Vinculando.org: Revista electrónica latinoamericana en Desarrollo Sustentable

This paper has explored the points of convergence and digression of the Trade Justice Movement and the Fair Trade Market in Northern countries and the Mexican peasant project, through the framework of transnational social movements. The northern initiatives appear to assume a natural narrative link with the grassroots character of the southern producers’ struggle for equal conditions of marketing. Other works have analysed the fairness and viability of the Fair Trade Market (Medina, 1997; Mace, 1998; etc), but the results are a complex and hard to reduce to a single answer. The alternative coffee market model has been criticised because its insertion into the mainstream rules has reproduced unequal economic relations by its reliance in some cases on the cash crops model, regarding the peasant as a mere provider of raw materials and basic foods for the North. It has also been criticised for reproducing North–South power relations in certification procedures (Gonzalez and Linck, n/d); and for the limited size of the market niche, available to a limited portion of the southern producers.