This paper analyses the organizational and cultural basis over which financial markets in poor regions are built. The action of grassroots organizations (as the basis of communities of the Catholic Church) has been especially important in the promotion of a cultural change process and in the formation of a thick network of organizations which enlarged the access of farmers both to financial markets and new channels of commercialization. This paper reconstructs the historical processes of constitution of credit unions, showing especially the influence of natural factors (as the climate, for instance) over the "sertanejo’s" rationality and the social structures of the new economic organizations.
Markets; Microfinances; Microcredit; Rationality; Economic sociology