If you surface is pretty flat, than you could use both. Because you prepare it for rainy season, strong and midle rain intensity could destroy strow mulch on the non flat surface. Also strow is convinient media for developing deseases against plastic mulch, but organic matter is better for soil properties.
For arid areas as you have mentioned, you could use straw mulch during the rainy season to allow water to percolate into the soil. I doubt if plastic mulch would meet these conditions unless the crop is sparsely planted so that the covering allows for spots for rainwater penetration into the soil. The importance of straw mulch on soil fertility improvement cannot be overemphasize in this practice.
I agree with Mr. Akwilin Tarimo that strow mulch will enable good percolation of water trought the soil. But if it is the rainy season, we could take in consideration both treatments.
Namely, first you could put the strow mulch (for improwing soil properties, firstly organic mater et cet.) than you could put the plastic mulch on which you need made some holes (with some sharp tool) for beter percolation enought water in the soil.
In that case water will come into the soil, strow mulch will enable percolating trought the soil and plastic much will protect soil from evaporation and ensuring continuing soil water moisture.
When one add straw as a mulch, the C/N ratio has to be considered. If the ratio is high, that can lead to immobilization of Nitrogen which could badly affect the crop. If you add straw treated with Nitrogen, that would be a good option. The organic matter will protect the soil, conserve moisture, improve soil properties and allow infiltration of water. By selecting mulching material disease and pest free will give more advantages. Plastic / polythene mulch could protect the soil, conserve water within the soil but will not allow infiltration of rain water. What I feel is straw (treated with nitrogen, and free from pests and diseases) have more advantages than a plastic or a polythene mulch.
Arid areas often have stone-rich soils. If the stones are flat, do not exclude the option of stone-mulching, thus placing the flat stones as a mulch on the surface. Water-retention, reduced evaporation, water-harvesting, increase of macro-organisms in top-soil, reduced soil-temperature, etc. are positive impacts.
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