Daniel G. Garza Turned his HIV Status into His Career | Living Y Ready

In his own words, Daniel G. Garza is the original Tex-Mex. His mother is Mexican, his father is Texan, and he is “as cheesy as the food”.

Born in Monterrey and raised in Dallas, Garza grew up around big Latino energy. His family was traditional and spoke Spanish. They played the music and cooked the foods from their country. But the macho culture was ever-present, as was a religious-conservative slant on sex and sexuality.

Garza, who as early as eight-years-old showed signs of being different from other kids in his Dallas elementary school, found solace in the gifted-and-talented programs. Still, he played on soccer teams. Still, he signed up for extracurriculars. But he lacked those innate macho characteristics his father had expected from his son, and a divide went up between them early on.

So, like anyone with daddy issues, he sought that paternal validation elsewhere: from teachers, coaches, and—later—lovers.

Daniel G. Garza on LATV’s original series, Living y Ready.Smart and independent, Garza found his own way over and over again. When he was seventeen, he came out. He found himself jobs. He started exploring his sexuality. What he encountered wasn’t always healthy.

“[Being smart] taught me a lot of resilience, it taught me to be resourceful, it taught me to get what I wanted out of people, it taught me manipulation—because there’s something that folks don’t think about when you are the child in a situation like [mine]. You learn to manipulate situations to your benefit,” Garza explains on his episode of Living y Ready.

That high of his youth would wear off.

In 2000, he was serving tables in Houston, he weighed 110 pounds, and he thought he was hot. He was heavily drinking and doing a lot of cocaine at the time, and his body was catching up with his lifestyle.

“Our minds are so powerful they will hold us up no matter how sick we are,” Garza says. “The moment I got home [from work one night], my legs gave out, my brain was shutting down, I was already having stomach infections, I was losing my hair, and I was losing my memory. I end up in the hospital.”

When he woke up, a priest was in his room. Garza was dying of AIDS.

Things got worse before they got better. It took time to get healthy again, to get his T-cells in check, to find his flow again as an HIV-positive man in this world. Not only did he survive, he decided to make a career of his status.

He got sober, moved to California, and has spent the last few decades traveling the country educating people about HIV prevention, diagnosis, and advocacy.

“What happened to me could have been avoided if my parents had broken down those barriers and talked to me about sex and sexuality,” Garza says.

Now, as an entertainer, writer, and educator in the HIV space, Garza hopes to fill that gap the didn’t have growing up. He lives in Laguna Beach and enjoys spending time with his partner, Christian.

Daniel G. Garza and his partner, Christian.

Check out Daniel G. Garza’s full story on the latest episode of Living y Ready.