Pedro Zamora

Pedro Pablo Zamora was an AIDS educator who traveled the country teaching youth and adults about the dangers of HIV. He is known for speaking with school children about the disease in nonjudgmental, accessible language. Zamora immigrated from Cuba with his parents at the age of eight, and thrived in school, both socially and intellectually. He contracted HIV through unprotected sex before his junior year of high school. Sex education in his school system portrayed the disease as a problem among “undesirables” and didn't include information on condoms and safe sex. As a star student who was popular with teachers and peers, Zamora felt safe. He only learned about his HIV-positive status through a notice from the Red Cross he received after donating blood.

At first he continued to live as he always had, in denial of the risks to his health as he had been in denial about the risks of unprotected sex. A two-month-long bout of shingles his senior year changed that, and he met others who lived with HIV and began to realize the importance of better AIDS education. He graduated high school and traveled the United States delivering information on AIDS, using language accessible to children and teenagers and emphasizing the point that anyone could contract it. He also focused on making the information relevant to the Latino community.

When he was offered a position on the MTV reality show The Real World, he knew it was his best chance to reach the greatest number of people at once, and joined even though he risked being ostracized by the other team members or becoming sick in the middle of the season. For most viewers, he was probably the first person with HIV they felt they “knew”, and his experience as an educator shone through. He politely and patiently corrected his housemates' misconceptions about HIV, and, through the camera, transmitted the information to the show's audience.

While the show was filming, Zamora began dating a friend and fellow AIDS educator he had met at a march in Washington, D.C. Their courtship turned to love, and they married, allowing the Real World producers to document the ceremony as part of the series. They paved the way for public LGBT marriages, and the moment is still remembered as one of the most touching in reality television, receiving a nomination for MTV’s “Favorite Love Story” award in 2008.

In November 1994, the day after the last episode of his Real World season aired, Pedro succumbed to complications from AIDS. Many mourned his death, and numerous AIDS-awareness foundations were founded in his memory. Through his work, many people who had never met someone with AIDS personally witnessed the reality of the epidemic. He helped the American public put a human face on a disease that is too often ignored.