Maternal Gift Economy: Breaking Through -
Ongoing Salons
Every two weeks
Salon #69 – Archaeomythology and Citizenship Science: A Multicultural dialogue of inherited knowledge honoring our Cultural Roots, part 2
Featuring Maria Suarez Toro, Joan Marler, Toluwanimi Obiwole, and Layli Moreno Vargas
Moderated by Letecia Layson.
11 AM - 1 PM US CT – July 27, 2024
María Suárez Toro is a feminist journalist, an activist in defense of human rights, and an educator. She was born in Puerto Rico and has been a resident of San José, Costa Rica for close to 50 years.[1] She was a co-director of the Feminist International Radio Endeavor (FIRE) from 1991 to 2011, of which she is a co-founder. She worked as an educator in literacy in many countries in Central America during the 1970s and 1980s. Since 1998 she has been an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Denver. Since 2011 she has been a correspondent for Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica for the News Service for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean (Servicio de Noticias de la Mujer de Latinoamérica y el Caribe), and since 2015 has been a coordinator of the Community Center Diving Ambassadors of the South Caribbean Sea (Centro comunitario de buceo Embajadores y Embajadoras del Mar del Caribe Sur), which is dedicated to archeological diving and recovery of the history of the afro-descendant population on the coast of Costa Rica.
Joan Marler is the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute of Archaeomythology. She is the editor of The Civilization of the Goddess (1991) by Marija Gimbutas and From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas (1997). She worked closely with Marija Gimbutas as her personal editor from 1987-1994 and lectures internationally on Prof. Gimbutas’ life and work. Joan Marler initiated courses in Archaeomythology at two graduate schools in San Francisco: New College of California and the California Institute of Integral Studies. She taught modern, folk and ethnic dance for 28 years through Santa Rosa Junior College in northern California. From 1982-1996 she worked as an independent producer and radio journalist for KPFA FM, Berkeley, California.
Layli Moreno Vargas, a Bribri woman of the Kolkuak clan inherited from her Bribri mother, is a graduate technician in organic farming and is co director and producer, together with her mother and sister, of Finca Didáctica Loroco in Volio, Talamanca. The farm has the largest local seed bank in the region. The family farm is dedicated to organic farming, the recovery of knowledge, consultancies and sale of organic cacao, local seeds and organic fertilizers.
As a Bribri, she believes that in her two cultures "there is diversity in worldview and in ancestral practices of the Bribri culture and the Mayan culture, in harmony with the environment, always very aware that we must take advantage of and adapt to the environment."
"We do not divide ourselves, what we do is share and know that we each have skills and the ability to do the same at different levels and we respect each other. When we have to represent the farm we all have the ability to do it, we all know how it works because it's our way of life and we have our ways of living and transmitting experience, culture and practices in ecological agriculture."
They work on women´s autonomy and guardians of the seeds and respect for Mother Earth.
Toluwanimi Obiwole is a Nigerian poet, performer, and workshop facilitator based in Denver, Colorado, currently residing in Costa Rica{as Southern Caribbean. She is a Brave New Voices international slam champion, a Denver city slam champion, and author of an upcoming chapbook. She has been a member of the Denver Minor Disturbance youth poetry team, and is currently a member of the Slam Nuba poetry team. In 2015 she was announced as Denver’s first Youth Poet Laureate. She is currently undertaking volunteer work with Ambassadors of the Sea in Costa Rica´s Caribbean and the Institute of Citizen Science (INMAR Caribe). "For me, as a Yoruba person, Costa Rica´ss Caribbean is where I have been able to connect with my original indigenous identity, in a way that I have not been able to connect either in the United States or in Europe."