Counterweights from Below: Mexican Fishing Cooperatives and Public Policy

Versión español aquí.

Introduction

In Mexico, various actors participate in the fishing industry. On one hand, there is the private sector, which consists primarily of business owners who possess capital and fleets. On the other hand, there is the social sector of the fishing industry, which is made up of fishers organized under various legal structures, the most representative and widespread of which is the cooperative society for marine activities in fish production. Both sectors—the private and the social—are governed by robust Mexican government legislation. This legal framework is not a gratuitous concession; rather, it recognizes our legal standing and is enshrined in our Constitution.

For us, this recognition is a fundamental tool that allows us to have a voice and participate as legitimate stakeholders in the forums and settings where public decisions affecting our daily lives are made. Building on this legal and constitutional framework, we have used the right to free association to come together, form partnerships, and establish cooperatives. This is not a recent endeavor; we have cooperatives within our organization that are more than 70 years old, some dating back to the 1970s and others even to the beginning of the cooperative movement in Mexico. Over the course of these decades, we have adapted to various amendments and reforms to the law, but we have done so without ever losing sight of the social purpose of the cooperative model.

Given the need for representation in various forums for social participation, cooperatives began to organize into federations by state and region. These federations formed the National Confederation of Fisheries and Aquaculture Cooperatives (CONACOOP). In 2014, several federations formed the Mexican Confederation of Fisheries and Aquaculture Cooperatives (CONMECOOP), which now represents 45 federations in 15 states. The confederation serves as a representative body that fosters synergy and proposes public policies to the government.

Leaders of 41 of the federations of cooperatives that make up CONMECOOP gather for a group photo in the port of La Paz, Mexico, May 2024.
Credit: Judy Gearhart

In this context, the concept of a counterweight comes out of a very clear historical and social need. As a social sector [social enterprises that represent their members], we did not want to leave the entire spotlight to business leaders and the private sector to dictate the future of the fishing industry. We were aware that allowing a single sector to dominate the agenda meant falling into dangerous practices, ranging from exploitative payments to fishers to monopolies on fishing permits and concessions. That is why we understood that the counterweight had to be the human factor—the workers of the sea—that is, organized fishers. The goal of this counterweight is to ensure the scales remain balanced at the tables where the rules of the game are defined.

In this sense, the counterweight also serves as a form of accountability. That is how the social sector can participate in decision-making, challenge decisions when necessary, and demand that the rules be applied fairly to everyone. It is not just about being present at a meeting; it is about influencing, balancing, and preventing a single party from dictating the conditions that govern thousands of families who depend on the sea.

Organization: Coming Together to Gain Representation

The fundamental basis of any effort to serve as a counterweight is organization. While the legal framework allowed us to come together and gain legal representation, organization is not something that remains merely a formality or an issue of being officially registered. True organization is built through daily practice and arises from the pressing need to have a collective voice capable of participating forcefully in decision-making forums.

CONMECOOP’s structure is built from local cooperatives up to federations and from there to the national confederation. This organizational structure responds to the need to have a presence at different levels of government and to be able to coordinate our participation. Because there is a very clear and tangible difference: a fisher who tries to sell their product alone and negotiate with the authorities on their own is not the same as a fisher who acts under the protection and support of an organized group.

When we are organized, we have much stronger bargaining power. We can sit at the table, we can make proposals, and we can actively participate with strong arguments. This capacity stems directly from collective organization. For this reason, the first essential step in any strategy to serve as a counterweight is to organize ourselves in such a way that we form a strong, reliable, transparent, and honest structure. Without these elements, representation is hollow, and the counterweight lacks the necessary mass to tip the scales.

Autonomy: Leadership Free of Political Agendas

The effective exercise of a counterweight depends intrinsically on real autonomy and true self-governance. In Mexico, the fishing sector suffered for many years under government paternalism and a corporatist model that took hold in the 1970s. This system tied us to the interests of the political parties in power; there was a system of control whereby, if organizations wanted to access government benefits or support, they were forced to follow the political line dictated by the government. This nullified our autonomy and drastically limited our ability to dissent or question official decisions.

We began to break away from that model by maturing enough to decide that we wanted to be autonomous. To achieve this, we established very clear internal rules. The most important one is that no leader holding an official position representing CONMECOOP may have political [electoral] ambitions. This is a matter of institutional integrity: if a leader aspires to run for senator or representative, they must resign from their leadership position within the organization. We do not prohibit the personal growth of our leaders, but we do require that their work within the confederation be exclusively dedicated to defending the interests of the sector, without any bias or alignment toward any particular political party.

There is another fundamental element to our autonomy: the financial aspect. Our organization enjoys total and absolute autonomy because we do not receive a single peso from any government agency. We are funded exclusively by the dues paid by members to the cooperatives, by the cooperatives to the federations, and by the federations to the confederation. Although on certain agendas we have strategic allies who support us with operational expenses, such as travel or specific activities, no external resources go toward anyone’s salary or the organization’s operating expenses. This financial independence gives us the leeway for self-management that is necessary to speak freely, to highlight the sector’s problems, and to defend our own positions without fear that the government will cut off our funding.

This independence and democratic maturity are even reflected in our national assemblies. Unlike other organizations, where the president controls the entire process, CONMECOOP’s assemblies are not led by the confederation’s president. At the time of the assembly, a presiding committee—composed of a chair, a secretary, and a vote-counter—is democratically elected. At that moment, they become the highest authority, and the national leader becomes simply another member. In this position of equality, the leader must be accountable to the collective through this transparent process. Without this financial and political autonomy, we could not act as a counterweight to the government, because if you depend financially on the decision-maker, you lose the ability to question them and, consequently, lose the ability to maintain a balance of power.

Competition with the Private Sector: Defining the Rules of the Game

One of the most complex and constant aspects of acting as a counterweight is our relationship with the private sector. While we operate in a market economy and competition is inevitable, the counterweight we provide is not limited to commercial matters of buying and selling. Although it is true that being organized gives us greater bargaining power vis-à-vis marketers, the true arena for exercising this counterweight lies in public policies regarding fishery regulation and management.

It is in the discussions involving permits, concessions, management plans, and fisheries management tools where we truly compete. All the stakeholders sit in these working groups: the private sector with its business interests, the social sector defending the interests of communities, the government as the regulator, and the scientific community in an advisory role. It is a tripartite relationship—private, social, and government—in which each party defends its vision for the sector.

This discussion is of vital importance because it determines who has access to the sea’s natural resources, under what terms, and according to what rules. There is a latent and constant risk that permits and concessions will be concentrated in the hands of a few actors with significant economic clout, which would create monopolies that would displace artisanal and social fishermen. We participate in these discussions to prevent these abuses and to seek conditions that are more equitable for those who work the sea. The counterweight lies precisely in ensuring that no single vision is imposed and that social interests are taken into account, so that the future of fisheries is not governed solely by the economic profitability of a select few.

Science: Information, Evidence, and Social Mediation

In the world of fisheries regulation, any technical discussion must necessarily be based on a scientific proposal. Science determines the opening dates for the fishing season, the closing dates for fishing bans, and catch quotas. However, in Mexico we face a complicated reality regarding the official research institute, IMIPAS [Mexican Institute for Research on Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture]. As a social sector, we often do not fully trust its proposals, and this is not necessarily due to bad intentions or underhanded dealings, but rather to its evident lack of capacity and funding. The institute frequently lacks the human and financial resources necessary to conduct in-depth research throughout the country.

This shortcoming puts us in a situation where, when they present data, we doubt its accuracy. To ensure that the process is reliable and we can trust it, we have collaborated and participated directly in research on the fisheries that regulate us. We work alongside our own technical advisors to generate our own information from the field. Since we’re out on the water every day, we producers often have more accurate information than the government or the institute itself.

This knowledge allows us to enter the discussion with a solid foundation. Science may propose a management strategy—for example, setting a fixed opening date—but we engage in mediation to seek agreements. We argue that sometimes the dates recommended by science are not appropriate from a social or economic standpoint; for example, if on the proposed date the price of the product is very low or market conditions are unfavorable. We argue that social interests can be flexible and that, based on our own evidence and without compromising the sustainability of the resource, management tools for certain fisheries can be adjusted.[1] Our role as a counterweight, then, also consists of using information and technical evidence to balance decision-making and prevent scientific criteria—isolated from the social and economic reality of fishermen—from being imposed.

Legislative Advocacy: The Case of the Navy and Criminalization

Another key arena where we act as a counterweight is in the legislative sphere. We strongly advocate for the public engagement process surrounding the legislative agenda to ensure that lawmakers do not listen solely to one side. Furthermore, by law, whenever a decree is to be issued or a change made to fisheries regulations, a public consultation must be held with the people affected by that measure. Our role is to serve as a counterweight for those of us who may be affected by decisions made from behind a desk.

A very recent and highly significant example is our firm opposition to the proposal that the Navy assume full inspection and surveillance functions, replacing the civilian authority of CONAPESCA [National Commission for Aquaculture and Fisheries]. Our stance is not a whim, it stems from our knowledge of the fisheries chaos that the government has allowed to persist over the past 60 years. Currently, there is a backlog of approximately 40 percent in the issuance of permits and concessions to fishermen who submitted their applications in a timely and proper manner. However, because the authorities lack the financial and human resources to process these documents, many fishermen are forced to go out to sea with expired permits (even though they have completed all their paperwork in a timely and proper manner).

If, in this context of administrative chaos, we bring in the Navy—whose job is simply to follow the book and apply the law to the letter—the result will be massive injustice. If they do that, they’re going to need a very large, spacious prison, because they’d be arresting thousands of innocent people who are working out of necessity and who are likely victims of the government’s own inefficiency. Acting as a counterweight in the Chamber of Deputies, we managed to halt this change for the time being, arguing that punitive, militarized surveillance cannot be implemented without first establishing a genuine fisheries regulatory framework that addresses the backlog the government itself has caused. This is the counterweight role in practice: preventing an authoritarian government act from criminalizing the social sector due to the state’s administrative failures.

Tripartite Surveillance and the Judicial Bottleneck

Given the government’s evident lack of resources and its historical lack of interest in effectively combating illegal and unregulated fishing, we have taken the initiative to create community inspection and surveillance committees. It is vital to clarify that we are neither self-defense groups nor armed groups; our goal is to assist the authorities, not to replace them. We cannot carry out surveillance tasks without the physical presence of legal authorities. The model we have developed is a tripartite collaboration involving the civilian, military, and social sectors working together. Under this framework, organized fishers provide the vessels and operational personnel for patrols, while the Navy ensures security and CONAPESCA handles the administrative and legal aspects of the operation. These mixed crews patrol the sea to protect the resource that feeds us.

However, we face a frustrating bottleneck in the judicial system. All too often, all the effort put in by these crews is wasted once the case reaches the courts. There is no trust in the judicial process because many judges view illegal fishermen not as major criminals, but as people who went out to fish out of necessity to support their families. Under this premise of “necessity,” the case is weakened, and the judge ends up imposing the minimum sentence or releasing the offenders. This impunity destroys the incentive for enforcement. That is why our role as a counterweight also involves pressing for changes to judicial protocols to ensure that penalties are more severe. If there are no real consequences for illegal fishing, the sanctions system does not work and the balance is disrupted

Relationship with NGOs: Finding the Middle Ground

In recent decades, the Mexican government has left gaps in areas such as training, the development of management plans, and the design of public policies. These gaps have been filled largely by environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Our relationship with these civil society organizations is complex and is defined by a very clear stance: “neither too much nor too little.”

We have learned to forge strategic alliances with organizations that share our agenda and respect the social purpose of our work. We understand that not everything can be radical conservation that prohibits human activity, but we are also aware that not everything can be unregulated fishing and the depletion of resources. We seek a middle ground, a balance that respects economic factors and families’ livelihoods, while always striving for sustainable use of the environment. With organizations that are not radical and that are committed to this balance, we have built bridges and will continue to work together, always exercising our own counterweight role to ensure that their external agendas do not jeopardize the viability of our traditional fishing activity.

Conclusion: The Cure for the Sector’s Ills

In conclusion, we must emphasize that a real and effective counterweight requires having a voice and the courage to speak up in the face of authority and other sectors. But it is not enough to speak up just to complain; we must do so with substance and clear proposals. If we do not do this—if we do not have a technical foundation and a solid organization behind us—we will merely be the loudmouths in the street who complain without offering real solutions.

.As we often say: complaining doesn’t cure the disease. A complaint is simply a warning sign, a symptom that alerts us that something is wrong, but on its own it cures nothing. If we truly want to heal the fishing sector and improve our living conditions, we have to go to the doctor and take the medicine to get better. For us, that medicine is the organization itself.

A functioning counterweight needs to have all the right ingredients: it must be a strong organization, trustworthy in the eyes of its members and the outside world, fully transparent in the management of its resources and democratic processes, and honest in its approach. Only through an organization with these characteristics—one capable of generating its own information and influencing every decision-making forum independently—can we ensure that, in the future of Mexican fisheries, the balance will be maintained.

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This blog post is a summary of an interview conducted with the authors by Jonathan Fox. The transcript was converted into a blog post through an experiment that used editorial support from three different AI models. The initial conversion to a blog post was performed by ChatGPT under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Fox, followed by an assessment of its fidelity to the transcript (90%). To further increase the blog’s fidelity to the authors’ exact words, phrases, and original ideas, the blog was reviewed by NotebookLM under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Fox, followed by his editorial review (achieving 95% fidelity). That version was reviewed by the authors, Jonathan Fox, and Judy Gearhart. It was translated from the original Spanish by Deepl, and the translation reviewed by Jonathan Fox and Karen Brock. In the spirit of learning by doing, comments are welcome.

[1] Editor’s note: In some fisheries, CONMECOOP members have voluntarily implemented self-regulatory measures that go beyond what is required by law.