodbyehiv.com/Files/Pai/Celebrities%20with%20HIV%20%E2%80%93%2016%20%E2%80%93%20Pedro%20Julio%20Serrano%20The%20Puerto%20Rican%20Activist%20Who%20Made%20History%20by%20Refusing%20to%20Hide%20Goodbye%20HIV%2006.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Celebrities with HIV &amp;ndash; 16 &amp;ndash; Pedro Julio Serrano The Puerto Rican Activist Who Made History by Refusing to Hide Goodbye HIV 06.jpg (192 KB)&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;Image source:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.instagram.com/p/DHlGPFcRN3N/&quot;&gt;Instagram (@pedrojulioserrano)&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He was the founding president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico and has served as managing director of Orgullo Boquer&amp;oacute;n, as well as director of external affairs at the True Self Foundation.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 2013, he received the Dennis deLeon Voice and Commitment Award at the Gala Cielo Latino of the Latino Commission on AIDS. This honour connected his work directly to the legacy of the man we profiled in the previous entry in this series. That same year, he was named one of the 20 Latinx Trailblazers of the Year by Being Latino and recognised as a rising star by the Hispanic Latino Coalition.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He has also survived cancer, adding yet another chapter to a life that has already encompassed more than most people could carry.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Message He Has Always Carried&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;When Pedro Julio Serrano speaks about HIV today, he speaks from more than three decades of lived experience &amp;mdash; and from a medical and scientific understanding that has transformed completely since his diagnosis in 1994.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Today, people with HIV who maintain an undetectable viral load through effective treatment do not transmit HIV through sex.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That message &amp;mdash; U=U, Undetectable Equals Untransmittable &amp;mdash; is one of the most important advances in HIV communication in recent decades. It is a message of hope and one that Serrano has helped carry to communities that still need to hear it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He has also been a prominent voice in moments of broader visibility. When a federal judge declared California&#39;s Proposition 8 unconstitutional, Serrano appeared on CNN en Espa&amp;ntilde;ol to discuss marriage equality for Spanish-speaking audiences. &quot;This decision demonstrates that the rights of citizens can never be put up for a popular vote,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;His advocacy has never stayed within a single lane. HIV. Marriage equality. Police accountability. Environmental justice. Trans rights. The rights of Puerto Rican people to determine their own future. For Serrano, these are not separate causes &amp;mdash; they are different expressions of the same commitment.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;//www.youtube.com/embed/KhIYfaUz0no&quot; width=&quot;550&quot; height=&quot;314&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;allowfullscreen&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #808080;&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Watch: Pedro Julio Serrano discusses his 30-year journey living with HIV, breaking down stigma, and explaining how treatment as prevention is key to ending the epidemic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Still Standing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He has been living with HIV for more than three decades. He was 19 when he received the diagnosis, at a time when HIV was widely viewed as a death sentence. He responded by running for public office, founding nonprofits, building coalitions, speaking in schools, and advising mayors and city council speakers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Over the decades, he became a prominent human rights and LGBTQ+ activist in Puerto Rico.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He was the first. And he did it publicly, on the record, asking voters to support him as both an openly gay man and a person living with HIV.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That moment still matters. It mattered then because it broke something open. It matters now because it reminds us what courage actually looks like &amp;mdash; not the dramatic, once-in-a-lifetime kind, but the daily, ongoing, unglamorous kind. The kind that gets a note on the windshield, finds its brake lines cut, and keeps going anyway.&lt;/p&gt;

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