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MEXICO MAGICO
TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people |
CHAPTER IV, The Forefathers (50th part continues...)
By Prof. German Estrada - February 2006 |
North of Zacatecas, obstacles rarely blocked the spread of the latifundio. Open country lay ahead, inhabited usually by nomadic and warlike Chichimecas. For a century or so, law and order were honored more in the breach than in the practice; legal obstacles, prevalent in central New Spain, were circumvented easily. Only Indian resistance slowed the northward advance of the latifundio, for instance in the Mayo and Yaqui valley of Sonora. In addition, colonization laws awarded land to individuals ready to gamble life and limb on the pacification of the north. Among them were wealthy mineowners and, later, merchants, above all in Chihuahua. Crown incentives converted the north into a region of powerful men and giant haciendas.
Whether grain, sugar, or cattle hacendados or pulqueros, who sold pulque from their maguey plants, they made their presence felt in the countryside. They were the influential men, which included an array of mayordomos (supervisors), capataces (field bosses), and administrators. In the local community, their word was law. More often than not, they ill used their Indian workers, a tyranny checked occasionally only by priest, when he was not an ally of the hacendado. In the provincial cities and towns, the landed gentry sat in the ayuntamientos alongside of wealthy merchants and mineowners.
Land came to confer social status; upon it rested the hierarchical structure. To the socially pretentious, land and family standing were one and the same. Land passed from father to eldest son preserved the family name and gave life to a rural aristocracy. The mayorazgo, or law of primogeniture, held sway until the end of the colonial era. “Lands divided among the children,” went a current saying, “were lands lost.” In the hands of the eldest son, lands and family remained together. The mayorazgo, not illogically, led to the search for titles, that of a marques or conde, for instance. By this method, wealthy men of dubious origin, mostly criollos, joined nobility. Increasingly, moreover, criollos were the landlords of the seventeenth century.
Whoever the hacendados, whether criollos or Spaniards and, eventually, a mestizo or two, the Indian suffered the most of them. If he withstood disease and misuse, he could still lose his lands. Not all, of course, did; countless Indian pueblos, especially in Oaxaca and Yucatán, thanks to poor soil, the absence of water, or their own vigilance, perhaps in that order, saved their lands. When deprived of his lands, the Indian lost his means of production for, essentially, he lived off the land. Without it, he became a wageworker, either tilling the land of the hacendado or wandering off to dig ore in a mine. The ownership of land bound together the Indian village and conferred meaning on family and individual. So long as it had lands, the village maintained its traditions and customs. Once it lost them, life disintegrated and the Indian ceased being Indian. The Indians’s struggle for his lands, a constant theme of the colonial centuries, signified not just a battle for land but, more important, his survival as an Indian.
The hacienda increasingly the kingpin of agriculture, evolved in response to the needs of mining camps, then to local and regional markets. Generally, the haciendas relied on commercial crops, either wheat, corn, sugarcane, or maguey. By law, crops which competed with those grown in Spain could not be cultivated----wine grapes and olive trees, to cite two. In practice, colonial farmers usually ignored these prohibitions. Most haciendas had vast amounts of land, enough to be planted and to lie fallow. They sold their produce on the market and bought little from the outside; for the most part, they were self-sufficient.
Hacendados raised cattle and planted chili, beans, and squash for their own needs.
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Hacienda in Yucatán 17th Century (Henequen (Sisal) Production)
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In the next issue we’ll continue with Chapter IV of this fascinating book: A NEW SPAIN (Miracles of Silver).
Prof. Germán Estrada
E-mail: estradanav@yahoo.com
Source: From the book Triumphs and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization. (W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London).
Prof. Germán Estrada is the author of the best selling book, México Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books, Books as well as directly from his website. |
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