382 5. Fair Trade and Local Development. A relationship? ARMANDO GARCÍA CHIANG "Fair trade" can be defined as a type of association that seeks lasting development for excluded producers or those who have major advantages to compete in a global market and who try to achieve such by proposing better trade conditions to producers and seek to educate consumers. This type of trade is the product of different initiatives of alternative commerce and has seen, since the last two decades of the twentieth century, a constant growth in industrialized countries; this situation has made clear the existence of different ideas and strategies for its progress, while at the same time it has raised questions on the impact of its practices and its ability to represent a true alternative to sustainable and fair development (García Chiang, 2011). One of the primary debates in that regard seeks to place fair trade right within the broadest context of an economy that serves human beings; i.e., that this commercial alternative fits within the scope of the social and solidarity economy. Likewise, it is considered that in its development there are fair trade practices that only make sense if they are able to exceed the scope of trade relations among developed and emerging countries, to be placed in a space of local or regional action, where there is a set of practices based on transparency and access to information that may help strengthen the solidarity between consumers and producers. Basic criteria of fair trade include primarily: the establishment of a direct relationship between producers and consumers, avoiding whenever possible intermediaries and speculators; the practice of fair and stable prices that allow producers and their families to lead dignified lives; the authorization of partial financing before harvest time; and the establishment of long-term contracts, based on mutual respect and respect toward ethical values, such as the pursuit of the common good and equality and care for the environment. These criteria seek not only to set a price that is enough to meet the needs producers, but also to create the conditions for sustainable development; in our point of view, this poses it as a tool of local development. Local development. Evolution of the concept To define the notion of local, it is possible that there is no other way to refer it to its correlative notion of global. When something is defined as local, it is because it belongs to a global scale. Therefore, a department or province is local with respect to the country, and a city is local with respect to the department or province to which it belongs. The first confirmation must lead to a categorical assertion: a local development process can never be analyzed without referring it to the global society to which it belongs. At the same time, the affirmation of the nature regarding the notion of local allows us to recognize the inclusion of global in each development process. For this to be the case, and so that the