Training to monitor the environmental impact of palafitos (Yucatán)
Community participation in Participatory Action Research (IAP) processes is indispensable and formative: we all learn something by solving a problem. In the construction of palafito prototypes for the Yucatan coast (Mexico). The participants of the community group learned concepts of architecture, corrosion, ecology and IAP, necessary to have a greater participation in the design and construction of the palafittes, teach what they know, interact with specialists in these disciplines, and monitor the environmental impact of the households. The methodology of the IAP is dialogical, combining research with teaching-learning and action, consistent with the approaches of participating in the production of knowledge. The problems of the communities are the starting point to seek solutions and transform the living conditions of the population, to arrive at processes of empowerment that propitiate the production of knowledge and useful actions for those involved and their environment.
The greatest learning has been to build a home through collaboration between a multidisciplinary team of academics and some members of the community, who joined the work from its very design. The participants, at the individual level and the group, were respected at all times during the process, in which they pointed out their agreements and expressed their criticisms, which were heard and analyzed. Together we obtained a prototype result of a common work and that is not, like many other well-intentioned projects, one technically impeccable but foreign to the community.
Mª Teresa Castillo Burguete and Federico Dikinson, professors and researchers from the Department of Human Ecology. Cinvestav-Mérida (Mexico)