Las actividades rurales no-agrarias en familias campesinas de la sierra norte del Perú

The aim of the document is to analyse the options of expansion that hat manufacture within peasant families of Bambamarca have. This is a part of one objective: the promotion of non-farming rural activities as a strategy to increase poor family’s income. A theoretical model, which allows identifying the growing possibilities of traditional transforming activities (Z goods), is developed. For the manufacture of hats case the problem was: how to transform hats from inferior goods to normal goods with a stable demand, not only in the national but also in the international market. With this aim, three things are suggested: the making easier the access to credit in order to allow people to buy raw material in the right time, improve the commercialisation system and the technique used in hat manufacture. In this moment, handcrafting is a subsistence activity that only allows the rapid capitalisation of the family. Therefore, interventions are required in order to make of handcrafting an activity that generates higher incomes and also creates new jobs in the rural industry context. Clearly, this effort of transformation requires the help of governmental actions, private agents and the peasant families themselves.