Dr. Liliana Rojas-Guyler

Dr. Liliana Rojas-Guyler brought up some very relevant points in her lecture which seemed to fit in with the idea that the Hispanic community faces opposition on numerous levels. I think that one of the points she brought up that I most agree with is the fact that many immigrants distrust the “system” and that greatly hurts their ability to feel comfortable pursuing help when they need it. Dr. Rojas-Guyler stated that it’s one thing to find a doctor and get to her office, but it’s a second and entirely different thing to actually trust the doctor. If someone can’t trust the doctor they are seeing, there is a much smaller chance that they will receive the medical care they need. I know that my grandmother is awful to take to a doctor. She feels that it’s socially inappropriate to complain to a man (yet ironically will only see a male doctor because “men are doctors”), but she also is extremely hesitant to trust someone and often lies about what’s wrong with her. She grew up in a middle-class white family and if she has this type of issues, I can only imagine how hard it would be to trust a doctor if you had actually be subjected to discrimination.