In Latin America the small-scale fishery ofmarine benthic invertebrates is based onhigh-value species. It represents a source offood and employment and generates importantincomes to fishers and, in some cases, exportearnings for the countries. In the review, wedefine 2 key concepts: small-scale fishery andco-management. We address the temporalextractive phases which Latin Americanshellfish resources have experienced, and thecorresponding socio-economic and managerialscenarios. We include 3 study cases in whichco-management and field experimentation havebeen used on different temporal and spatialscales: (a) the muricid gastropod (Concholepas concholepas) in Chile; (b) theyellow clam (Mesodesma mactroides) inUruguay; and (c) the spiny lobster (Panulirusargus) in Mexico. We demonstratethat co-management constitutes an effectiveinstitutional arrangement by which fishers,scientists and managers interact to improve thequality of the regulatory process and may serveto sustain Latin American shellfisheries overtime. The main factors supporting co-managementare: (a) a comparatively reduced scale offishing operations and well-defined boundariesfor the management unit; (b) the allocation ofinstitutionalized co-ownership authority tofishers; (c) the voluntary participation of thefishers in enforcing regulations; (d) theimprovement of scientific information(including data from fishers) to consolidatethe management schemes; (e) the incorporation ofcommunity traditions and idiosyncrasies; and (f)the allocation of territorial use rights forfisheries under a collaborative/voluntarycommunity framework. Chile is identified as anexample in which basic ecological and fisheryconcepts have been institutionalized throughmanagement practices and incorporated into theLaw. Several factors have precludedshellfishery management success in most of theLatin American countries: (a) the social andpolitical instability, (b) the underestimationof the role of fisheries science in managementadvice, (c) the inadequacy of data collectionand information systems, (d) the poorimplementation and enforcement of managementpractices and (e) the uncertainty in short-termeconomic issues. In the review, we also show that in LatinAmerica, large-scale fishery experiments arestarting to play an important role in theevaluation of alternative management policieson benthic shellfisheries, especially whenaccompanied by co-management approaches thatexplicitly involve the participation offishers. Fisher exclusion experiments havedemonstrated changes in unexploited versusexploited benthic shellfish populations and inthe structure and functioning of communities.The information has been used by scientists toapproach system elasticity. Ecological andfishery related knowledge has been translatedinto novel co-managerial strategies. Thesedentary nature of the shellfish speciesanalyzed in this review allowed localizedexperiments with different levels of stockabundance and fishing intensity (e.g., marinereserves or maritime concessions versus openaccess areas). This includes the establishmentof closed seasons as de facto managementexperiments, which proved useful in evaluatingthe capacity of passive restocking of depletedareas and for the quantification of populationdemographic features. The precise location offishing grounds provided reliable area-specificestimates of population density and structure,catch, and fishing effort. This allowed theallocation of catch quotas in each fishingground. We also discuss the reliability andapplicability of spatially explicit managementtools. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) andTerritorial User Rights in Fisheries (TURFs)fulfilled objectives for management andconservation and served as experimentationtools. The examples provided in our reviewinclude a comparative synthesis of the relativeusefulness of alternative spatially explicitmanagement tools under a framework ofmanagement redundancy. The cross-linkagebetween fishery experimental managementprotocols and the active participation offishers is suggested as the strategy to befollowed to improve the sustainable managementof small-scale shellfisheries in Latin America.Finally, we discuss the future needs,challenges and issues that need to be addressedto improve the management status of thesmall-scale shellfisheries in Latin America,and, in general, around the world. We concludethat for the sustainability of shellfishresources there is an urgent need to look forlinkages between sociology, biology andeconomics under an integrated managementframework. Fishers, and not the shellfish, mustbe in the center of such a framework.