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This paper presents the results of an analysis of a government-led microcredit initiative in the state of Tabasco. It incorporates the viewpoints of various government employees who were involved in the initiative's design and responsible for the offices and field staff who implemented it, and especially the viewpoints of the women who were the beneficiaries of the program. Thus, the program operation and the women's perspective of its impact are reconstructed. The information contained in the text stems from a review of the guideline documents of the program, structured, semi-structured and in-depth interviews with the women beneficiaries, government employees, the operating and coordinating staff of the offices, and intermediary finance administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the advances of a research project about the efforts of a women's association of the coastal region of Jalisco within the frame of the Alternative Rural Financing System (SIFRA), and in particular the expansion and reformulation of livelihood strategies that women are developing with this micro-credit program's support. It discusses the relevance of the concepts of assets and social capital to analyze the program's results, as well as their usefulness to identify the shared resources and understand the processes through which they are established, used, and tested. It also argues that such processes are vulnerable to conflicts and the exercise of power, and that keeping this in mind may help to avoid turning social capital into a normative concept and to define its analytical capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]