Maria Suarez Toro interviewed by Melody Garrett - Diving With a Purpose

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Maria Suarez Toro interviewed by Melody Garrett

Home > Maria Suarez Toro interviewed by Melody Garrett

Who is Maria Suarez Toro, Ph.D?
So many accomplishments and titles passed through my mind. I decided to google her and, to no surprise, it read …Master Scuba Diver, boat captain, NAS certified, feminist, journalist, professor, activist in defense of human rights, women’s rights, educator…….

Maria, now in her mid 70’s, was born in Puerto Rico but left for New York as a young woman. She explains, “I went to New York and studied to get my Master’s Degree in Education from the University of Albany. I was one of the first bilingual teachers in the state of New York in 1972, taught in Harlem, and started one of the first bilingual Headstart Programs in the area.”

So how did you end up in Costa Rica (CR)?
“I met and married my Costa Rican husband in 1974 and we moved to San Jose, CR where I continued to teach until I began to work in the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign to teach 1 million adults to read and write. I did the same (taught literacy) in El Salvador just after their war.”

So when did all of your fire and passion to become an activism begin?
“When I returned to CR, I became part of the Human Rights’ Commission. With the dictatorship in Central America and the war, I witnessed that during those wars, there were a lot of violations of human rights and I saw the need for human rights education.”
“That’s when I also recognized that women’s rights are human rights. I joined the feminists’ movement to force the UN to recognize violence against women and to recognize women’s rights are human rights. She explained, “I interviewed women worldwide. There are very few countries that I haven’t been to. When I interviewed them, I would hear women of all ages and from all walks of life saying that their rights were not recognized.”
“Women had a perspective not in any books- about environment ‘a woman’s body is the first environment of everybody.’ I had never heard that before.” For the next 50 years, Maria stayed engaged in the feminist movement and hosted a international radio program of women’s voices worldwide. It was the only thing that was important enough to keep her away from her beloved ocean.
Maria shares that she missed the ocean desperately as a diver and fisherwoman. She had learned to swim before she could walk. Both of her parents had been avid ocean lovers. “I remained heavily involved in activism until I retired but I simply had to get back to the ocean.” At that time, the nearest beautiful beach was a four hour drive.
At age 65, she decided that she must move to a home near the ocean. Her plan was to retire, dive, snorkel, and work with the local fishing community. Maria quickly realized that living by the ocean came with a price. Somehow (not surprisingly), she became engaged in the struggle to keep the original land rights of the BriBri tribal community as well as the struggle for conservation of the ocean. “I realized that we [the community] could win that fight to keep the culture of the community, the land rights, and the ocean.” Unfortunately, there was another adversary. “If we lost our youth to drugs, desperation, and suicide, we would have no life here. That’s when I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to the youth who told me that in order to continue to relate to the ocean, they could no longer do it the way their grandparents and parents did it. They wanted to do it
by scuba diving, in a modern way.” Some of the youth were Afro-BriBri kids, born in that ocean as fourth generation descendants from the sunken enslaved shipwreck. This would become the birth of Ambassadors of the Seas (AOS). The four founding youth of AOS were ages 13-15, and with tanks on their backs for the first time, they experienced Discover Scuba with a local Dive Instructor hired by Maria.
When they returned, gauging their excitement and the sparkle in their eyes, Maria decided, “ This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.” This would be their opportunity to continue their parents’ legacy of entrepreneurship with ocean conservation. “Talamanca has such cultural biodiversity and natural richness because their grandparents protected the ocean, mountains, and the forest.”, she added.
Maria sighed, “This would be their diving with a purpose, an opportunity for youth to conserve on their own terms and do it sustainably.”

When did you begin publishing?

She talks about her first book, self published in 1984, was called ‘The Children Of The War’ about the children in El Salvador during its war understanding the voices of those who silently suffered persecution. It was about ordinary people who couldn’t read and write but connected to the land, rivers, and nature with their wisdom about the state of the world and how they perceived their right to justice, land, and peace. “I wrote a similar book about Nicaragua’s people once they were able to read and write, they could express a wisdom that came from relating to
nature in a way that many literate academic people had lost.” Forty years later, she wrote her first children’s book using the character ‘Tona Ina’ who
was a light in the ocean representing the Spirit of the lost ancestors buried beneath the ocean’s floor. It teaches youth about ocean conservation and about the their rich cultural heritage that lies in the ocean beneath. “That history must be told to children to complete what older people haven’t been able to do- to bring together and integrate rather than fractionate archeology, geology, climate, sociology, and culture. Children have that in their nature- not to academically fractionate, but to integrate. Remember everything is connected.”

What’s the next chapter for you?

Maria explains, “AOS is creating a different way of doing underwater archeology- from the perspective of the inheritors of the legacies that are in those ships and they [the youth] have a voice so archeology changes will include not only the study of objects and history but also the way people connect to their own legacy which was lost. They are the first generation with access to high school. These
young people have both ancestral knowledge from grandparents and parents plus the access to science. They can integrate that. They have to take over the direction of the project and integrate citizenship, science, archeology, climate, and sociology.

What do you want your legacy to be?

“Very early in life, I knew that I came to this world with a mission: to facilitate peoples’ push and to challenge practices that are
detrimental to our happiest livelihood as a species and as a people. I lived it fully in my life and I hope people will remember that.”
“We are very grateful to the international community and to Diving With A Purpose. We all have something in common as [maritime] archeology activists.”