Scientists, artists, athletes… and badasses

Posted on by stanleyobando
Courtesy of Soy Niña

Six days left to go, and today I want to celebrate what yesterday’s post was supposed to be about (until current events took things in a slightly deeper, darker direction). Really, it’s just a sunnier side of the same street: the power of Costa Rica’s women.

The bras in this house were already getting a little nervous at the start of this past year. As I’ve written about quite a bit, recent events had driven my feminism to a new level. The election of a president who boasted about sexual assault. Facing conundrums in my work as a journalist that unveiled a fiery core I hadn’t known I had. My first experience having men talk around me in a meeting I was running, for an organization I directed, as if I wasn’t there.

But what really fired me up was, during this past year, seeing the stories of brilliance and bravery all around me. I barely had to look outside my field of vision to be gobsmacked by excellence. Women’s soccer players stepping up during the pandemic. Environmental advocates Christiana Figueres and Melania Guerra. Tomorrow’s leaders on the rise at Soy Niña. A brave doctor and a whole bookful of other rebel girls. The list goes on and on.

I think my epilogue to yesterday’s post on the horrible murders of women in Costa Rica is this: when those deep waters and currents of sexism are too much, one way we can rise into the air above and take a long breath of fresh air is simply to fix our sights on these endless sources of inspiration. They aren’t just a demonstration of why we must curb this violence: they are the pathway out of it. Whether not they’re directly engaged in women’s rights, they’re showing women, girls, boys and men what womanhood really means. From a lab or a stage or a running track, they’re making us safer.

Investing in their talents is perhaps the surest solution we have.

Featured image from Soy Niña.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! To learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

 

It’s time for some Soy Yo

Posted on by stanleyobando

This week for Happy Hour, I’m busting out the massive 2016 hit that put an 11-year-old Costa Rican girl in the international spotlight.

The music video for “Soy Yo” (“I’m Me”), from Colombian band Bomba Estéreo, featured the irrepressible Sarai González, who pretty much broke the internet that year. She lives in New Jersey (or did, at the time the song came out), but her father is from Costa Rica.

If you haven’t listened in awhile, crank it up and have yourself a little Friday dance. Sarai, whatever you’re up to now, I hope you’re still just as happy and full of killer moves.

Have a great weekend.

I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; learn how to join my Overwhelmed Writers’ League, every Saturday at 1 pm EST; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! To learn more about how to support Costa Rica during the crisis, visit my COVID-19 section – or for ways to enjoy Costa Rica from afar, visit Virtual Costa Rica.

Fearless Ticas: Mariana, who fights for access and curiosity

Posted on by stanleyobando

As a mother, I hope I never forget the advice that Mariana Camacho Cordero, 29, offers to children in the book “Ticas sin Miedo” (“Fearless Ticas”). She encourages kids to ask away when they see a disabled person in the street:

Talk to them in a natural way, be curious, ask, and don’t go with what adults tell you – because only through questions, through curiosity, through sharing, can we start breaking down the barriers that society itself has opposed upon us.

Mariana was a premature baby, part of a multiple birth, and as a result had cerebral palsy that affected the mobility of her legs and her arms. However, this didn’t keep her from being an active child who crawled or moved any way she could and hated to say “I can’t.” She disliked being separated from other kids and went to mainstream school throughout her education, finding new freedom when she received her first wheelchair in her favorite color, purple.

She was the first-ever disabled student at the Colegio Claretiano in Heredia and went on to study International Relations at the Universidad Nacional, following that up with an additional degree in Politics and Diplomacy. Today, she’s an advocate for disabled women through groups such as the Movimiento Estamos Tod@s en Acción and the Latin American Alliance of Disabled Women. She’s presented at the United Nations in 2017 and continues to work on behalf of the full inclusion of all women in society.

Mariana: I thank you and salute you. And I promise you, the next time my daughter asks questions about people we encounter who are overcoming great odds, your words will be ringing in my ears.

Excerpted and translated from “Ticas sin Medio,” a Kickstarter-funded project published by Dina Rodríguez Montero and illustrated by Vicky Ramos Quesada. Learn more here.