María Suárez Toro (1948) – Puerto Rican and Costa Rican feminist, teacher, journalist and human rights activist in local, national, regional and international arenas, through my work as founder and co-director of FIRE —Feminist International Radio Endeavour between 1991 to 2011. As producer of FIRE, I have covered women’s perspectives on all issues at the global level, including United Nations Conferences since 1992 to 2000, ranging from Rio de Janeiro, Vienna, Cairo, Beijing and Durban, and South Africa, to numerous other local, national and international conferences and events but mostly many local grassroots women’s events and activities.
As an ocean person, fisherwoman and scuba diver I co-founded in 2014 the Centro Comunitario de Buceo Embajadores y Embajadoras del Mar (CCBEM) in Costa Rica’s Southern Caribbean. It is a non-governmental intergenerational initiative that trains Afro descendants and indigenous youth as scuba divers and cultural advocates in community underwater archaeology.
As a writer I created a literary, ancestral, Yoruba character to tell the saga of this youth’s citizenry science efforts. Tona Ina: The Mysterious Light in the Caribbean Sea, University of Costa Rica, 2021, awarded 2025 Sarasvati Special Recognition for Best Visionary Book.
In the 1970s and 1980s I worked as a human rights activist and literacy teacher and writer at the grassroots level in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras, in adult literacy and in popularization of women’s human rights.
I have taught communications as a university professor in Costa Rica in the USA and in Sweden.