In 1975, the anthropologist Larissa Adler de Lomnitz described the Cerrada del Cóndor, a shantytown in Mexico City, in the journal Demografía y Economía. Of about 180 households, “solamente diez unidades residenciales estaban desligadas de sus vecinos” (only ten households were cut off from their neighbors). The others formed 45 networks of reciprocal exchange, averaging four or five families.
“Las redes están formadas en su mayoría por parientes cercanos, pero también incluyen a vecinos no emparentados” (The networks are formed mostly of close relatives, but they also include unrelated neighbors). When a man loses his work, “su familia recibe alojamiento y es mantenida mientras se le encuentra empleo” (his family receives lodging and is supported while a job is found for him).