Abstract
In recent decades, international financial agencies have stressed the importance of public
policies as theoretical and methodological device against the governmental centralization.
In the discourse of these agencies, social participation and decentralization are the main
axes, whereas from a critical perspective, it is appreciated as a form of appropriation of
social demands in order to preserve and centralize power. From the latter frame work,
we analyze and discuss some changes in the Mexican state as reform stoart.115 of the
Constitution and the Sustainable Rural Development Law (srdl), analysis which lead us
to institutional and rural actors from the municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, aspects and
voices that, in the end, enable us to reflect about limitations and municipal possibilities in
defining policies for rural development.