Reflections on attending Encuentro 2026: Rooted in the South

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Encuentro 2026: Rooted in the South. The conference was a three-day meeting conducted by Latinos in the South, held in Durham, NC, October 28-30. The event convened LGBTQ Latinx Southerners and allies to strengthen healthcare capacity and build bridges between emerging multi-racial and multilingual Southern Latinx communities and their supporters. Approximately 118 attendees and speakers actively engaged in panel presentations and workshops and interacted with keynote speakers focused on a holistic examination of Latinx community needs.

Latinos in the South was started as a program initiative of the Latino Commission on AIDS in 2007. The main target states of focus are North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida. The organization's work has a very targeted emphasis on improving the lives of people living with HIV, in addition to overall access to healthcare issues experienced by Latino communities in the South. Since 2012, the Latinos in the South program has been headquartered in North Carolina. The annual Encuentro meeting is held in a different city each year, with 2026 marking its return to Durham, NC.

The conference's central themes were building organizational capacity, criminalization and community defense, expanding healthcare access, and protecting public benefits. Building organizational capacity was addressed in sessions focused on issues such as building the future of LGBTQ+ organizing in the South and examining the various stages of leadership through case study examination of a particular community’s Planned Parenthood Program. One of the criminalization and community defense sessions focused on creating means of civic education. The purpose was to teach people how to give communities tools to channel their outrage and direct it effectively to hold those in power accountable for meeting their needs and demands. A notable tool discussed was creating local and regional rapid response groups to engage in public comment and respond to legislatures and Ryan White Planning Councils.

The topic of expanding healthcare access was addressed in sessions such as ‘Advancing Equitable PrEP Access in the Latine Community Through Implementation Research in the South’. This particular breakout session examined a community/academic partnership between Latinos in the South and Duke University. The collaboration co-created equity-focused clinic strategies to improve PrEP expansion among Latines and tested them while adjusting to site-level barriers. A notable public benefit protection session was entitled ‘From MIPA to Movement: How People Living with HIV Can Build Power to Transform Policy’. MIPA stands for Meaningful Involvement of People Living with HIV. This particular session used the Texas Strike Force (TSF) as a case study to show how a coalition turned lived experience into system change. The TSF’s successful outcomes include advocating for sustainable local HIV funding, expanding access to long-acting injectable HIV medications, and protecting access to the Texas AIDS Drug Assistance Program.

Notably, all workshop sessions were interactive. They were not lecture-style sessions where people simply took notes while speakers talked. While a good deal of information was presented by speakers, a large portion of the breakout sessions was spent on attendees interacting to engage in exercises to identify concerns and brainstorm solutions surrounding whatever topic was being discussed. Attendees were able to bring community-specific concerns to the table as a group in order to leave with a plan to address them when they returned home. One leadership session I attended even ended with a mini arts-and-crafts session where participants used various yarns, pipe cleaners, fabrics, and buttons to make wearable jewelry as a reminder that multiple human components are woven together to maintain effective organizational leadership.

The inclusivity and accessibility were two of the most impressive aspects of the conference. The Latinos in the South organizers preached the importance of language justice and demonstrated it in their operations. While many participants were bilingual, some were monolingual, speaking only Spanish or English. The conference had a well-organized, well-executed interpretation services technology team. Bluetooth earpieces were available each day for live interpretation. During the group plenary sessions, interpreters translated presentations into both languages. Individual teams of interpreters staffed each breakout session, requiring attendees only to quickly pair their earpiece with the mobile interpreter’s transmission box in each room. There was a separate channel for main plenaries with individual closed circuits for breakouts. As someone who does not yet speak Spanish, it was humbling to be dependent on the need for interpretation services whenever English was not being spoken. It is easy not to fully appreciate the importance of language justice until you are the one it benefits.

It is easy not to fully appreciate the importance of language justice until you are the one it benefits.

The location of the next Encuentro has not yet been announced. Wherever it occurs, it will be a valuable and effective continuation of the work being done. The energy at Encuentro was a spirit of family among repeat attendees, and in the manner they welcomed first-timers as well as English-only speakers. The need for increased healthcare capacity building and adaptation to system infrastructure changes will only become more relevant in the future. Latinos in the South is addressing those needs with Encuentro.