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.
Hacienda de Calderón, Guanajuato: bronze bell on residence, 1838.
Hacienda de Calderón, Guanajuato: bronze bell on residence, 1838.
Haciendas became an embodiment of time. They seemed to defy time, offering the illusion that a family could live there indefinitely.
Hacienda cattle brand
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda de Ciénega de Mata, Jalisco: 16th-century church.
Hacienda de Ciénega de Mata, Jalisco: 16th-century church.
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
Hacienda cattle brand
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."
Hacienda de Cabezón, Jalisco: chapel Virgin; her elaborate wardrobe valued at $50,000.
Hacienda de Cabezón, Jalisco: chapel Virgin; her elaborate wardrobe valued at $50,000.
The mayordomo was hospitable and accommodated Mayer and his party 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."
Hacienda de Cabezón, Jalisco: capital, front of residence. 1800: building designed by architect Eduardo Tresguerras.
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: late 17th-century church in rose stucco. A famous Jesuit hacienda.
Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: late 17th-century church in rose stucco. A famous Jesuit hacienda.
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.
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.
Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: handpainted wall fresco in bedroom of ruined residence.
Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: handpainted wall fresco in bedroom of ruined residence.
Hacienda de Cuisillos, Jalisco: mural, one of fourteen panels on veranda wall of residence.
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
Hacienda cattle brand
Hacienda de Cañedo, Jalisco: 19th-century church.
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.
Hacienda de Xcanatún, Yucatán: one of a series of gold wall motifs around chapel walls.
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.
Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo, Puebla: florentine armor in residence.
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.
Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo, Puebla: pistol and brand of hacienda
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo, Puebla: 16th-century stone bas relief, 3 feet x 5 feet, unearthed in garden.
Hacienda de San José Huejotzingo, Puebla: 16th-century stone bas relief, 3 feet x 5 feet, unearthed in garden.
Hacienda de San Francisco, Jalisco: residence.
Hacienda de San Francisco, Jalisco: residence.
Hacienda de Sodzil, Yucatán: narrow-gauge railway passenger car drawn by mule or horse
Hacienda de Sodzil, Yucatán: narrow-gauge railway passenger car drawn by mule or horse
Hacienda Yaxcopoíl, Yucatán: residence. Note narrow-gauge railroad car.
Hacienda Yaxcopoíl, Yucatán: residence. Note narrow-gauge railroad car.
Hacienda de los Morales, D.F.: spinning wheel in residence patio.
Hacienda de los Morales, D.F.: spinning wheel in residence patio.
Hacienda de Bianca, Oaxaca: patio
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda de Dolores Noriatenco, Puebla: century-old carriage.
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.
Hacienda cattle brands, state of Jalisco.
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.
Hacienda de Cedra, Jalisco: stone cross to one side of hacienda chapel. 8 feet tall.
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.
Hacienda de Tabi, Yucatán: early 18th-century church.
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.
Hacienda de Altillo, Coyoacán, D.F.: pastel of St. Andrew.
Hacienda de Altillo, Coyoacán, D.F.: pastel of St. Andrew.
Hacienda de Xotla, Puebla: residence patio and oven.
Hacienda de Xotla, Puebla: residence patio and oven.
Hacienda Zapotitán, Jalisco: map on veranda of residence.
Hacienda Zapotitán, Jalisco: map on veranda of residence.
Hacienda de Buena Vista, Jalisco: 18th-century aqueduct.
Hacienda de Buena Vista, Jalisco: 18th-century aqueduct.
Hacienda de Zapotitán, Jalisco: remains of 1750 residence and mirador; white stuccoed masonry.
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."
Hacienda de Dolores Noriatenco, Puebla: polychrome wood statue, 16th-century, 5 feet tall.
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.
Hacienda de Castamay, Campeche: 18th-century church.
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.
Hacienda de Dolores Noriatenco, Puebla: saddle belonging to former President Ávila Camacho decorated with silver.
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.
Hacienda San Ignacio, Yucatán: 18th century brass sacristy Implements--handbell and Bible holder.
Hacienda San Ignacio, Yucatán: 18th century brass sacristy Implements—handbell and Bible holder.
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.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda San Ignacio, Yucatán: brass ecclesiastical candle holder.
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.
Hacienda de Castamay, Campeche: <i>cepo</i> (stocks), made of mahogany.
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.
Hacienda de Castamay, Campeche: chapel stairway.
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.
Hacienda Corralitos, Corralitos, Chihuahua: one-million-acre cattle and mining hacienda, 1750. Adobe residence, 1886, surrounded by cottonwoods.
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."
Hacienda de Bellavista, Jalisco: sugar refinery silo.
Hacienda de Bellavista, Jalisco: sugar refinery silo.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda de Yocotepec, Hidalgo: church and stone cross.
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.
Hacienda de Sodzil, Yucatán: bronze weathervane on residence.
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.
Hacienda de Puerto de Nieto, Guanajuato: stone residence and chapel.
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).
Hacienda de Puerto de Nieto, Guanajuato: gate.
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.
Hacienda de Puerto de Nieto, Guanajuato: church.
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.
Hacienda de Aurora, Jalisco: commemorative bridge column dated 1750.
Hacienda de Aurora, Jalisco: commemorative bridge column dated 1750.
Hacienda de los Morales, D.F.: patio fountain, 1643.
Hacienda de los Morales, D.F.: patio fountain, 1643.
Hacienda de Xala, Hidalgo: residence and chapel, 1785.
Hacienda de Xala, Hidalgo: residence and chapel, 1785.
Hacienda de Tenache, Oaxaca: twin bells on roof of residence.
Hacienda de Tenache, Oaxaca: twin bells on roof of residence.
Hacienda la Calera, Jalisco: second residence on the property, 1890.
Hacienda la Calera, Jalisco: second residence on the property, 1890.
Hacienda Pixoy, Yucatán: brick-adobe residence and storage rooms. 18th century, eleven rooms.
Hacienda Pixoy, Yucatán: brick-adobe residence and storage rooms. 18th century, eleven rooms.
Hacienda de los Ricos, Guanajuato: residence.
Hacienda de los Ricos, Guanajuato: residence.
Hacienda de los Ricos, Guanajuato: bullring entry door.
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.
Hacienda de Yaxche, Yucatán: Virgin, 14 inches high, 17th century.
Hacienda de Yaxche, Yucatán: Virgin, 14 inches high, 17th century.
Hacienda cattle brand
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.
Hacienda de Tamanche, Yucatán: 17th-century colonial residence and remains of sugar refinery chimney.
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.
Hacienda de San Antonio, Guanajuato: 18th-century chapel ruin.
Hacienda de San Antonio, Guanajuato: 18th-century chapel ruin.
Hacienda de San Antonio, Colima: 17th-century chapel and terminus of aqueduct.
Hacienda de San Antonio, Colima: 17th-century chapel and terminus of aqueduct.
Hacienda de Jajalpa, D.F.: pink stucco sixteen-room, red-tiled 19th-century residence and chapel.
Hacienda de Jajalpa, D.F.: pink stucco sixteen-room, red-tiled 19th-century residence and chapel.
Hacienda San Cayetano, Nayarit: one of a pair of pink ceramic lions at entry to residence.
Hacienda San Cayetano, Nayarit: one of a pair of pink ceramic lions at entry to residence.
Hacienda de Guarache, Michoacán: residence and chapel. Now a government school.
Hacienda de Guarache, Michoacán: residence and chapel. Now a government school.
Hacienda de Petaca, Guanajuato: residence.
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.
Hacienda de Juana Guerra, Amado Nervo, Durango: millstone.
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.
Hacienda Aguilera, Oaxaca: former 19th-century hacienda residence, now university building.
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.
Hacienda San Cayetano de Valencia, Guanajuato: church, 1788.
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.
Hacienda de Juana Guerra, Amado Nervo, Durango: baroque church.
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.
Hacienda de la Venta del Astillero. Jalisco: 18th-century stone and brick residence and chapel. 220 feet long.
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.