Mexico is a burgeoning economy, ranking as the second largest economy in Latin America. According to the OECD, there are at least four million SMEs in Mexico, most of which are microenterprises. However, both culturally and politically, Mexico is making efforts toward encouraging more growth-oriented entrepreneurship, with Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara becoming known as entrepreneurial hubs.

There is also a focus on entrepreneurship outside the major cities, with rural areas in Mexico increasing in employment opportunities and entrepreneurship rates. However, South and Southeast Mexico still lag behind the northern and central areas of the country.

There has been less research conducted specifically on entrepreneurship in South and Southeast Mexico, defined in this study as the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz, and
Yucatán. A significantly greater proportion of the population in these southern states live in poverty compared to the rest of the country,7 and thus, how entrepreneurship may contribute to local economic growth in these regions is of interest to the international development community. A first step to understanding the current
support available to entrepreneurs is to identify the various actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

"This article traces experiments aimed at promoting wider adoption of ‘microinsurance’ – small, simplified insurance policies targeting the poorest. Microinsurance is a central element of a wider turn towards the promotion of ‘resilience’ in global development. The development of commercial markets for microinsurance, however, has failed to meet the expectations of promoters. This article traces the ways that the diverse donor agencies, professional organizations and philanthropic organizations involved in the promotion of microinsurance have responded to these failures, primarily by seeking to articulate basic data infrastructures that might make possible profitable insurance operations."