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Abstract
La Colonia Extranjero, a dispersed settlement of North American retirees situated in the Lake Chapala region of West Mexico, was investigated by the participant observation method. The social field of La Colonia Extranjero, broadly construed to include the rural Mexican social system in which it is embedded, is brought into focus by examining social relations by means of three analytically distinct but empirically interconnected perspectives: these are the infrastructure of a dispersed settlement; the strategies and symbols which serve to create and maintain social boundaries in that setting; and the social, political, and economic relations between the retirement settlement and its host community. The discussion elaborates on the ideological, organizational, and geographical formations which establish this dispersed colony of retirees as a social entity, and the processes which link the guest community to the host community.
Distinctive characteristics of the community are discussed. These are the ideal of egalitarianism, the absence of a corporate structure, the avoidance of conflict, and the belief in the superiority of American cultural value; the integration of colony and host community through bonds of patronage and their social separation through the mechanism of privileged association; and the structural tension which exists between colonists and hosts in the form of asymmetrical relations of power and prestige.
Several general understandings about retirement communities are proposed. The dispersed retirement settlement is found to be a sociologically significant form and when the colony is a stranger community, migrancy is a structural feature of political consequence. The social field of the colony, a two-part system, is the set of formal and informal relationships which are exclusive to the members of the community, and the universe of town, neighborhood or society in which the community is embedded.
