Community resilience: the case of Asunción Ixtaltepec Oaxaca

Community resilience is the process by which the people who make up a population develop cognitive, socio-affective and behavioral mechanisms to face events that disrupt their balance. For instance, natural catastrophes, economic crisis or the presence of social factors, such as violence, which otherwise drive people to deploy personal and collective resources in order to mitigate its impact. The objective of the study was to analyze how the residents of the town of Asunción Ixtaltepec in the state of Oaxaca developed resilient ways to face the psychosocial consequences of the 2017 earthquakes, for which a Community Action Intervention Program was developed for the benefit of 420 people, whose age range was from 15 to 69 years. The data obtained reports that 81 % of the people developed community resilience, considering as main tools: a) favorable cognitive assessment about strengthening cohesion and social ties among the population, b) development of tranquility and psychosocial harmony as part of the recognition of collective actions to reduce the impact of seismic activity in the region and, c) the promotion of actions to reduce the psychological and psychosocial impact of seismic events