with comfortable rooms. Following dinner, Mayer walked among the
hacienda's fields of sugarcane. He inspected the _tienda de raya_ (the
general store), and the hacienda's offices, kitchens, parlors,
bedrooms, and an "immense corridor of arches filled with caged birds,
hung with hammocks, where the family pass most of the long warm days of
summer."
[Illustration: Hacienda de Cabezón, Jalisco: capital, front of
residence. 1800: building designed by architect Eduardo Tresguerras.]
At sunset the workers gathered under the arches of the residence
and the administrator called the roll and each man replied with
"Alabo a Dios" ("I praise God"). When all were dismissed they
walked away singing a hymn to the Virgin.... That night a group of
musicians played in a hut: violin, clarinet, flute, and drum.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
In 1833, travelers Emma Undsay Squier and her husband were guests at a
tequila hacienda, Ometusco, about an hour and a half by horseback from
Mexico City. From the railroad station, the complex appeared like a
"salmon-pink birthday cake in the shape of a walled fortress." The
buildings were surrounded by fields of maguey. The Squiers entered the
grounds through a large gateway where soldiers lounged. The walled
patio was enormous and paved with stone. Burros trotted by, bearing
casks of freshly collected _agua miel_ (sap of the maguey).
Ometusco was the size of a village; the hacendado's home was a palace
of many rooms, kitchens, winding stairways, patios, poultry yards,
corrals. The largest patio, centered by a stone fountain, was planted
with flowers, trees, and flowering vines. A tiny school had its own
patio. The chapel was elaborate. Guests enjoyed a billiard room in
the main house. Each bedroom had beds protected by mosquito netting.
The dining room could seat seventy persons at a mahogany table. Inlaid
buffets glittered with silver and glassware, seldom to be seen after
the revolutionary period of 1910-1914.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: late 17th-century church
in rose stucco. A famous Jesuit hacienda.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: floor plan of residence.
A. Residence. B. Kitchens. C. Chapel. D-E. Living Quarters. F-G-H.
Corrals. I. Granary. J. Jail. K. General Store (Tienda de Raya). L.
Living Quarters. M. Yard.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: handpainted wall fresco
in bedroom of ruined residence.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: mural, one of fourteen
panels on veranda wall of residence.]
By 1952, the renowned Hacienda Cabezón had become a mere _casco_ (a
shell). Located about 48 miles from Guadalajara, near Ameca, the
residence was designed in 1780 by the famous architect Francisco
Eduardo de Tresguerras. Now, grunting, shuffling pigs have squatters'
rights to the fifteen rooms. The building is roofless; its handpainted
bedroom walls are open to the weather, all that remains of the handsome
structure, once the focal point of fifteen or twenty _sitios_
(ranches), is the chapel, pewless, clean, its walls faded red, gold,
and yellow. Swallows fly in and out of their nests in the gold
curlicues of the reredos.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
Cabezón has a single treasure: the Virgin of Candelaria, protected by a
plate-glass case. Her face seems Andalusian. Colored scrolls,
garlands, and angels frame her as she stands on a silver crescent moon,
her figure the center of a gilded _reredo_. About 18 inches tall, she
wears a white satin gown sewn with gold. A jeweled pearl crown rests
on her hair, making her the perfect madonna. Close by, under the dark
mesquite floor, members of the hacienda family are buried: Ignacio
Cañedo de Valdivierlos (1836); Estanislao Cañedo (1887); Manuel Calixto
Cañedo (1905).
According to a chiseled inscription, the floor was laid in 1858 and
cost 166 pesos.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
The land belonging to the famous ecclesiastical hacienda, Santa Lucía,
was purchased by the Jesuits on December 4, 1576. Legally, the
estate's area measured 18.8 square miles, an area populated by Otomi,
Tepaneca, and Chichimeca Indians. At the time of its purchase it had
16,800 sheep, 1,400 goats, 125 brood mares and colts, 1 stallion, 1
saddle horse, 2 donkey mares, 2 donkey stallions, and 8 slaves.
During the 1580s, construction work was carried out on residences,
offices, storage buildings, corrals, sheds, and quarters for the
slaves. A chapel was built in 1592. The hacienda produced barley,
oats, beans, wheat, corn, chickpeas, and livestock: cattle, sheep,
goats, mules, and horses, in increasing numbers each year. Santa Lucía
prospered for nearly two centuries.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
Cuisillos is another Jalisco hacienda, a place of jacaranda, palms,
eucalyptus, ash, and mesquite, near Cabezón. Horizon hills are often
steel blue, and a low-lying volcano is often misty gray. Cuisillos,
deeded in 1620, first belonged to Juan González de Apodaca, chief
constable under Cortéz. During the sixteenth century it was one of the
largest estates in Mexico and added substantial revenues to the Crown.
Neoclassic, its _casa principal_ (main house) and chapel form an L, and
fronting the L is a grove of palms. The main house has thirty rooms,
two tiled patios with a fountain in each; in the main patio there are
fourteen fresco panels painted in 1910 of seascapes, landscapes, and
scenes of women in the eighteenth century.
The grilled patio gate bears the renovation date 1910 and the hacienda
brand and family monogram. All rooms are still roofed and floored.
The house is putting up a valiant struggle. Its primitive kitchen has
an igloo-shaped oven with a charcoal basket dangling from its chimney
pipe. A corkscrew limestone stairway leads to the chapel tower where
there are bronze bells whose skirt dates are 1895, 1895, 1896, and
1896; the fifth bell has no date. The chapel façade is ornate. The
interior is simple: a small _coro_ (choir gallery), with a small
darkwood organ that is badly battered. The walls of the chapel are
white and gold.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
A neighboring hacienda is architecturally imposing. The Hacienda
Cañedo has a church that would be outstanding in any city. The
building, of yellow limestone, is baroque-Italianate. It towers above
the surrounding structures and is amazing for its spire and its twelve
stone apostles in the forecourt--8-foot carvings of limestone on stone
pedestals--native craft at its finest.
The church interior is blue, white, and gold. Sedate. The black
mesquite floor has a carved strip leading to the altar, and the words
on the strip indicate when the floor was laid and what it cost. Altar
and decorations are simple: brass candle holders, vases with paper
flowers. There are solid-backed wooden pews in cedar. The room
expresses spaciousness.
The residence, which adjoins the church, is a stone mansion with badly
scaled walls. All rooms are vacant except the kitchen, a
charcoal-blackened room with smudged clay pots and a row of cracked
white plates in racks above a tiled stone stove. Around this _casco_
are other buildings, storage rooms--all stone, all neglected. At one
time, according to a wall sign, there was a _biblioteca rural_ (rural
library) in the complex.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
In the state of Hidalgo, the Hacienda de San Francisco--a pulque
estate--was refurbished in 1880. The twenty-room mansion stands in a
giant field of maguey ringed by hills. Fifty carriages could park in
front. Once there were twin swimming pools, a bullring, and fifty
Japanese gardeners to maintain the gardens.
The residence has rooms around a flower-weed-garbage patio. The
building is in a pseudo Arabian-Spanish style. On a wall there is a
crank-style phone. There is electricity and a broken television
antenna. A large _sala_ (parlor) has a number of ornate tables, tufted
velvet couches, and silk-damask chairs; imported brocaded drapes are
fastened by gold sashes, all from France via train, ox cart, and
tumpline. On the stairway leading to the roof, the hacienda workers
killed the owner in 1910.
Occasionally there are guests, weekenders. Barefooted girls wearing
braids serve among the antiques.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Cañedo, Jalisco: 19th-century church.]
Far south, in Yucatán, Yaxcopoíl is a working henequén hacienda, a
survivor of two centuries, still semi-successful economically. Located
about forty miles from Mérida, on the Uxmal-Campeche highway, the
residence forms a U. Residence, chapel, offices, and storage space are
eighteenth-century structures. The main house has thirteen arches
along its broad veranda and micro-chapel. This section of the complex
is connected by an imposing pillared breezeway to the dining room,
kitchen, and servants' quarters.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Xcanatún, Yucatán: one of a series of gold
wall motifs around chapel walls.]
The floor of the extensive patio between these buildings is paved with
flagstone carved with Mayan glyphs and designs, appropriated from
nearby ruins on the property. The residence is furnished in eighteenth
and nineteenth-century styles with marble-topped tables, bronze and
brass beds, dangling chain lamps with handpainted globes and shades,
henequén hammocks, and tanned hides on tile floors. Bathroom fixtures
are British and washbasins with silver faucets bear a porcelainized
coat-of-arms.
There are reed chairs in the living room. Mediocre prints and a
seventeenth-century religious canvas decorate the walls. The floor
tiles are conventional in pattern; there are no rugs; the ceiling beams
are stenciled in pastel floral designs. Double doors lead to the
veranda. The dining room has a center table with a Tiffany-type lamp.
In the office there are chairs, an oak desk, a handpress, and a
bookcase.
In the micro-chapel, its wall decorated with gold and silver
fleur-de-lys and pink roses, there is a large sixteenth-century canvas
by an accomplished, anonymous artist: the descent from the cross, with
eight or ten figures merging with the background. There are no chairs.
The altar is small, insignificant. A white Seybold organ, a silver
crucifix, a pair of silver candles on a side table complete the
furnishings.
Behind the residence stands a theater with simple stone façade and
pilaster figures of women representing spring, summer, autumn, and
winter. A windmill spins behind a carved Mayan head perched on the
roof line. The auditorium accommodates a couple of hundred people for
movies and plays.
[Illustration: Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo, Puebla: florentine
armor in residence.]
The henequén production mill consists of a large open shed with a
corrugated roof. There is a machine press for crushing the maguey
leaves, which are hauled in by narrow-gauge flat cars, pulled by mules
or Ford-engine. There are fence-like racks behind the mill for drying
thousands of fibers at one time. Employees here work on salary; today
there are no feudal restrictions.
[Illustration: Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo, Puebla: pistol and
brand of hacienda]
From the rooftop of the residence, Mayan ruins are visible as earthen
mounds in the midst of maguey plantings. The seven mounds are an
unexplored archaeological site.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
The imposing Hacienda San José Huejotzingo is near the city of Puebla
in the state of Puebla. Its stark one-story red brick, white brick
façade faces a lane of dying elm and willow. The residence measures
170 feet across the front. At each corner there is an ornamental
tower. The house encloses two patios. Destroyed by revolutionaries,
its chapel and storage areas are roofless, but the residential rooms
have been reconditioned. They are filled with _recuerdos_ (mementos):
incunabula, antique firearms, a suit of Italian armor, oil paintings,
Aztec figures, charro spurs, leather chests, colonial tables and chairs.
In the dining room are tall ecclesiastical wooden candelabra, carved
cedar chairs, monogrammed chests, pre-Columbian objects, colonial
pottery, and old dishes. Modern Tonalá pottery ornaments a
nineteenth-century buffet. Throughout the residence the floors are red
tile.
The central patio has a 5-foot limestone statue of St. Joseph, carved
in 1624. It stands near a wall tile that reads: _Margarita Barrados,
died June 3, 1871_. A stone plaque of a conquistador on horseback, in
primitive style, decorates another wall.
The property--a corn, wheat, and cattle estate dating from Cortesian
days--is owned by Juan Matienzo, who has made a hobby of reconstructing
his ancestral home. Few other haciendas have Popocatépetl's
18,000-foot peak looming behind.
[Illustration: Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo, Puebla: 16th-century
stone bas relief, 3 feet x 5 feet, unearthed in garden.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de San Francisco, Jalisco: residence.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Sodzil, Yucatán: narrow-gauge railway
passenger car drawn by mule or horse]
[Illustration: Hacienda Yaxcopoíl, Yucatán: residence. Note
narrow-gauge railroad car.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de los Morales, D.F.: spinning wheel in
residence patio.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Bianca, Oaxaca: patio]
San Martín Rinconada, a feudal hacienda, is halfway between Puebla and
Jalapa on the Jalapa route. The buildings are enclosed in a compound.
The protective walls, 30 feet high, are in good condition--mellowed by
age. Extensive cornfields surround the compound, which is about one
half-block square.
An intricate grilled gateway opens to a plateresque church. The church
clock keeps time, and the stone sundial by the corral also keeps time,
hacienda time. Behind the church, a windowless chapel, with double
doors for light and air, contains five mauled wooden desks, dusty
benches of adzed wood, and a cracked blackboard. This was once a
school.
Outside the compound, facing the church, are adobe huts roofed with
straw. They accommodated the workers, their poultry, pigs, and dogs.
Perhaps one hundred people lived in the twenty huts. A shingle-roofed
_pozo_ (well) supplies water for horses, cattle, and people, spilling
it into a 20-foot wooden trough. Gun slots in the compound walls slant
toward the well and trough. Zapatistas and Carrancistas threatened the
hacienda in 1914; they banged on the residence door and demanded beef
and saddle horses but left the property undamaged.
Now empty, the bedrooms are papered in gold and white and are
semi-frescoed overhead. A minute patio, facing several bedrooms, has a
few shabby cypress. The _sala_ has no furnishings.
Stained-glass windows, humble panes of colored glass, light the
auditorium that seated one hundred people. Behind a plaster life-size
Christ on the altar hangs a dark red velvet drape; nearby, on the same
wall, is a tortured Christus. A pair of prayer wheels stands by the
altar. Chandeliers are encased in white covers, carefully tied. There
are stubby oak candelabra with fat candles that have dripped wax. A
foxed, framed letter is dated 1742.
+III. Hacienda Life+
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
Life on an hacienda was basically agrarian, revolving around the care
of livestock, poultry, planting, harvesting, crop storage, irrigation,
and general maintenance. If the estate was located in an area that
included tropical low-level land, mountainous terrain, and semi-desert,
administration was complex. The thousands of acres had to be
supervised on horseback. Weather was a daily concern. Keeping a
competent work force was an ever-changing problem.
The personnel of an hacienda consisted of a mayordomo (the
administrator), minor supervisors, field workers, cowhands, shepherds,
blacksmiths, masons, saddlers, cobblers, carpenters, woodcutters,
weavers, a stable boss and assistants, errand boys, a barber, a
chandler, gardeners, dairymen, maids, butler, cooks, seamstresses, the
manager of the tienda de raya, butchers, a priest, an organist, a
teacher, a governess, and sometimes a doctor. The bigger the estate,
the bigger the staff. All were responsible to the hacendado who lived
on the hacienda or who was an absentee owner-administrator.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Dolores Noriatenco, Puebla: century-old
carriage.]
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the haciendas became
increasingly self-sufficient. Isolated as they were, they made every
effort to provide for their own needs: water, food, carriages, wagons,
carts, saddles, shoes, spurs, harnesses, clothing, linen. Equipment
like saws, plows, pumps, pipe, guns, and machetes had to be "imported."
The hacendado, his family, and staff ate an early breakfast. Bells
clanged for a Mass at 6:00 or 7:00 A.M. (before or after breakfast),
depending on the weather. In most tropical regions, work commenced at
dawn to escape the noon heat; during the summer, work was often
suspended around midday and resumed late in the afternoon.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brands, state of Jalisco.]
Each morning, the hacendado found his clothes laid out by his mozo
(valet), perhaps his charro outfit, a shirt, socks, sombrero, pistol,
boots, gloves, and quirt. His breakfast menu included fruit, eggs,
meat dishes, beans, tortillas, or _pan dulces_ (varied sweet rolls).
The chef offered coffee, chocolate, tea, pulque, or beer. Cuban cigars
were favored. Mounted on a well-groomed thoroughbred, riding western
saddle, the hacendado checked crops, cattle, corrals, granary,
irrigation project, and village laborers. He also conferred with
village _caciques_ (chiefs). During a lifetime the hacendado rode some
60,000 miles.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Cedra, Jalisco: stone cross to one side of
hacienda chapel. 8 feet tall.]
The hacendada looked after her staff, her maids, the governess, the
tutor, she allocated tasks: sheets to be laundered, soap to be made,
the purchase of _manta_ for linen, clothes to be mended, skirts to be
hemmed. If guests were expected, the dinner menu had to be carefully
planned. Children, relatives, friends--they were all important.
Supplies had to be brought to the hacienda from the nearest village or
town: kerosene, salt, lamps, matches, drugs.
By 2:00 or 2:30 P.M., it was time to eat. At a kind of makeshift
picnic, the workers shared their clay pots of hot beans or rice, their
tortillas, and pulque. Sometimes there was meat with the rice or
beans: chicken, pork, beef, goat. In season, there were zapotes,
mangos, oranges, avocados, bananas, chirimoyas. Workers wore
cast-offs: torn shirts, torn trousers, battered hats; the women were
usually dressed in blue cotton dresses and blue and white rebozos.
They ate in the fields, in the kitchen, in the corral and
stables--sharing their food.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Tabi, Yucatán: early 18th-century church.]
At the same hour, inside the big house, the hacendado, his family, and
guests enjoyed a meal at the long table set with imported or hacienda
linen, elegant china, cut glass, and Mexican and European silverware.
Barefoot maids served. Perhaps the maids wore Tehuana or Yucatecan
dresses. The butler may have worn white gloves. In the spacious,
beamed, windowed room, cool in summer, warm in winter, the menu was
varied:
Hors d'oeuvres
Soup
_Sopa Seca_ (pasta, rice, etc.)
Beef, chicken, pork, lamb, venison--or
a combination of these (Turkey, rabbit,
quail, fish, when available)
_Flan_ (custard), _chongo_ (a milk and
syrup confection), _cajeta_ (caramelized
goat's milk), cake--or fresh fruit and
cheese
Coffee, tea, wine, liquor, _horchata_
(a rice drink), _jamaica_ (a tropical drink),
chocolate.
Wine and liquor were both domestic and imported. Both local and
imported cheeses were served, as well as European delicacies like
caviar, marmalades, jellies, mints, nuts, and bon-bons.
After dinner, the siesta called for relaxation, comfortable chairs,
hammocks. A well-earned sense of ease took over. A few guests played
pool or billiards, bridge, rummy, pinochle. At dusk, croquet was a
favorite game. Some estates had a swimming pool or access to a river,
lake, or ocean playa.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Altillo, Coyoacán, D.F.: pastel of St.
Andrew.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Xotla, Puebla: residence patio and oven.]
[Illustration: Hacienda Zapotitán, Jalisco: map on veranda of
residence.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Buena Vista, Jalisco: 18th-century aqueduct.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Zapotitán, Jalisco: remains of 1750
residence and mirador; white stuccoed masonry.]
At a Jesuit hacienda, a peasant who failed to attend Mass might be
lashed; but the average hacienda was lenient about attendance. At
evening Mass after a day's labor, the workers were glad to kneel or
squat: the hour was a humble reward. Hymns were sung. Someone played
the organ or piano.
Each chapel or church boasted an altar--a lace-covered table with paper
flowers or a rococo gilded carving, with _santos_ (saints) and angels
in the gray niches. The Virgin or saint was the focal point.
Stained-glass and onyx windows appeared in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Marble and onyx sometimes replaced mesquite or
tiled floors. Some chapels and churches had pews, but in those without
furniture the workers knelt. As for the hacienda family, they sat on
cane chairs or worshipped behind a screened _coro_. There was a clear
distance between them and the "unwashed."
[Illustration: Hacienda de Dolores Noriatenco, Puebla: polychrome wood
statue, 16th-century, 5 feet tall.]
Most services were conducted in Latin, a language disliked by the
Indians because they considered it an affront to their integrity.
Spanish was a tribulation and Latin was another. When they memorized
songs in Latin or Spanish, they often mispronounced words intentionally.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Castamay, Campeche: 18th-century church.]
Crucifixes were evident in most places of worship. The figure of
Christ was sometimes pornographic in style, sometimes tragic. "Yerma,"
Federico Garcia Lorca's tragic evocation, was brought to life again and
again.
Young people grew up seeing marriage distorted, warped by superstition
and rigid conventions. They learned to admire martyrs. They learned
that the body was unclean--putrefying. The bloody cross hung in
countless minds. With a cross dangling at her throat, the señorita
made confections: sugar skulls. "A Nun's Cry" was the name of a
confection. Hacienda loneliness did strange things; it summoned
_duendes_ (spirits). In this remote place, the church bred
intolerance--deep whispers of death and damnation.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Dolores Noriatenco, Puebla: saddle belonging
to former President Ávila Camacho decorated with silver.]
Great art--when it could be found--added to extremism. St. Sebastian
and his arrow-pierced body, Murillo and his forlorn madonnas,
Caravaggio and his rebellious saints--each tilted the mind a little
further askew. However, there was great music at some estates.
Freighted by train, retransported in sections by ox cart, the London
Broadway piano brought Bach, Händel, and Couperin to the señora's
_sala_. Most haciendas had a sala cluttered with heirlooms: horsehair
sofas, tapestry chairs, wicker rockers, a parotta table, an ormolu
screen, an inlaid card table, brass spittoons, and a whatnot of
oriental ivory carvings.
[Illustration: Hacienda San Ignacio, Yucatán: 18th century brass
sacristy Implements--handbell and Bible holder.]