i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

This came as a surprise. The UCA, Santos, and Griselda were blatantly
misrepresenting themselves and their members, not to mention scamming the Cup of
Excellence awards program.
Pedro Altamirano, José Damas, and Guillermo Hernández were necessary
members of the second-tier cooperative because of the image that they convey about the
UCA, but they neither produced the majority of coffee nor reaped the majority of the
benefits of export. This stands out as a significant display of the attitude the cooperative
administrators have toward their clientele and the preference they give to the private
enterprises that fund their work.
Conclusion
The accounts in this chapter are examples of the realities, conflicts, and struggles around
alternative development that occurred in the Segovian context of San Juan del Río Coco
between 2004 and 2006. However idealistic the motives of alternative development may
be, the methods of their operationalization are still derived far from the site of their
application and, in turn, are destined for complication.
My sense is that there are multiple narratives at play when the lived realities of
the latest versions of alternative development are expressed. Farmer-owned cooperatives
must present a certain image of their operational structure to certifying entities and
external sources of financing. But the manner in which daily life unfolds follows
traditional patterns and interrelations that have been in existence long before the modern
concept of sustainable agricultural development hit Nicaraguan shores.
Although resistance to authority and deception may be traditional cultural
attitudes toward external influence and domination in Las Segovias (see the review of
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