Community Resilience: Chichica Speaks Out

The resilience is a human ability it has always been important, but in the risky society we live in (Ulrich Bech, 1992 dixit), it is revealed as an important aspect that needs to be encouraged, in individuals and communities, in urban and rural areasin activities business and community. Thus, already in the Human Development Report of Panama 2014, the United Nations Program highlighted the need to understand and promote resilience in the context of societies such as Panama, where poverty and vulnerability affect a very large number important of the Panamanians.

Around the same time, Panamanian sociologist Enrique Rascón Palacioresearcher at Specialized University of America (UDELAS), I conducted field research with a team from the same university to examine community resilience in an extremely poor area of ​​the country: the village of Chichica, Müna district. in Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca. (See: Rascón, E., 2023: “Resilience and risk perception. The case of Chichica, Comarca Ngäbe Buglé“, IMPREUDELAS, Panama). This corregimiento is one of those that show the most critical multidimensional indicators of poverty in the country, and the measurement of the indicator of the same name in itself reveals the widespread difficulties of the population of the considered area.

However, instead of focusing on poverty itself, Rascón and his team wanted to investigate, using the tools of both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and techniques to better understand the logic that allows some people to thrive in the face of poverty. very unfavorable conditions, overcome them and even become leaders in the fight against adversity. Based on the concept of resilience – beyond the purely psychological or individual part– will understand that community resilience deals with “a set of factors that enable a human being or his group to face and cope with life’s problems” (Suárez and Melillo, 2005). One not far from employed at UNDP and other organizations such as the IDB, but above all Latin American authors, who lead us to think about the four pillars of resilience: cohesive social structure, cultural identity, self-esteem collective, social humor and state honesty. (Rascón, 2003: 17-18).

From a methodological point of view, the appropriateness of the methodology makes her research a model to follow, but the intrinsic advantage is that through life stories (constructed through semi-structured interviews) they give voice to the lives of individuals and the community as a whole thanks to the use of focus groups in places such as Cerro Plata, Cerro Grito, Cerro Tijera, Cerro Alto Estrella,

Puerto Rico and Chichica, in these cases to gain their own perspective on the risks that communities face. The results of the research work are embodied in the work that comes out under the editorial seal UDELAS, financed by PRIDCA, CSUCA and Swiss cooperation in Central America. In it, the aforementioned author and lead researcher categorizes protective factors and risk factors that conspire against the resilience of people and communities in Chichica.

Despite the fact that the study is descriptive and exploratory in nature, it comes to important conclusions that largely support the findings of broader theories and that highlight the role of resilience protection factors such as: the mother/son relationship; family support network; teacher/student relationship: education and religion; but equally others such as sports and good public administration.

In doing so, I would like to emphasize the educational factor, but understood not so much as a process of training and promoting cognitive skills – which is certainly very relevant – but also education as an educational ecosystem of a person, capable of awakening self-confidence in them, self-esteem, responsibility and solidarity.

The section dedicated to life stories that shock with their raw simplicity and brutal honesty tell us how the material conditions of life certainly greatly limit human development, but misunderstandings are even more difficult. cultural, like heritage from a time when “dumb” children were educated, not because they lacked the physiological ability to speak, but because the mother tongue, Ngäbe, was a mere dialect to be exterminated, and aspects of vernacular culture were considered barbaric.

Fortunately, times have changed, and the comparisons that can be made between the perceptions of life and the future of the generations close to the 1970s and those of the present century, who were largely the beneficiaries early education in the mother tongue, as well as the incorporation of intercultural inclusion, despite the fact that these processes are in their relative infancy here.

Another novelty of the book in question is the relationship that the author establishes between community resilience and disaster risk management (natural and anthropogenic) and adaptation. climate change (GIRD, ACC), succeeding in proposing a management plan from and for the community. Natural risks such as earthquakes, fires, droughts, landslides, but also those resulting from bad agricultural practices or residues have been identified. In a very precise way, they outline sustainable and coherent courses of action that turn into an exercise in self-protection and self-care, which traditional authorities, as well as national and provincial governments, should be aware of and take advantage of.

This study and its proposals are worth repeating, not only in the regions, with other indigenous peoples in order to compare the results and deepen our knowledge of the social dynamics of those peoples, but also in peasant communities and vulnerable areas of our cities where the population is exposed to other evils and a different civilizational matrix, typical of metropolitan Panama and others Panama which coexist in our territory (Pedro Rivera, dixit, vr.gr. 2017).

From this novel, well structured and coherent that makes Chichico speak and, above all, let us know publicly, future contrasting and replication work can and should be done in other communities, using new data from the 2023 Census: using standard of living surveys, as well as using maps and studies of poverty and multidimensional poverty and indicators such as those that UNDP designed its study on infant and childhood conditions in Panama 2014. Another contribution of great interest will be the monitoring of GRID and its replication in other regional communities and beyond the regions. So Chichica will not only speak, but also give examples.