Mexico's Marginal Inshore Pacific Fishing Cooperatives

Following their establishment by the central government in 1933, Mexico's inshore Pacific fishing cooperatives enjoyed great prosperity. Today, however, they are marginal entities, and many are failing. The inshore cooperatives of south Sinaloa state are examined as a case in point. Their decline was brought about by a multiplicity of factors-corruption, counter-productive technological innovations, natural catastrophe-and especially by an underlying structural flaw in their organization: as State-instituted and controlled entities, they are not autonomous. Thus, as the central government developed economically more viable offshore shrimpproducing cooperatives, the inshore cooperatives were unable to respond competitively, and declined.