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MEXICO MAGICO
TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people |
CHAPTER IV, The Forefathers - The Baroque Years (67th part continues...)
By Prof. German Estrada - November 2006 |
Given the growing shortage of Indian workers, part and parcel of the decline of the native population, part and parcel of the decline of the native population, systems of agricultural labor also started to change. Eventually, hacendados had to pay their field hands. One offshoot of that necessity was debt patronage (peones acasillados), a system common to regions of acute labor shortages, notably central Mexico. Debt patronage took form during the late sixteenth century. For many a hacendado, it was the answer to his labor problems: how to guarantee the availability of Indian workers during the planting and harvest seasons. Mine owners in Zacatecas, too, relied briefly on debt patronage, as did the obrajes. But it was on the hacienda that it took root, especially with the rising demand for grains in the mining towns and cities. By ending the repartimiento, the crown conferred tacit approval on debt patronage. By this system, the Indian bound himself to his employer by going into debt to him. The hacendado lent him money, often an advance on his wages, or sold him good on credit, on the condition that we work off what he owed. The peons, as the workers were named, and their families resided on hacienda lands, living in humble huts not far from the master’s house, which during the seventeenth century, evolved into a palatial mansion.
Debt patronage benefited mainly the big hacendados, who, with capital at hand, were able to entice Indians to their estates by offering to pay them. The peons were given small plots on which to plant corn, beans, and squash. With workers at their disposal, the hacendados could then, by acquiring additional land, expand their plantings, multiply their harvest, and monopolize local and regional markets. Relying on debt patronage, the big haciendas became the lords of the countryside of central Mexico. They were, in essence, units of production endowed with enough land to plant and to let lie fallow, granaries to store the harvest, houses for hacendados and mayordomos, huts for workers, buildings for blacksmiths, and sheds to keep farm implements in. Debt peonage, on the other hand, hurt small planters, who, capital poor, either had to rely on the labor of their sons or become aparceros, sharecroppers on the big estates.
Difficult as it may be to believe, debt patronage partly saved the Indian from his worst enemies. When he moved himself onto a hacienda, his lot could improve. By joining the hacendado, the Indians, who had lost his lands or never owned any, gained a measure of protection -–a job and home for his family. The hacendado, if wise, became the defender of his Indians, looking after them in emergencies. He kept at bay voracious labor contractors and so to it that his workers had food, clothing, shelter, and a priest to baptize their young, marry their offspring, and buried their dead. Not to do so meant risking the loss of his workers by death or by flight. Even when heavily in debt, it must be remembered, the Indian, by and large, could leave the hacienda; he stayed on because he had a job and a bit of security. Few rebellions of peones acasillados were recorded during the colonial period. All the same, wageworkers from neighboring villages harvested most of the crops on the haciendas.
Not all hacendados, unfortunately, proved wise. Some worked their peons to the bone, beat them, and, the evidence reveals, stole the virginity of their daughters. The sale of a hacienda, not infrequently, included its peons in the price, sold like buildings and land to the buyer. Hacendados hungry for more lands dispatched armed goons to invade the lands of nearby villages, or bribed authorities to shut their eyes while they made off with them. Countless villages lost their lands. Despicable behavior of this kind spawned the story of selfish and cruel hacendados, slavemasters in disguise.
Debt patronage and wage labor underline the transformation of the colonial economy during the seventeenth century. Capitalist institutions had surfaced
---the commercial hacienda, for one---and gradually won a bigger role to play, not just in agriculture but in mining and the obrajes, which relied exclusively on manual labor and were never mechanized. Spaniards and criollos, and the lucky mestizo, were living off the profits of their individual enterprise. It was no longer simply a subsistence economy.
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Hacienda in Chichimequillas in Querétaro
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Hacienda Yaxcopoil, Yucatán
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In the next issue we’ll continue with Chapter V of this fascinating book, The Baroque Years.
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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