NETWORK FOR INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ARTICULATION TO MANAGE INNOVATION IN THE REGION OF LOS TUXTLAS, VERACRUZ, MEXICO

In the region of Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, a Network for Institutional and Organizational Articulation (Red de Articulacion Institucional y Organizacional, RAIO) was formed to improve the relationships of collaboration, cooperation and association between institutions and organizations involved in a proposal of institutional intervention that dealt with the scarce technological innovation in the economic and social development of small-scale hillside farmers, with the agroecologic technology of milpa interspersed with fruit trees (MIAF, for its initials in Spanish), promoted with participatory strategies in order to improve knowledge and comprehension among producers, and to become the basis for innovation in the face of conditions that complicate its transference, such as scarce inter-institutional coordination. Institutions were invited to integrate the RAIO, an essential part of the proposal, generating new levels of relationship among them. With the social network analysis (SNA), relationship structures were compared in two moments, "before the proposal" and "with the proposal", to identify actors and the ties generated. It is concluded that the RAIO was integrated by eight institutional actors that promoted development and natural resource conservation, structured as a temporary network that strengthened the relationships between actors and generated synergies to improve family production systems, and that the management of innovations for economic and social development of the rural sector in Los Tuxtlas is a complex process socially, institutionally and organizationally.