In 1973, the anthropologist Larissa Adler de Lomnitz published a study of survival in a shantytown of Mexico City, in the El Colegio de México journal Demografía y Economía. She wrote that confianza “depende de factores tanto culturales (distancia social) como físicos (cercanía de residencia)” (depends on both cultural factors, social distance, and physical ones, nearness of residence).
Her conclusion: “la confianza es variable y flexible mientras que la distancia social es formal e invariable” (trust is variable and flexible, while social distance is formal and fixed). A cuate, a close friend, “podrá ser de mayor confianza que un pariente que vive muy lejos” (may be trusted more than a relative who lives far away).