In this original and compelling book book, William Schell Jr.
examines the largest foreign colony in Mexico during the reign of
Porfirio D'az, from 1876 to 1911. Expatriate Americans constituted
the greatest number of technicians, technocrats, consultants,
engineers, agronomists, mining specialists, railroad experts, and
venture capitalists in Mexico. The influence of these 'integral
outsiders' extended far beyond economics and Porfirian efforts to
manage the booming era of Mexican modernization. Marriages between
Americans and Mexican society women and membership in such
organizations as Masonic brotherhoods brought the foreigners into
the most important social circles.
Integral Outsiders: The American Colony in Mexico City,
1876D1911, contains a colorful history of the Porfiriato through
the lens of American participation, including carefully wrought
descriptions of expatriate Americans. These individual biographies
make the narrative more human and interesting, allowing Schell to
move beyond the simplistic view of weak, greedy Mexican elites
conspiring with powerful, greedy foreign capitalists to amass great
wealth while impoverishing the Mexican masses and creating economic
underdevelopment.
Basing his comments on meticulous research, Schell points out
that U.S. influence was hardly a one-way street and that the
interaction between U.S. citizens and Mexicans was a complex system
of cultural negotiations. He demonstrates convincingly that, while
insinuating themselves into Mexican society, Americans thought that
they were changing Mexico, and, in so doing, changed themselves. As
Schell states, 'Ultimately, then, it may be said that the Porfirian
regime got the form of hegemony it sought, and Washington took the
sort of hegemony it could get.'
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