Sin Maquillaje

From Sunday to Thursday, journalist Altagracia Salazar manages to connect with thousands of people live on her YouTube channel, in a space called El patio, which is broadcast from 6:00 to 6:30 in the afternoon. The views of each installment end up with an average of 18,000 viewers, reaching over 30,000 views on particular days. This is their second product born from the YouTube platform. The first, Without Makeup, has a formal informative structure, it is broadcast from [7:00 to 7:30] in the morning with a summary and analysis of the previous day. Between both programs, Salazar estimates that his income from the platform is around $6,000 per month, from his channel that already has more than 88,000 subscribers. Salazar dedicates three hours of preparation to Sin Maquillaje for the half hour of transmission, which starts at 3:00 in the morning. But El patio has another structure, much lighter in content. Altagracia Salazar's first broadcast of El patio was one afternoon in March, just the second day of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Remember that "in the absence of a profession", he took advantage of the abundance of spring in the flowers of his patio, to show it. That first day about 700 people connected. The next day, she had no intention of showing the same flowers, but a Dominican doctor living in New York suggested she do it again. Altagracia Salazar understood that she was providing a kind of remedy, in the face of the uncertainty that was being experienced. And he transmitted again. "The idea was to do it only during the confinement period. Then I made a survey (about) if we could do it one or two days. The point is that it stayed," he says. For Altagracia Salazar, El patio has generated an "educational and fraternal" space. among those who consider themselves "patieros", which has manifested itself in a tangible way, in the creation of a WhatsApp group called "La gente del patio". Joel Mateo, one of its administrators, explains that it was born from about 20 followers of Altagracia. The group already exceeds 200 people, the majority also live abroad. "We generally comment on current affairs, social concerns, (cooking) recipes...". Mateo, who lives in Canada, adds that they are united by "that feeling of wanting a better country." The live broadcasts are, literally, a kind of meeting where each other, in the conversation box, greets each other. And Altagracia Salazar responds to your greetings and comments. Photos and text taken from Acento. (2021 interview)