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.
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda San Ignacio, Yucatán: brass ecclesiastical
candle holder.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Castamay, Campeche: _cepo_ (stocks), made of
mahogany.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Castamay, Campeche: chapel stairway.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda Corralitos, Corralitos, Chihuahua:
one-million-acre cattle and mining hacienda, 1750. Adobe residence,
1886, surrounded by cottonwoods.]
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."
[Illustration: Hacienda de Bellavista, Jalisco: sugar refinery silo.]
+IV. Fiestas+
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Yocotepec, Hidalgo: church and stone cross.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Sodzil, Yucatán: bronze weathervane on
residence.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Puerto de Nieto, Guanajuato: stone residence
and chapel.]
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).
[Illustration: Hacienda de Puerto de Nieto, Guanajuato: gate.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Puerto de Nieto, Guanajuato: church.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Aurora, Jalisco: commemorative bridge column
dated 1750.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de los Morales, D.F.: patio fountain, 1643.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Xala, Hidalgo: residence and chapel, 1785.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Tenache, Oaxaca: twin bells on roof of
residence.]
[Illustration: Hacienda la Calera, Jalisco: second residence on the
property, 1890.]
[Illustration: Hacienda Pixoy, Yucatán: brick-adobe residence and
storage rooms. 18th century, eleven rooms.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de los Ricos, Guanajuato: residence.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de los Ricos, Guanajuato: bullring entry door.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Yaxche, Yucatán: Virgin, 14 inches high,
17th century.]
+V. Education+
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Tamanche, Yucatán: 17th-century colonial
residence and remains of sugar refinery chimney.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de San Antonio, Guanajuato: 18th-century chapel
ruin.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de San Antonio, Colima: 17th-century chapel and
terminus of aqueduct.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Jajalpa, D.F.: pink stucco sixteen-room,
red-tiled 19th-century residence and chapel.]
[Illustration: Hacienda San Cayetano, Nayarit: one of a pair of pink
ceramic lions at entry to residence.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Guarache, Michoacán: residence and chapel.
Now a government school.]
[Illustration: Hacienda de Petaca, Guanajuato: residence.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Juana Guerra, Amado Nervo, Durango:
millstone.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda Aguilera, Oaxaca: former 19th-century hacienda
residence, now university building.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda San Cayetano de Valencia, Guanajuato: church,
1788.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de Juana Guerra, Amado Nervo, Durango: baroque
church.]
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.
[Illustration: Hacienda de la Venta del Astillero. Jalisco:
18th-century stone and brick residence and chapel. 220 feet long.]
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+
[Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand]
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....
But then we entered a little cornfield in a valley where the
fighting was very bad. The Zapatistas were on one hill and the
Carrancistas were on another and we were in the middle, fighting
hand to hand with other Carrancistas. The two armies got all mixed
up, there in San Gregorio. There was a tremendous hail of bullets
and the dead piled up like stones in a milpa (small plot). The man
just next to me fell.... At five o'clock a bullet got the Captain
who had been blaspheming the day before. In the dark we didn't
know who was a Zapatista, who was a Carrancista.