Modelo de resiliencia comunitaria: territorio, memoria y género

Project Features:
In the bio-reconstruction and rehabilitation of damaged adobe housing there is a political and moral stance where health, nature, social and cultural life benefit. In addition, it promotes communities' constructive autonomy . It is essential for the preservation of peasant cultural identity that architectural heritage includes rural vernacular forms, instead of focusing the attention on urban environments, such as the historical centres which tell colonial, exploitative and extraction-based history only.
Two years after the events, affected communities are used to live in their damaged houses, which has evidently increased their vulnerability to potential future disasters.
The BioReconstruye Collective proposes participatory methodologies because the greater the community participates in a project, the better the process will be adapted to the social and cultural context, and therefore, the greater the likelihood of achieving long-term sustainability.
The project has 3 main focuses: gender, basin and community.
During the realization of the project, community workshops will also be held, which ensure that the knowledge acquired will not only stay within the circle of families benefiting from the reconstruction of adobe housing but will reach more people. Being a participatory processes, people will acquire a living experience and with it, adapt what they have learned to the needs of other adobe houses damaged by the earthquake or deteriorated by abandonment inside and outside their communities.

General Objective:
Preserve the architectural cultural heritage of 3 damaged rural adobe vernacular houses in the community of Nueva Urbina, Chiapas.

Specific Objectives:
Recover the historical memory of the generations that inhabit the 3 adobe houses.
Strengthen the intergenerational affective bonds of families.
Increase women's participation in both decision-making and house rehabilitation efforts.

After the 2017 earthquake, a network of spontaneous responses is generated by individuals and collectives in the six affected states, including the BioReconstruye Mexico Network. Specifically, in the state of Chiapas, BioReconstruye México Chiapas performs the emergency work.
The disaster cycle includes the stage before, during, and after the disaster, which merges again with the stage before, during and after the next disaster. And so on, since geophysical phenomena (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions) and hydrometeorological (hurricanes, heavy rains) are not going to stop happening. After the return to daily life, the work to reduce vulnerability, identifying existing risks and prevent future risks becomes indispensable. In this way, we will be building a culture of resilience, understood as the ability of individuals and a community to respond and adapt; that is, the ability to leverage experience to project the future. In this way, we will not start from scratch in the face of a new disaster situation and will reduce the risk over time.
We will run the project in the community of Nueva Urbina, Pijijiapan, Chiapas, (Mexico) and we will carry out our work considering women as fundamental agents in community management capacity, since their organizational experience to sustain life is critical in reacting and preventing a disaster. This women's organization, responsible for reproduction, resource management and care, remains unseen, so it is essential that it moves from the periphery to a central role in decision-making.
Similarly, this invisible organization is based on community ties and is this social fabric one of the most important protective factors that will ensure the reduction of risk. This community perspective provides us with the participatory tools to generate an exchange between the collective and the community, in an exercise of autonomy.

Currently, we are a transdisciplinary team of four women working with natural construction, appropriate technologies and agroecology, through horizontal practices.
We carried out our work in communities in the state of Chiapas (Tonalá, Pijijiapan and San Cristóbal de Las Casas), which were affected by the earthquake of september 7, 2017. The following work was carried out:

• structural diagnosis in more than 75 houses in 5 locations.
• the reconstruction of 15 houses of adobe, pajarcilla and cob.
• the rehabilitation of 2 adobe houses and a school.
• the construction of 24 saving stoves.
• the implementation of 6 community safe water systems.
• the implementation of 6 sanitation modules for grey water.
• 6 workshops on living in risk areas and 6 participatory murals.
• 4 workshops on agroecological systems.
• 6 performances of the theatrical play 'Rebuilding us'.
• survey of material and editing of 6 audiovisual newsletters.
  Thanks to the experience of these 2 years of accompaniment to the affected communities we have learned that, after having lived a disaster, the community's reconstruction efforts foster the cohesion of the social fabric.

Members of the collective :

Architect Fernanda Prado Flores
Architect specialized in natural construction, with extensive experience in construction management. Responsible for the administration and management of resources, realization of budgets and systematization of information.

Architect Mariana Decorme Bouchez
Architect specialized in natural construction, permaculture and appropriate technologies. Since the 2017 earthquake, she has been collaborating with affected communities in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of their houses. Responsible for overseeing and accompanying the construction processes.

Educational Psychologist Martina Vega Francino
Responsible for developing pedagogical proposals and learning environments with participatory and collaborative methodologies with a gender focus. Responsible for the evaluation of learning processes.

Geologist Virginia Domingo Fernandez
Specialized in strategies for the prevention of socio-natural risks and disasters with a basin and gender approach, as well as in the design and installation of hydraulic systems. Responsible for external communication and systematization of audiovisual material.

Resources:
Basic tools are available for construction, communication and water analysis. A car is also available.