Intergenerational transmission of historical memory of volcanic risk in Mexico

Volcanism in Mexico

Central Mexico is crossed by the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt, where there are 16 active volcanoes, including Popocatepetl. This volcano is considered to be in high risk level in the country by scientists, because more than 25 million people live within 100 km of the crater (De la Cruz and Ramos, 1992). The activity of this volcano has been intermittent since its birth about 780,000 years ago (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, Comisión Estatal del Agua y Medio Ambiente del Estado de Morelos and Centro Universitario para la Prevención de Desastres Regionales (CUPREDER) de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), 2005: 154). On 21December 1994, Popocatépetl had a strong seismic activity that consisted of explosions which generated a 7 km-high ash column that produced a fallout that reached 50 km to the north and east (López-Vázquez et al., 2008; Macías et al., 1995). Pyroclastic flows, lahars, and ash fall are the principal hazards threatening the closest villages near the Popocatépetl volcano. This situation led geologists and volcanologists to elaborate a risk map that contemplates: pyroclastic flows, tectonic faults, landslides, mudflows, and ash fall (Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres (CENAPRED), 2001; Macías, 2005; Instituto de Geofísica de la UNAM and Centro de Geociencias, 2017) in order to define more precisely the level of risk in each geographic zone around the volcano. Within the closest volcanic risk zones, approximately 15 km away, there are many populations that have been established in the area for centuries and have developed integrating the presence of the volcano throughout its history. Since its reactivation in 1994, Popocatepetl has had uninterrupted activity that has forced the population to evacuate on several occasions and to remain on constant alert, as the possible increase in the magnitude and intensity of eruptions, which could lead to the destruction of their villages, is not ruled out (CENAPRED, 2012).

Intergenerational exchange, historical memory

The exchanges of meanings between different generations in the process of constructing the historical memory of a population living near a volcano, such as Popocatepetl in Mexico, can allow us to delve deeper into the complex relationships between society and nature. Intergenerational relationships can produce both continuity and changes in the patterns of memory and social behavior of a population, referred to in some sociological studies as trajectories or transitions, respectively. A trajectory is understood as the course that, over time, the behavior, ideas, political positions, general attitudes and way of thinking of a person, a social group or an institution follows. In this framework, trajectories can be understood as processes of continuation, reproduction, persistence, prolongation, permanence, subsistence, or stability of patterns, models, or norms of behavior. On the contrary, a transition is the action and effect of passing from one way of being or being to a different one (Caballero, 2014).

Historical memory and perception of volcanic risk

Historical memory and the oral transmission of meanings are concepts closely related to the perception of risk. Risk perception can be understood as an evaluative process that allows people to define when a situation is threatening or not, the level estimated by each person and collective, the benefit that living in that situation can generate (cost-benefit evaluation), how acceptable it is for the person to be close to that hazard (López-Vázquez and Marván, 2018; Slovic, 2000; Slovic et al., 1982), and social trust in prevention and intervention agencies (Bronfman and López-Vázquez, 2011; Siegrist and Cvetkovich, 2000), among other variables. In this way, we can understand that perception is built around different personal, social, contextual, and historical factors that will give rise to what we call risk perceptions (Slovic, 2000). From the point of view of social interactions, these perceptions determine the concept and extent of a risk that is transmitted from generation to generation. They are fundamental to define the collective acceptance of a given hazard and are also the support of the symbolic relationship that orients the social behavior of acceptance or rejection (Douglas, 1996). So, the social construction of meanings is elaborated on the basis of experience and personal and collective interpretations. Then, it is understood that disasters result from the interaction of geophysical (disasters due to natural hazards) and historical, cultural, psychological, political, economic, and social aspects (Beck, 2012; Briones, 2005; Castillo, 2014; Douglas, 1996; Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982; Duclos, 1987; García, 2005; Lavell, 2005; López, 2011; Narváez et al., 2009; Ojeda, 2016; Ojeda and López-Vázquez, 2017; Tierney, 2014; Urteaga and Eizagirre, 2013).

In the case of volcanoes and the population of indigenous descent settled in their surroundings, volcanoes are important referents of the territory as mythical actors, persons, or deities (Broda, 2009). According to Glockner (2012), for most people of these communities volcanoes are sacred beings and have a dual nature; they are considered like people and mountains at the same time. Through personification, a kind of subjective immunity is given, equating human and volcano, so that the latter become less threatening (González, 2008).

In this framework, legends and myths about volcanoes are also constructed and circulated. According to Juárez (2012), the volcano, although it is a deity and controls from above, when personified through conversation it becomes close to the community, it is with them. As Glockner (2000) says, there is still a deep belief that God is still in the world and does not live only in the sky, and can be reached through the volcano who serves as an intermediary between men and God, an idea that is similar to that of other indigenous cultures. These ideas about volcano make part of the population identity.

In a study on volcanic risk carried out in a community near the crater of the Colima volcano, Padlog (2007) affirms that the idea of not to abandon volcano territory is clearly influenced by community identity, which lasts over time, as it is timeless.

Generations and socialization processes

Despite the reasons mentioned beforehand and current advances in the field of volcanology, social scientific knowledge about the relationships between populations and volcanic territories is still insufficient. This deficiency makes it challenging to implement risk management actions in accordance with community contexts. To this end, it is necessary to know both the reproduction processes and change of meanings toward a volcano with which people have lived for long periods of time. This is the reason why studying intergenerational relationships involved in the construction of historical memory takes on a special relevance.

Generations, understood as abstract groups with limitations that are difficult to define, share the same period of time with their socio-historical determinants, identification processes, and social relations that affect them and other groups. These elements originate reproduction and change of patterns in society (Caballero, 2014; Caballero and Baigorri, 2013; Gutiérrez and Herráiz, 2009; Leccardi and Feixa, 2011). In an environment classified as risky, generational processes imply reciprocal influences within an age group or between two or more generations to signify and resignify risk (Ojeda and López-Vázquez, 2017).

Each generation develops its own meanings and transmits them to other generations, the process during which memory becomes dynamic. Memory contains aspects of individual and collective history. Historical memory is understood as the ability to remember and resignify the past in relation to the present and the future. Collective memory, on the contrary, includes the set of significant memories of a group and the intergenerational transmission of social events or transformations (Bugueño, 2008; Oddone and Lynch, 2008). Guichard and Henríquez (2011) also relate the concept of memory with that of generation and state and that the study of memory is possible by accessing the direct testimony of the people who constructed the meanings of an event in connection with their contemporaries. This aspect highlights the importance of social position of an age group at a given time.

There are some studies that relate historical memory to generational processes, such as the research conducted by Oddone and Lynch (2008), which analyses the construction of generational historical memory in Argentina and concludes that historical memory can be an organizing principle of generational processes, affected especially by significant or dramatic events, but enriched by each generation in particular territories; in conclusion, the hypothesis of the existence of a generational collective memory is supported. Another study about the historical and collective memory from two catastrophes in Chile, the 1939 earthquake in Chillán and the 1960 earthquake in Concepción and Valdivia, showed that these events served as background for the meanings attributed to the earthquake of 2010 (Guichard and Henríquez, 2011). In this work, it is shown that each age cohort takes as references particular events that mark them, giving way to generational memories, in this case, for example, people over 60 years old who lived through catastrophes talk about how these experiences marked them as a group.

A study on historical memory in Putre, in the Tarapacá Volcanic Complex, Chile, showed how the memory about the activity of the volcano is practically nonexistent because no eruptions have been recorded in a long period of time. This lack of social memory could hinder education and prevention in the face of volcanic risk. It would be important to insist on rescuing the ancestral culture from the Andean Aymara cosmovision and not focus actions only from the scientific perspective (Romero and Albornoz, 2013). In another study in Chile, about the 2010 earthquake, it was found that the memory of that event is expressed differently depending on the age of the people, the context, and the particular situation of the population; that is, in some cases the affective and emotional impact may be greater in adolescents and adults, but it could also be greater in children and older adults. Collective memories also play an important role given the emotional connection that is produced, since it should be noted that the historical memory surrounding the disaster works through the popular knowledge transmitted intergenerationally and is an important resource to avoid eventual tragedies (Concha and Henríquez, 2011).

As can be seen in the above empirical background, there are important links between memory and intergenerational processes, so it is possible to suggest that the study of these categories can contribute to the understanding of the social construction of the perception of risk. In this framework, the present study focuses on understanding the meanings, perceptions, and responses facing volcanic crises, considering the collective memory that has been transmitted intergenerationally after the new stage of activity of the Popocatepetl volcano in 1994.

Participants and techniques

The participants comprised 75 men and 61 women who were classified into three age groups: (1) 53 adolescents and young adults (Ado-Y) between 12 and 34 years, that is, born between approximately 1981 and 2003; (2) 63 adults (Adu) between 35 and 57 years, that is, born approximately between 1980 and 1958; and (3) 20 older adults (O-Adu) aged 58 years and older, who were born in 1957 or earlier (see Table 1). Considering the reactivation of the volcano in 1994, according to the choice of age of the participants, there is a group of people who grew up observing the manifestations of an active volcano, but also others who have lived through both stages, before and after the reactivation.

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Table 1.

Classification of participants and age groups according to interview techniques.

Technique	12–34	35–57	58 or older	Total
Deep individual interviews	4	6	4	14
Focus groups	10	6	-	16
Group interview	-	-	4	4
Workshop	2	9	1	12
Community meetings	37	42	11	90
Total	53	63	20	136

We worked with people from the community of different age groups, gender, and social roles. The diverse occupations and social roles of the participants included: teachers, students, parents, shopkeepers, members of organized productive groups, government officials, and housewives. The sectors from which the participants came from: family, school, organized groups, and government.

Inclusion criteria were also taken into account: (1) being a resident or working full time in the municipal capital of Tetela del Volcán; (2) willingness to participate and informed consent or informed assent for minors between 12 and 18 years of age; (3) being at least 12 years old. The inclusion of participants was carried out with different sampling strategies: by reference from other researchers, by convenience according to ease of access and ascription to an institutional or community sector, by snowball, or by need of information saturation; this last criterion consisted of linking new participants until the information became reiterative and was considered sufficient to meet the research objectives (Fusch and Ness, 2015).

For the fieldwork, elements of ethnography were taken up again, in particular the contextual and reflexive perspective (Guber, 2001), a framework from which it is assumed that reality is constructed and defined as it is investigated, according to the characteristics and interactions of the people in the particular context, which the researcher needs to reflect holistically. In this framework, the process was conducted between February 2013 and October 2016. The techniques developed were: (1) individual in-depth interviews (Vela, 2008), (2) group interview, (3) focus groups with parents and teachers, and with students belonging to a student brigade (Gutiérrez, 2011), (4) workshop with representatives of different community sectors, (5) community meetings with representatives of sectors such as education, health, neighborhoods and productive sector, spaces for socialization, agreement, feedback, and return of emergents. These techniques were accompanied by participant observation (Guber, 2001) and recorded in the field diary. Table 1 shows the participants according to each of the techniques developed:

Diary and field notes, audio recordings, photographs, and video recordings were used for participant’s information collection. We obtained a formal consent from all the participants, which stipulated the objectives of the study, procedures, and their right to leave the study if they decided to do so. To respect anonymity and confidentiality, pseudonyms or codes were used and care was taken in the storage of both physical and digital information. From the beginning, the community approved the development of the project and we communicated the progress and results to them in order to ensure that the information corresponds to the reality of the participants.

With regard to the analysis of information, below is a synthesis of the elements worked on (Ojeda- Rosero et al., 2020). The participants were organized into three age groups: (1) adolescents and young adults (Y-Ado; (2) adults (Adu); and (3) older adults (O-Adu, to facilitate the organization and analysis of information. For the qualitative analysis, elements of grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 2002) were used, which consisted of generating concepts and their relationships based on analytical categories derived from the information obtained, including a thematic analysis (Charmaz, 1991, 2001; King, 2004; Mieles et al., 2012). To obtain the results, the contents were refined based on the aspects of pertinence, relevance, density, clarity, and coherence, taking into account the technique of selective coding and constant comparison (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 2002).

Intergenerational transmission of the memory created from the dormant and active periods before 1994

One of the first aspects that can be distinguished in people’s discourse is related to the way they handle the feeling of fear toward the Popocatepetl volcano. It is observed that from generation to generation it has been transmitted that there is no need to fear the volcano because it has not caused and will not cause damage. The elders have transmitted this idea to the new generations and that is why it is present in people of different ages, as can be found in the following words of an older adult and a teenager: “. . . our ancestors, our parents, as I say from generation to generation, have been transmitting to us not to be afraid because in this place it has not caused significant damage” (O-Adu). A mother that witnessed the volcano’s activity when she was young mentions: “. . . my mother has told me . . . she tells us to be calm, nothing is going to happen. When I was a child I always thought the same . . .” (Y-Ado).

It is scientifically proven that, in the eruptive history of volcanoes, several generations may pass without activity, or it may not be strong enough to cause significant damage to the surrounding population. Between 1697 and 1919 (more than 200 years), there are no reports of eruptions and emissions of solid materials from Popocatepetl, so numerous excursions to the crater are recorded and there is evidence of sulfur dioxide exploitation due to the abundance of this mineral (UNAM et al., 1995). Before the 1994 reactivation, the volcano was not significantly active for nearly 70 years (Macías, 2005). These intermittent periods have caused people to generally perceive the volcano as inactive.

However, in spite of the temporal distance between the periods of activity, the memory of these volcanic events that were told by their ancestors is noticeable in the narratives. An adult woman tells us about a period of activity at the beginning of the last century that her grandmother and great-grandmother told her about. In addition, it can be noted in her story, how from an early age the idea of not being afraid of the volcano is transmitted, as this has been the experience of past generations:

Long time ago when I was a child my great grandparents used to talk to us about the volcano. My grandmother told us that the volcano moaned as water boiling in a pot. But my grandmother says that it was all the time, during the night, during the day, sometimes for four days, even weeks; it sounded horrible, horrible . . . (Focus Group of parents and teachers)

In this regard, it is documented that Popocatepetl had a period of activity approximately between 1919 and 1938 (CENAPRED and UNAM, 1995; Macías, 2005), which coincides with the period mentioned by some of the great-grandparents. In a study carried out in Hueyapan (Morelos), the elderly population talks about the volcanic activity at the beginning of the twentieth century and compares the volcanic activity of that time with the current one. They affirm that volcano activity at the beginning of the century was of greater magnitude than that of 1994, and that if nothing happened in the first one, there is no reason to fear in this second period of activity. This point of view is taken into account by the new generations since there is a high respect for the elders (Vera, 2009). In this study, we can verify the importance of the role of ancestors in the social construction of volcanic risk.

Perceptions and collective memory about the volcanic context after the new activity period on 1994

This second category of results has its origin in the analysis of the participant’s speech in relation to the dual perception of the volcano, seen as both a part of the landscape and a risk factor.

The year of 1994 is conceived as the beginning of a new historical time for the Popocatépelt volcanic activity, which involves all the contemporary generations. After 70 years of quiescence, the Popocatépelt emitted ashes, which elicited concern among inhabitants and authorities (CENAPRED, 2014). According to Macías (2009), it was a surprise “to observe the volcano with new eyes, whose familiar smoking figure was never associated with a sense of danger.” This is the beginning of a new age, when old and new elements amalgamate or, in other words, a time in which the social construction of the risk’s perception by the new generations turns into a complex situation involving a new scenario: the possible danger that the volcano had become. This vision of the volcano as a threat would be coinciding with the vision that the government and scientists manage from their discourse and publications, thus integrating into a more global vision of the risk perception of the volcano as a threatening factor.