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. Along Mexico's Pacific coast are complexes of lagoons and estuaries which produce prodigious quantities of fin-fishes, oysters, and shrimp. Mexico's first fishing cooperatives were established in these regions in the 1930's. These organizations are primarily devoted to the production of shrimp, and to a lesser extent oysters, for export. The inshore cooperatives of south Sinaloa state-the first fishing cooperatives to be established in all of Mexico-are currently members of a State-instituted and con