Wh´appen Caribe Sur?. a new magazine in Puerto Viejo and its surrounding areas

Wa´ppen Caribe Sur?

A local grassroots magazine was born on the 3^1st of August 2014 in the Southern Caribbean cost of Costa Rica during the celebrations of “Black People´s Day” in the country. 

                                                                        First revista


The production in Spanish gives the local community a written voice in order to compliment their own information in oral language and most recently though social media. It is produced by Gudy Productions with the comunicational support of Foro Caribe Sur.

Official figures show that only 25% of local people in the Caribe Sur have Internet access. This means that any project that seeks to use Internet alone to provide information will only deepen the digital divide.  While it might target international and national audiences well, making the information available to the local people require other productions.

This is why the Foro Caribe Sur is supporting this initiative by a group of young producers who have done this kind of local magazines in other communities in the country. The Foro, after a successful year and a half of producing in the social networks in Facebook with over 11,000 “likes” and in a blog that has had 27,000 readers in one year, has taken the task of closing the digital gap in the community. It´s material in the social media will be produced for the magazine in collaboration with its producers.

Team of producer and collaborators
who brought the first publication from
the printing press to the zone

The first publication came out to the local public and government authorities at the end of the month and was well received. “This is so needed” said Sonia Rodriguez, an Afro Costa Rican young entrepreneur that own the local “libreria”.

Renowned Afro Costa Rican writer, Qunice Duncan  said that he was very interested in the proposal and will bring it to the President of Costa Rica next month in his visit with him.

A tourist told the distributors that he was very happy to see a paper that portrays the voices, stories and struggles of the people he meets in the streets.

The project seeks to provide the Caribe Sur communities in southern Costa Rica  a platform to express themselves, while providing a place where tourist businesses can disseminate their services by buying adds in it. This type of “encadenamientos” (links) can make the magazine self-sustaining in the long run.

It is being distributed by local activists and placed in the most visited local businesses, the pulperías (grocery stores).