"William Schell, Jr. examines the largest foreign colony in Mexico during the reign of Porfirio Diaz, 1876-1911. 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 the country's 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, 1876-1911 focuses a colorful history of the Porfiriato through the lens of American participation, including carefully wrought descriptions of the expatriates. These individual biographies allow Schell to move beyond the usual simplistic view of weak, greedy Mexican elites conspiring with powerful, greedy foreign capitalists to amass great wealth while impoverishing the masses and furthering economic underdevelopment."--BOOK JACKET.