Participation and Organization in Two Rural Communities in Ruiz, Nayarit, Mexico: Between Corporatism and Self-Management

In this paper the authors argue that reflection on the issue of participation and social organization in rural areas, cannot be understood without a local historical perspective and recognition of the productive transformations that have lived the farmers and their families from the implementation of a neoliberal policy that has impoverished conditions of rural life in Mexico. External interventions of the State, non-governmental organizations or local economic actors, via government programs or private interests, they have enabled, with own internal processes, different responses and practices of community participation and organization; some of them characterized as corporative practices and others with a self-managed way. What conditions exist either? What are the forms of participation in rural communities? What terms can transform the relationship with the State?

To answer such questions, we decided from the analysis of the productive and organizational evolution of the two communities to live together in the same region in the state of Nayarit in Mexico, but that given the characteristics of community resources and forms of intervention present through the years, they have outlined different ways and different conceptions of participation and organization. Methodologically, the road layout has been the ethnographic; techniques: semi-structured interviews and participant observation.