Part 2

The history of the hacienda spans three centuries. The first haciendas appeared in New Spain toward the beginning of the seventeenth century, when demand for agricultural products increased and the prehispanic supply system crumbled. Farming received an impetus at the hands of Spaniards, and the small farms and livestock ranches, which dated from the sixteenth century, expanded their landholdings. Many new sources of water were tapped, and a resident labor force was developed. These steps encouraged production and supplied the regional as well as the continually growing metropolitan markets.

The increase in hacienda production and in the number of hacienda workers made it necessary to expand the sixteenth-century facilities, which, with the exception of those of the sugar plantations, had been very modest. In this way, a large number of buildings were constructed, buildings that were to be preserved as the core of many haciendas until the Porfiriato.

There were three principal types of haciendas. Grain haciendas were the most important because they were dedicated to the cultivation of the subsistence crops corn and wheat. In addition, beans, barley, lima beans, chiles, and other crops were planted. Grain haciendas were established mainly in the vicinity of the urban centers, which they supplied. The important areas of grain cultivation were Puebla, Atlixco, Toluca, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, and Michoacán. Livestock haciendas occupied a second level of importance. They raised cattle and horses, as well as goats and sheep. This type of hacienda tended to be located in more remote areas, in an attempt to prevent the livestock from invading cultivated fields. Sugar haciendas were located in tropical regions, where they could count on sufficient water for the cultivation of sugarcane. The most important sugar regions were Veracruz, Cuernavaca, Cuautla, and Michoacán.

Throughout the seventeenth century the haciendas grew in significance. They held much of the land and water resources, expanded their labor force, intensified their control over the market, and consolidated their territorial rights in accordance with _composiciones de tierras_. (The phrase _composiciones de tierras_ belongs to the legal terminology of the time. It relates to a legal mechanism that was instituted by the Spanish Crown during the first half of the sixteenth century but which was applied mainly during the seventeenth century. It made it possible to legalize properties whose titles were not in order.) They sought to make improvements by constructing, for example, buildings, irrigation systems, roads, granaries, and shelters for livestock. Together, these made it possible to increase agricultural yields substantially. It was not an easy process, often involving transfers of hacienda property, severe indebtedness of their owners, and great difficulties in production.

Hacienda expansion proceeded throughout the following two centuries. Huge tracts of uncultivated land were transformed into farmland and impressive water distribution systems opened up new areas to irrigation. The population, constantly growing, demanded an ever greater quantity of food. Much land that had been devoted to the raising of livestock was turned over to cultivation, and the stock were gradually displaced until livestock haciendas came to be located mainly in the north of the country. However, this was not a period of unimpeded progress: there were severe periods of crisis, sharp fluctuations in production, a lack of continuity in the transmission of property, and frequent bankruptcies. Hacienda properties tended to be deeply mortgaged to ecclesiastical institutions and to individual lenders.

When dictator Porfirio Díaz assumed power in 1877, a boom period for the hacienda began. Historical circumstances were favorable, and the government offered all manner of facilities to the livestock and farm impresarios. The substantial increase in the country's population, as well as the strengthening international economy, created a great demand for farm and livestock products. The consumption of goods from the tropics, such as coffee, cacao, sugar, tobacco, and vanilla, grew considerably during this time both in Europe and in the United States. The same thing happened with certain basic materials, among them _henequén_, rubber, chicle, and _ixtle_. (_Ixtle_ or _istle_ is the name given to the hard fibers that are extracted from different plants of the genus agave, of which the most important are the _maguey_ and the _lechuguilla_. They are raised mainly in northern Mexico.)

As a result of laws that secularized communal land and set aside fallow land, huge areas of cultivation and land suitable for farming were placed at the disposition of commercial agriculture. Supporting capital for the most part came from foreign sources--from the United States, France, and England. Labor came from the impoverished peasants, from town workers, and from indigenous groups, among them the Mayas and the Tarahumaras.

Large landed estates appeared and a powerful class of hacienda owners arose. It was during this period that it was possible to overcome some of the endemic problems that had beset the hacienda since its birth: instability, indebtedness, lack of capital, and scarce revenues. During the Porfiriato, the majority of the haciendas were highly productive and provided their owners with plentiful earnings. Yet, at the same time there were haciendas that had to face financial problems and fluctuations in production.

Frequently, hacendados participated in other areas of business, such as finance, commerce, and mining. Their privileged economic position permitted them to furnish their rural properties with great luxury and to sustain a life of affluence. Bartlett found hacienda residences with twenty bedrooms, salons for dancing, Japanese gardens, billiard rooms and music rooms, swimming pools, bullrings, and palisades. Bearing witness to the interior splendor of these mansions, there was fine furniture from Europe, carpeting from Persia, velvet draperies, chandeliers of cut crystal, and valuable oil paintings. There were haciendas that possessed chapels that rivaled the provincial churches in size, architecture, and decor. Of course not all haciendas were this elegant: most had much more rustic appointments; many were in decline, poorly maintained, furnished with the very barest minimum.

Bartlett captured and transmits to us today through his art the grand cultural richness that enfolds the hacienda, its diversity according to its moment in time, its location, and its type of production, and he accompanies these with a portrayal of hacienda life, customs, and its inherent style of thought. He is one of the pioneers in his field of study.

+Sonora+ 1. Hacienda de Endo

+Chihuahua+ 2. Hacienda de Colonia Campo 3. Hacienda Corralitos 4. Hacienda Quinta Carolina

+Durango+ 5. Hacienda de Juana Guerra 6. Hacienda de Canutillo

+Nayarit+ 7. Hacienda San Cayetano

+San Luis Potosí+ 8. Hacienda de Castamay

+Guanajuato+ 9. Hacienda de Valenciana 10. Hacienda de Leoncito 11. Hacienda de Calderón 12. Hacienda de Puerto de Nieto 13. Hacienda de los Ricos 14. Hacienda San Cayetano de Valencia 15. Hacienda de Petaca 16. Hacienda de la Erre

+Jalisco+ 17. Hacienda de Medinero 18. Hacienda de Cedra 19. Hacienda de Ciénega de Mata 20. Hacienda de Cabezón 21. Hacienda de Cuisillos 22. Hacienda de Zapotitán 23. Hacienda de Bellavista 24. Hacienda de Aurora 25. Hacienda de la Venta del Astillero

+Hidalgo+ 26. Hacienda de Santana 27. Hacienda de Xala 28. Hacienda de Pueblilla 29. Hacienda de Tepa-Chica

+Michoacán+ 30. Hacienda de Guarache

+Colima+ 31. Hacienda de San Antonio

+State of México+ 32. Hacienda de San José 33. Hacienda de Altillo 34. Hacienda de los Morales 35. Hacienda de Jajalpa 36. Hacienda la Gavia 37. Hacienda de Esperanza

+Morelos+ 38. Hacienda de Cocoyoc 39. Hacienda de Chinameca

+Tlaxcala+ 40. Hacienda de los Molinos

+Puebla+ 41. Hacienda de Pópulo 42. Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo 43. Hacienda de Dolores Noriatenco 44. Hacienda de Arenillas 45. Hacienda de Caleturia

+Veracruz+ 46. Hacienda de Encero 47. Hacienda Manga de Clavo

+Oaxaca+ 48. Hacienda de Águilar

+Campeche+ 49. Hacienda de Castamay

+Yucatán+ 50. Hacienda de Holactún 51. Hacienda de Teya 52. Hacienda de Xcanatun 53. Hacienda de Sodzil 54. Hacienda de Tabi 55. Hacienda San Ignacio 56. Hacienda Pixoy 57. Hacienda Yaxche 58. Hacienda de Tikuch 59. Hacienda de Chichén Itza

I. The Hacienda System

Forty years ago, traveling by train in Mexico, I saw, in remote areas, what appeared to be miniature villages. I made sketches of them from the train and later visited some of the sites and learned they were ancient haciendas. Over the years since then, I have visited 330 haciendas and made the first art record of these estates. I traveled on horseback, on foot, by bus, train, car, truck, motorbike, and mule-drawn, narrow-gauge railway. I saw that haciendas had become mere place-names as they disintegrated or were bulldozed.

Walk into a handsome mansion and you find twenty or thirty empty rooms. To escape the revolution, the owner fled years earlier. Earthquakes, weather, and abandonment have riddled walls and floors. The residence stands roofless, windowless, doorless--constructed of stone, brick and adobe, or a combination of these. Church and chapel exist at every hacienda and they are still used by neighbors and peasants who may occupy the manor house. There are dates on bell skirts, on walls or beams of a storage bodega, on escutcheons, on archways; often they are carved in the mesquite floor of a chapel or church.

In the tropics, flame trees, bougainvillea, red-orange galeanas, lavender jacaranda, and yellow primavera flower among ruins. In northern areas, pine, tall eucalypti, mesquite, cedar, pepper, and chinaberry remain.

I sketched under the tropic sun, in corrals, in a bullring, under an Indian laurel; I poked through empty rooms.

As I sketched, burro trains passed, their sacks loaded with charcoal or corn; goat bells tapped as a herd grazed; ox teams hauled carts with wooden wheels; blackbirds crowded a treetop; a cowboy tipped his hat.

There was always courtesy. I drank _pulque_ from a communal gourd; I shared pineapple grown in Tecomán; I was entertained at town houses of hacendados. On the estates there was silence from the days of the viceroys, the silence of padres, the silence of abandonment.

In the sixteenth century, following the Spanish invasion of Mexico between the years 1519 and 1521, the Spanish Crown granted enormous land areas to the conquerors and adventurers who came to the New World. Since this property belonged to the natives, the grants amounted to usurpation. Scattered throughout Mexico, from Yucatán to Sonora, the extensive holdings frequently included towns and villages. These grants of land were the origin of the haciendas, the rural estates.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish immigrants sometimes passed themselves off as noblemen--camouflaging criminal or poverty-stricken backgrounds. Others, with a sack of cash or a pair of brawny shoulders, used the invasion as an opportunity to bluff their way and claim land and lives through the power of the sword. They remembered that dropping quicksilver into a mule's ear made the animal trot faster. Wealthy immigrants were able to purchase titles, and this arrangement was encouraged by the Crown since it benefited the treasury.

The hacendado (or his representative) employed or coerced native workers to build a residence, church or chapel, storage buildings, mills, dams, aqueducts, fences, and roads. He paid lip service to the Crown and whenever possible circumvented legalities. It was advantageous to sidestep the Crown since a letter or document took half a year to reach Spain. The employer was unable to communicate with the people who spoke Otomi, Coro, or Chichiméc. He was thwarted by new diseases, strange customs, tropical climate, and crop problems. Unlike the countries of Europe, Mexico was a corn culture, not a wheat culture. During his first years he learned that grain did better when planted in the most primitive manner, by stick and foot.

As rapidly as possible, the landowner, the _hacendado_, added to his holdings, buying or usurping acreage. An hacienda might consist of several thousand or several million acres. The terrain might be mountainous, semi-desert, coastal strips, forest or jungle, or a combination of topographical zones. There were cattle haciendas, sheep haciendas, mining haciendas, pulque/tequila haciendas; others produced henequén, grew coffee, sugarcane, corn, wheat. A few bred bulls for the bullring.

During the first century of the occupation, Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, friend of the Indians, objected to the atrocities committed by the Spanish. Alfonso de Zorita, writing his "Brevíssima Relación," exposed Indian mistreatment. Burnouf, French agronomist, wrote Emperor Maximilian that the whip of the _mayordomo_ (the hacendado's administrator) was destroying many lives. Regardless of objections through the years, the hacienda system prospered.

Counts, countesses, dukes and duchesses, crude invasionists, wealthy men, and religious orders owned estates. Some of the famous hacendados were Hernán Cortéz, Porfirio Díaz, Martín Ruiz de Zavala, General Santa Anna, and Pancho Villa (who was given his hacienda as a political bribe). Famous families owned estates: Terrazas, Rosa, Amor, Jaral, Ibarra, Echeverría, and Regla.

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, hacienda architecture varied: Where generation after generation owned the hacienda, in families of great wealth, façades were gothic, churrigueresque, plateresque, Islamic, baroque, rococo. The most widespread architectural style derived from the Roman. Most residences had their living quarters around an _atrium_, or patio. Grilled windows and massive wooden doors and shutters were common. Thousands of work-hours went into the carvings and embellishments--in gray, pink, or yellowish limestone. _Hornacinas_ (niches) peppered a church or chapel façade.

Each niche contained a saint or religious figure: It was tapestry in stone.

In the states of Puebla and Oaxaca, tiled façades ornamented the hacienda residences and lofty walls surrounded them. Church and chapel domes were also tiled. In the Sierras, haciendas were often built of logs and planed wood--rustic, two-story buildings with outside stairways. In the tropics, the usual residence was one story with ample verandas and deep-set doors and windows. Most buildings were roofed in cone-shaped, interlocking, or flat tiles.

The majority of hacienda structures were skillfully mortared in stone block _cantera_ (limestone) by rule-of-thumb. Professional architects like Francisco Eduardo de Tresguerras were seldom available. Instead, artisans were employed who used various styles learned from early ecclesiastical buildings.

Bitter rivalries between estates were part of the scene. Owners were on the alert for a bankrupt hacienda that could be purchased at a very low price. If extending landholdings meant violating the rights of a village or of an individual farmer or rancher, those rights were brushed aside, or contested legally.

To bolster his stature, the hacendado placed a baronial device on the façade of his residence or church: A coat-of-arms elevated his status. He also respected his skin, and against the threat of _la intrusa_ (the intruder) he installed gun slots, grilled windows, studded doors, and armed his retainers. _La intrusa_ was his Old World enemy. Now and then he raised a private army to repel difficult natives, belligerent hacendados, or revolutionaries. Thick-walled, ponderous buildings reflected his philosophy. They indicated his loneliness and his fear of death as well.

As life became less threatening in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as roads improved and travel became safer and more comfortable, hacienda owners erected open structures: Residences appeared with multiple arches across the front, and tiled verandas led to the outdoors. Two-story homes, with balconies on the second floor became common. Eucalypti, jacaranda, chirimoya, and columnar cypress shaded a complex of buildings: church, residence, _bodega_. In the north country, a line of cottonwoods led to the gracious house, which was stuccoed pink or pale yellow. Farther south, a grove of palms graced the setting.

As time passed, viceroys, churchmen, lawyers, and teachers became more and more aware of the language barriers that existed throughout the country and that impeded progress. The Catholics, through their _colegios_ (ecclesiastical schools) attempted to upgrade life. There were no public schools.

Among the ecclesiastical orders, the Jesuits were major hacienda owners. Their design-for-living began at 4:00 A.M. and ended at 7:00 P.M. At the most famous Jesuit hacienda, Santa Lucía, near Mexico City, slaves were purchased, bred, sold, or retained for work on the estate. There were no fiestas at Santa Lucía. For almost two hundred years the hacienda functioned to support the ecclesiastical schools of the order. The Colegio Máximo, in Mexico City, was the principal beneficiary. Until June 25, 1767, when all Jesuits were deported from Mexico, the estate prospered, selling wheat, corn, textiles, cattle, sheep, and slaves. Its economic influence extended as far as Guadalajara, Zapotlán, and Colima.

Schooling at the hacienda was largely disregarded. There were sixty foreign dialects to contend with. There were no dictionaries, no language bridges for the Zapotec, Coro, Méxica, and Nahuatl people. On the estates a priest or teacher, one who knew a little Latin, gave lessons in Spanish, arithmetic, Latin, and the catechism. Scholarly priests began linguistic studies of some tribes; they edited dictionaries, but these were never circulated. Some of their work has yet to be published.

_Machismo_ was more meaningful to the average estate than education. The blacksmith from Barcelona, who now owned ninety thousand acres, was eager for compliant women. Sex life, for the invaders, for the colonist, was freer than in Europe. Since the men did not speak the Indian dialects, sex was a body language. Some were promiscuous and guilty of perversion. Priests and nuns were shocked by their animality and attempted to control their countrymen. Since most haciendas were remote and few women accompanied the settlers, isolation and power granted license.

The kindly man, the gentile man, looked for other ways to overcome loneliness, isolation, homesickness. Some, preferring the familiar life, returned to their homeland. By 1910, thousands of estates were scattered across the country. Mansions were located in the midst of maguey and henequén fields or were situated in lush valleys. Some faced the ocean; some were lost in acres of corn; miles of range country surrounded others; there were desert haciendas with the nearest neighbor fifty miles away; there were rain forest haciendas, mahogany haciendas. Many were regional landmarks.

Haciendas became an embodiment of time. They seemed to defy time, offering the illusion that a family could live there indefinitely.

+II. Through the Eyes of Hacienda Visitors+

Through the years there were notable visitors to the haciendas who have left us their impressions: Bishop Landa, Father Alonso Ponce, Gemelli Gareri, Samuel de Champlain, John Chilton, Mora y Escobar, Sieur Bully, Fathers Balalenque and Acosta, Thomas Gage ("clerical spy"), Don Ernesto de Icaza, Emperor Iturbide, Emperor Maximilian I, Baron von Humboldt, Madame Calderón de la Barca, James Stephens, and Frederick Catherwood, among others.

One of the most famous haciendas, in the state of Jalisco, is Ciénega de Mata, legalized by the Crown in 1697. Owned by the Rincón Gallardo family, it was a tract of eighty-seven estancias (ranches). According to Alfonso Rincón Gallardo, reminiscing about his father's estate, the residence was built during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It is a two-story building with twenty rooms and spans or arches across the front. The church is gray limestone, like the residence, with a baroque façade. An elaborate coat-of-arms embellishes the entry. Sculptured pink stone _cantera_ saints and angels fill various niches. The octagonal dome and tower are richly carved.

Gallardo appreciated the life at Ciénega, the brandings, the roundups, sheep pasturing, shearings, and weanings. "I liked to ride with the cowboys," he wrote, "those extraordinary horsemen, pleasant companions, tanned by sun and wind, simple in tastes, frank, never tiring--the classic men of the great haciendas."

Recalling his life he tells us:

Every morning after breakfast, all of us--my father dressed in his charro outfit; my mother attired English style--would set out on horseback, riding about the hacienda's vast fields of corn and barley. After the midday meal, back at the house, we walked about the stables, the granaries, and over a small hill that lay nearby; and sometimes we played fronton or went out riding again. At night, after supper, we read or played games. In this tranquil, pleasant manner, life went on, broken only by the annual festival, an event celebrated on a grand scale with parades, banquets, horse races, cockfights, boxing matches, and, in the evening, a fantastic display of fireworks.

Brantz Mayer, secretary of the United States Legation in Mexico during 1841 and 1842, enjoyed a horseback visit to the Hacienda de San Nicolás, near Tetécala, in the state of Mexico. He admired the white buildings and the neatness of the estate: "The sugarcane fields were in capital order, the roads smooth, the fences maintained; cattle were under the care of herdsmen."