Part 4

Since most work was onerous and the hours long, with most workers undernourished and small-boned, the haciendas faced labor problems. Most man-hours went into agricultural jobs; in some areas where the water supply was critical, wells had to be dug and serviced, pipelines demanded upkeep. If an aqueduct supplied the estate, the canal, its outlets, and spans had to be maintained. In the fields--across thousands of acres--there was planting, weeding, harvesting, and shucking to be done. There were beans, peppers, and tomatoes to pick. Fences had to be repaired. The cycles continued, altered by rain or drought, by pests and soil failure.

The most capable agronomists were the Jesuits; their haciendas achieved the best production records. Their workers often were treated with a measure of consideration. The Jesuit conduct book called for respect. This 200-page bible of _Instrucciónes_, written in the sixteenth century, forbade the whip, ball and chain, and the pillory. Yet even so, Jesuit cruelty was evident. In Santa Lucía, administrators chained mill workers and left skeletons of men in chains in subterranean rooms. In 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from New Spain. By 1810, Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans, and Franciscans owned more than half of the nation's real estate.

As for slavery on the haciendas, when is a man a slave? He is a slave if he works in perpetual debt. If he cannot, under penalty of imprisonment and death, leave the hacienda and work elsewhere, he is a slave. From the days of the _encomiendas_ (land grant estates) until 1910, workers were enslaved by the hacienda. A small hacienda kept ten or twelve black slaves. Since there were approximately eight thousand haciendas in 1910, the total of black slaves must have reached many thousands. A large hacienda kept one hundred to one hundred and fifty slaves, of all ages. There is no accurate count, but it is clear that black slavery played an important role in the hacienda system.

Disharmony was common among the ethnic groups: negro, mulatto, mestizo, Creole, Zapotec, Méxica, Chichimeca, Yaqui. The mores of each group were affected by Spanish customs and demands. Ethnic problems existed at each estate to varying degrees. At the mining hacienda, the sugar refining hacienda, and the vast cattle properties, the worker was less valuable than the horse. Big jobs and big land grants minimized personalities; anonymity took over. At the mine holdings, workers grubbed for ore 1,000 feet below. They worked almost naked, without adequate food, drank contaminated water, climbed precarious ladders in shafts faintly lit. Men, women, and children were employed. In principle, they were to work for a few days and then return home, but they worked until they were ill or until they died. Overseers were unwilling to spare the workers. There was no medical care.

With their mining, sugar refinery, and cattle properties, the hacendados were proud of their affluence, evident in their elegant mansions, ornate churches, endowed schools, and hospitals. They lived like Carolingian kings as they traveled from one hacienda to another, attended by friends, relatives, and parasites. They were famed for their hospitality, hated for their cruelty, kowtowed to when they went abroad.

Rincón Gallardo offered his private army to the Spanish Crown should there be a need. It took the Gallardo family less than a century to create a principality with its own administration, castle, village, and subordinate haciendas.

Rincón Gallardo reminisced about his hacienda life:

I spent my vacations with friends at Tlalayote, near Apán, in the state of Hidalgo. There we rode in the morning; in the afternoon we hunted for pheasant, quail and rabbit, and, near Tultengo Lake, for ducks. Since there was no automobile we went everywhere on horseback.

I can remember returning late from a hunt, the stars our only guide, since the one we were supposed to use--Evaristo, our groom--had by then a headful of pulque and was in no shape to lead us home. But once back at Tlalayote's main house we handed over our game-bags to Miscaela, the magnificent cook, who prepared several of the birds and served us plentifully with great mugs of pulque brought in from the fermenting shed.

This rural life seemed yet another indication of the land's undying attraction. As a young man I learned to ride charro style, to throw a calf by its tail, to lasso on horseback and on foot, to drive a six-mule team, to break wild colts and calves, and use firearms of various kinds.

I enjoyed the brandings, the shearings, and the weanings, which include one of my favorite sports ... separating calves from their mothers.

But there were a few hacendados who disavowed the great estates: One of them said: "I'd rather have an attic in Paris than an hacienda."

+IV. Fiestas+

Haciendas were the home of the fiesta. The first fiestas were held shortly after the Conquest. As the influence of Catholicism spread, fiestas increased in number--honoring a saint, commemorating a religious event, a holiday, a wedding. Generally, fiestas were initiated by the peasants and represented a communal expression. At an hacienda village someone had to collect funds, arrange for costumes, supervise church or chapel decorations, commission the fireworks, hire or borrow musicians, and arrange for food and drinks. If the hacendado hosted a fiesta, he might leave the details to his wife or the _mayordomo_. The priest and his assistant also managed fiestas.

People came on foot, by ox cart, palanquin, burro, mule, horse, wagon, and carriage--from distant haciendas and towns. For some four hundred years fiestas livened these feudal outposts that existed across the nation. Guests were often royalty or politically important: a viceroy, a duke, a governor, or church dignitary. Since travel was usually tedious and fatiguing, everything was done to make the festival memorable.

Sixteenth-century fiestas were announced by drums and the _chirimía_--a shrill flute from Aztec-Toltec-Mayan days. Dancers performed in front of the big house or danced in a patio or on the tiles of the church plaza. They wore harlequin-like costumes, feathered headdresses, conquest clothes, white trousers sashed with red, giant sombreros, masks; they flaunted wands, shields, spears, bows, and arrows. Ankle rattles hissed. Gourds thumped and rustled. Only male dancers participated.

In the far south, at estates in Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche, the marimba replaced the flute and drum. Sometimes six or eight musicians pounded out music simultaneously on four or five instruments.

In the north, on Sonoran and Chihuahuan haciendas, the violin was the chief instrument. Fashioned with no other tools than pieces of glass and a knife, it supplied basic rhythms, one or several instruments wailing for Yaqui and Tarahumaran dances.

Flowers decked every fiesta. Gardenias were tossed into the fountains, carnations were woven into bell ropes, and rambler roses were spun around ox cart wheels and wagon wheels. Blossoms filled churches and chapels with fragrance, they crisscrossed patios on wires, they brightened roadside shrines.

Food and drink were plentiful: tortillas, beans, beans cooked with beef or chicken, pots and pots of beans, iron caldrons of soup, meat barbecued on spits, ox and goat, barrels of punch, buckets of pulque, barrels of beer, bottles of tequila, and, of course, cognac--for the _gente de razón_ (gentry).

In the big house, dinners were elaborate--the hacendado presiding. The menu offered _Cochinita pibil_ (pork barbecued in banana leaves), squash blossom soup, _quesadillas_ (tortilla turnovers stuffed with cheese and mushrooms), _uchepos_ (corn mush steamed in husks), _muk-bil pollo_ (chicken and pork tamale pie), _tamales Veracruzanos_ (pork-filled tamales), and _ate de guayaba_ (guava candy paste). For special guests, the chefs served more elaborate dishes: pheasant, quail, javelina, venison, dove, rabbit. There were no government restrictions on wild game. Fishermen contributed _gallo_ (rooster fish), _pardo trucha_ (trout), _huachinango_ (red snapper), turtle, turtle eggs, lobster, and crab.

The guests gathered for cockfights. If it was summertime, a canopy shaded the pit. In the highlands a _mozo_ swept aside pine needles and built a green fire to fight the mosquitoes. In the south, white awnings and striped parasols furnished shade. The cocks, which were uncaged at a pit, were named: _Biba Manza_, _Panadero_, _Porfirio_, _Tigre_, _Mi General_, and _El Rayo_. At a signal the birds flew at each other, their razor blades flashing. Bets were wagered ... a hundred ... a thousand ... five.

Every fiesta had popular dances: Cora Paixil, Moro, Tapatío, Jarana. The _gente_ (people) danced in the sala or on a cool veranda or outside by kerosene lamps, by torches, by candlelight, under chandeliers in the big house, by gasoline lamps--the illumination changing with the epoch. Orchestras--brought by train from the cities--played polkas, waltzes, rustic Bach, "La Bamba," "Torres de Pueblo," "There is Someone," and other current favorites. Mariachis, in their sequined black suits and sprawling black hats, played and sang. They were always the favorites at every fiesta.

Dating from Aztec days, _Los Voladores_ (pole dancers), were the sensation. Customarily, five men participated, first dancing on the ground, then climbing a lofty pole where they hurled themselves into space, roped by the feet. Spinning round and round the pole, they gradually descended, unwinding.

Fiestas lasted a single day or several days; sometimes they became a _feria_, a market where vendors would set up booths and display fabric, produce, herbs, pottery, machetes, knives. Poultry and livestock were sold or bartered. Early in the sixteenth century, Spanish bullfighters arrived and performed at haciendas near the capital.

The elegantly-dressed cowboy, the _charro_, spent $1,000 on his outfit; his trousers were skintight and had single or double rows of silver buttons trimming the outside seams. His shirt was homespun cotton or handsomely embroidered linen. His jacket was embroidered and sequined. His boots were made of inlaid leather, expertly fitted. His sombrero was ornamented with silver and silver banded. His stirrups and spurs were chased silver or gold, and his saddle was inlaid with silver or gold.

It is not known when the first _castillo_ (bamboo tower) spat fire. When there was ample gunpowder, someone fashioned a windmill for pinwheels, rockets, Roman candles, blazing globes of flame, and strings of tangled lights. It was a windmill of bamboo, a shivering, shaking tower of color, 20 to 30 feet high.

Throughout the fiesta, workers dipped into the pulque casks. They tried to dance off their intoxication; they did their best to forget their hardships; sometimes they found themselves in the hacienda jail.

Notables played billiards, pool and cards and tossed dice; until far into the night they might gamble at the _Monte_ (card game) tables; when the fiesta came to an end they laid down their cards reluctantly--it might be a long way home.

July, August, September--the summer calendar rolled on and new fiesta dates became important: Candlemas, Holy Week, Corpus Christi, Día de Los Reyes. On the Day of Divine Proficience, candles burned for twenty-four hours. On carts and on men's shoulders, biblical floats appeared: It was time for a reappraisal of faith, time to honor the local Virgin.

+V. Education+

In bygone days--two hundred years ago--an hacienda church or chapel bell signaled school. A youngster or priest or acolyte yanked the bell rope. In the tropics, if you were lucky, you put on your _shirgo_ (raincoat), and got to school dry. Your class started at 7:00 A.M. and lasted until noon, when the heat moved in. You walked to your home for lunch or picked it off the trees as you went home. If school convened regularly you were fortunate. You were fortunate if classes freed you from hacienda chores.

In the temperate zone, school began about 9:00 A.M. and reconvened after the siesta--closing at 4:00 P.M. Again intermittency played havoc with the sessions. The _maestro_ (teacher) was very informal; if you had a teacher who was dedicated, your education began to acquire meaning.

Teaching was in Spanish, though the pupils might speak one or more of the sixty dialects. For centuries the parents objected to Spanish being taught; at home the children spoke their native tongue. Since Spanish coercion was continual, it was only normal for the students to rebel. Intuitively, they sensed the destruction of their way of life. Both school and church were suspect.

Priests, as instructors, read selections from the Bible, religious treatises, and pamphlets. There were no books for the students. With pencil, paper, and blackboard or slate, children learned the rudiments of writing, reading, and arithmetic. Without musical accompaniment, they learned hymns and poetry. Their centuries were centuries of neglect.

It was exceptional when an hacienda hired a priest-instructor permanently. Since teachers were either poorly paid or were hacienda guests, they offered halfhearted service. Haciendas were known to neglect education intentionally: the peasant was to be kept subordinate--a little reading, a little writing, but no more.

Usually the main hacienda residence housed the school. One of the twenty or thirty rooms was designated the classroom. It was small and had few or no windows; the open door let in light and air. Students in the sixteenth century sat on the floor. Later, they had benches and sat around a table, the _maestro_ at one end. Slates came into being in the eighteenth century; and, in the nineteenth century, blackboards. Engravings of the presidents began to decorate bare walls. Dirty, foxed maps hid stains. Tiled floors were often cold and damp. Though there was sunshine most of the year, classes were never held under the laurel or palm trees.

Girls sat on one side, boys on the other--if the room was large enough. There were no sanitary facilities, no health precautions, no hygiene instruction. At recess, the children drank from the patio fountain or cattle trough.

On an hacienda employing four hundred workers, about twenty children attended school. Since the hacienda was on a dawn-to-dark schedule, work never ran out; the average hacendado felt he could employ those skinny legs and arms to his advantage. At harvest time there were no classes; during fiestas there were no classes; if the _maestro_ got drunk there were no classes. Truancy was a fact of life.

At school and at home the children played marbles, using clay marbles of their own baking. They spun tops and played jacks, tag, hide-and-seek, and a flower game called "Stealing a Soul." In "The Old Saints," the "buyer" dashed from one saint to another to see if his saint is the one he wants to buy. If the saint runs off and is caught he is given a "job" to do.

A favorite song was "Golden Bell":

_Little golden bell, Let me pass; With all my children Who are behind me._

Singing "La Víbora del Mar," the children divided into two groups; this was a tug-of-war song and is still remembered:

_The serpent, serpent of the sea, here it can pass by. Those in front run fast, those in back will be left behind; a Mexican girl, selling fruit, plums, apricots, muskmelons, and watermelons._

Haciendas had no school libraries. The _casa principal_ may have acquired a collection of history, travel, philosophy, and fiction; but such collections were rarely shared. For centuries the Inquisition influenced most reading habits. Pagan and Catholic superstition wreaked havoc with young minds; it is still evident in rural Mexico where men and women knock on the side of a coffin--and listen for an answer. Men and women flagellate themselves. Tarahumaras, in caves of the Barranca del Cobre country, worship stone idols and pray to rain gods. Lacandones still leave offerings on jungle altars.

Until about 1826, when a national school system was created in the larger towns and in the cities, textbooks were unknown except at private schools. Homer, Sappho, Plato, Shakespeare and Kant were all but unrecognized. _Don Quixote_, however, was an influence. So were Lope de Vega and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. But they were only literary shadows. No hacienda _maestro_ explored the thoughts of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, or Jefferson. There were no science labs. There was no art instruction.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries only six or eight Mexican minds contributed to culture and learning: Ruiz de Alarcón, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, and Don Bartolomé de Alba were among them. Their influence was restricted to metropolitan centers. Without books, with limited transportation, the hacienda remained a lost society.

In 1910, when there were approximately eight thousand haciendas, between ten and twenty students attended school each day on a given hacienda: In all, some 870,000 children and teenagers were enrolled--gaining a rudimentary education. In towns and cities, where private schools contributed to the nation's education, schools were small and offered limited opportunities. With a population in 1910 of 15 million, Mexico's enrollment was among the world's lowest. Mexico had only 3 million literates. In all hacienda areas millions could not read or write--or speak Spanish.

During the more than ten years of civil war and machete madness that followed 1910-1914, education of the masses was disrupted throughout the nation. School attendance dropped in towns and cities; on the hacienda every hint of learning stopped. When hacienda after hacienda was pillaged or burned, the skeletal school system disappeared. Books--those there were--went up in flames. Youth had no chance for scholastic growth. The young who survived were fortunate. During these years, Mexico's population declined by one million people.

Years of revolution retarded Mexico to an incalculable degree as guns took the place of brains. Towns, while occupied by troops or harassed by gunfire, had to abandon teaching and schooling. Youngsters born on an hacienda during those years grew up without seeing the inside of a school.

Yet, it is an amazing and stimulating fact that Mexico, after such havoc, could evolve an educational system of merit and induce the young and the old to attend classes. The "Each One, Teach One," or "Analfabetismo Program," was put into effect and successfully carried out. In 1951, thirty-seven years after the haciendas had been abolished, the government appropriated 355,680,000 pesos for schools. Prefabs sprang up overnight; old buildings were renovated; education became compulsory; efforts were made to attract teachers and to train them.

The wealthy elite sons and daughters of the hacienda studied at institutions of higher learning abroad. This favored group, though small, contributed to the nation's maturity. Universities such as Salamanca, Heidelberg, Harvard, the Sorbonne, Oxford, and Cambridge enriched these students. They assumed important posts, government positions, and engineering jobs; they became senators, doctors, lawyers, and educators. The long, bitter struggle to attain a middle class had begun.

+VI. The Revolution+

John Reed, an American journalist who covered the campaign of Pancho Villa, described in _Insurgent Mexico_ the revolution at an hacienda in northern Mexico in 1913-1914:

We crept close to the line and when we were almost upon them we opened fire. There were three detachments and we pushed right into their encampment and set fire to their shelters. Their corn and beans were laid out on blankets to dry in the sun and we even destroyed that.

The Carrancistas fled from us and we chased them through very rough country. We believed we were winning, but man! It wasn't that way at all! We followed them without knowing where we were going. They stopped on the other side of a hill, at the entrance to Hacienda San Gregorio, and there a fourth detachment withstood us so we pulled back and joined our forces. There were five thousand of us but we were extended from San Gregorio to Topilejo. Our guides were local peasants and they sent General Chon and his men through the mountains. He was from Guerrero and he didn't know these mountains so they sent him to the worst peaks. His men were stopped but we weren't. We were sent along the side of the highway and General Teodor's men went on the highway because they were all on horseback. The Carrancistas had artillery but the shots passed over us because we lay down in the ditches....