Social mining as an alternative of collective resource management in social property

Abstract

Social mining is considered a historical option for local development, facing the dominant modality of commercial mining of interest to large international and national companies, which has recently dispossessed the original owners of millions of ha. Social mining is a small and medium scale type of mining where ejidos and agrarian communities participate, devoted primarily to the exploitation and valuation of non-metallic minerals, contemplated as an option and opportunity for economic, organizational and social development. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used to identify the processes and organizational situation of the community, and to gather data about production, costs and income from marble sales. It was found that the agrarian community has generated its own organizational structure and normative modalities that regulate access to the resource; the characteristics of producers’ organizations determine the ability of a relational system for trade, obtaining credits, transactions with buyers and management of institutional processes. It is necessary to consolidate the community organization and the integration of marble producing cooperatives to make an incursion into added value chains.