Podcast series, part 1: A harvest turned upside down

To celebrate our new podcast partnership with Onda UNED, a media project from Costa Rica’s State Distance University, we’re revisiting our very first series—the one that took us deep into the coffee fields of southern Costa Rica during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This month, we invite you to slip in your earbuds and join us on a journey that took us from the chaos of the mid-pandemic Panamanian border, to the odd quiet of isolation barracks at a Coto Brus farm, to the living space of the Palacios family high in the mountains of Los Santos. You’ll learn, as we did, about how Nicaraguan and indigenous Ngöbe-Buglé migration flows sustain this country’s iconic industry, and how unusual alliances were formed to save the harvest during the massive threat posed by the COVID-19 virus.

Check out Part 1 of our six-part series. (You can also hear this first episode in Spanish, right here. Listen to “A harvest turned upside down” on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify (below)—or just search for “El Colectivo 506” wherever you listen to podcasts.