Children’s Participation in the Chiapas Coast Earthquake Disaster and in the Reconstruction with Libraries

Abstract

While a collaborative research process with rural communities and child participation was being carried out on the Chiapas Coast, an earthquake and tsunami took place on the night of September 7, 2017, and resulted in a social, material and personal disaster for hundreds of coastal families in the Municipalities of Pijijiapan and Tonalá. The situation called for professional commitment to the affected communities and in particular to the children; as a result, the direction of the research was transformed to respond to a situation of emergency and to the subsequent reconstruction process. Because of the totally unexpected nature of the event, children participated in the proposed collective activities, as part of psycho-social care, in sharing their experiences, emotions and concerns derived from the natural disaster and its consequences. They also proposed actions of solidarity with the most affected and collaboration in the reconstruction process, in the synergy generated among various social actors, which led to the inclusion of opportunities for child participation in the installation of community libraries in damaged schools. This text, in addition to giving an account of the medium term collaborative and participatory processes with social actors and coastal children respectively, proposes the children’s narrative for the first adult approach to knowledge and analysis