LatiNation Media Presents Volume III of Living y Ready

Living with HIV has its complex array of challenges, stigmas, and silver linings. No matter who you are, getting diagnosed changes your life forever. How you embark on that new chapter depends on your unique environment. The questions unfold without answers. Who infected me? Do I tell my mom? Will I ever be intimate again?

In the third volume of Living y Ready, we look for answers firsthand in the HIV-positive Latino community.

In past years, the show has featured roundtable discussions and documentary-style profiles. However, 2025 will bring something new. We are presenting a collection of short-form episodes, each dedicated to a specific theme. These episodes will feature candid conversations among HIV-positive Latinos and people of color, showcasing a diverse range of lived experiences and viewpoints.

Dorian Klemensine is in his late twenties working in entertainment. He found out he was positive after the end of a monogamous relationship—or so he thought it was monogamous. At first, he decided he’d let HIV be his ‘way out.’ His mom convinced him otherwise.

Dale Roberson was diagnosed in the early 2000s, long before living with HIV meant taking just one pill a day. For ten years, he continued in his meth addiction until getting help. A gay, Black man from the Chicagoland area, he decided not to tell his family. They still don’t know.

To this day, Marilynn Ramos doesn’t know how she contracted HIV, but she was pregnant when she found out. A San Fernando Valley native and a mother of five, she kept quiet about her diagnosis for decades, scared to tell her eldest daughter the truth.

Jose Ramos was working in the field before he was even diagnosed. You’d think he would have been ready. But when he was denied by a lover post-diagnosis, he saw the uphill climb anew. With a more visceral understanding of the condition, he continues to educate and uplift the HIV+ Latino community.

Ceasar Corona disappeared. At least that’s what his friends said. He stopped coming to baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Until one day, his friend Jerry Rodriguez, a case manager at a local jail, found him. Corona was incarcerated, struggling with a meth addiction, and HIV-positive. Today, he teaches Zumba.

Daniel Garza returns to the series with long-term partner Christian Ramirez. When they first started dating, Garza was open about his HIV status. Ramirez, HIV-negative, said that it didn’t matter to him. Years later, he opens up about the fears and concerns he kept quiet, and how he overcame those stigmas because of love.

In each episode, each individual walks us through the next part of their story: processing the diagnosis, telling (or not telling) family, navigating romance, and understanding what it means to be Latino, or what it means to be Black, what it means to be gay, or a woman—all HIV-positive in the current socio political climate.

Created by LatiNation Media’s CEO Andrés Palencia; directed by Andrew Tamarkin; produced by Aura Quiroz, Natalia Trejos, Susana Vaamonde, and Karla Solarte; with cinematography by Pedro González Kuhn; and original illustrations by Tevy Khou, the third volume of Living y Ready is back and taking you into the field again. Sensitively and informatively, this anthology of stories will provide primary resource material on living with HIV amongst people of color in greater Los Angeles.