Paul Alexander Bartlett

“ As an artist, Bartlett's attention was drawn foremost to the hacienda buildings themselves and to the works of art that they housed. The majority of his illustrations and photographs therefore depict the main group of hacienda buildings or certain buildings—for example, the main residence, the church, the patios, and work buildings. However, among his rich materials, one can also find a testimony to hacienda work and life: machinery, irrigation devices and structures, farm implements, mining equipment, warehouses, barns, corrals, and carriages, among others. ”

“ From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, hacienda architecture varied: Where generation after generation owned the hacienda, in families of great wealth, façades were gothic, churrigueresque, plateresque, Islamic, baroque, rococo. The most widespread architectural style derived from the Roman. Most residences had their living quarters around an atrium, or patio. Grilled windows and massive wooden doors and shutters were common. Thousands of work-hours went into the carvings and embellishments—in gray, pink, or yellowish limestone. Hornacinas (niches) peppered a church or chapel façade. ”

“ In the struggle to eliminate the hacienda system, more than eight hundred thousand men, women, and children died.
Forces that held together a dubious past seek to achieve an enlightened future. Education continues to enrich more and more lives. Mexico's present-day inflation and political corruption have halted the country's advance, but these unfortunate conditions cannot last. ”

“ In place of Díazism the peasants wanted freedom, dignity, land, schools, and food; to achieve these goals they would ravage the nation. Men, women, and children, intent on smashing the hacienda world, could no longer exist on tortillas and water. Singly and in hordes, they scavenged and ravaged. Peasants who understood less than ten Spanish words found themselves trying Spanish if it helped the cause. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no hacienda nostalgia in Mexico—only frenetic pressure for industrialization and overall capitalism. Most renowned haciendas are only memories: they are cascos, recuerdos.
Hacienda de Valenciana, Guanajuato: residence.
The 1529 Hacienda San Gabriel de Las Palmas, in Morelos, has become an American luxury residence; other mansions house millionaires; still others have become motels, dairies, factories, schools, posh restaurants, subdivisions with an hacienda office. But hundreds of hacienda homes have been totally abandoned. They are piles of rubble—no more than place-names. ”

“ Bartlett found hacienda residences with twenty bedrooms, salons for dancing, Japanese gardens, billiard rooms and music rooms, swimming pools, bullrings, and palisades. Bearing witness to the interior splendor of these mansions, there was fine furniture from Europe, carpeting from Persia, velvet draperies, chandeliers of cut crystal, and valuable oil paintings. There were haciendas that possessed chapels that rivaled the provincial churches in size, architecture, and decor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When dictator Porfirio Díaz assumed power in 1877, a boom period for the hacienda began. Historical circumstances were favorable, and the government offered all manner of facilities to the livestock and farm impresarios. The substantial increase in the country's population, as well as the strengthening international economy, created a great demand for farm and livestock products. The consumption of goods from the tropics, such as coffee, cacao, sugar, tobacco, and vanilla, grew considerably during this time both in Europe and in the United States. ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ To escape the revolution, the owner fled years earlier. Earthquakes, weather, and abandonment have riddled walls and floors. The residence stands roofless, windowless, doorless—constructed of stone, brick and adobe, or a combination of these. Church and chapel exist at every hacienda and they are still used by neighbors and peasants who may occupy the manor house. There are dates on bell skirts, on walls or beams of a storage bodega, on escutcheons, on archways; often they are carved in the mesquite floor of a chapel or church. ”

“ Hacienda cattle brand
Forty years ago, traveling by train in Mexico, I saw, in remote areas, what appeared to be miniature villages. I made sketches of them from the train and later visited some of the sites and learned they were ancient haciendas. Over the years since then, I have visited 330 haciendas and made the first art record of these estates. I traveled on horseback, on foot, by bus, train, car, truck, motorbike, and mule-drawn, narrow-gauge railway. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under a single military leadership the revolution might have been shortened, saving thousands of lives. Following the collapse of the Porfirio Díaz regime, leaders tottered like dominos, and local revolts involved years of quixotic terrorism.
Zapata, Villa, Madero, Carranza, Huerta, and Obregón attempted to form a government or attempted to attain power for the sake of power. Greed and chicanery took their toll. Almost every community felt the impact as governments failed. The Church did its best to retain the feudalism of the hacienda ”

“ Others, with a sack of cash or a pair of brawny shoulders, used the invasion as an opportunity to bluff their way and claim land and lives through the power of the sword. They remembered that dropping quicksilver into a mule's ear made the animal trot faster. Wealthy immigrants were able to purchase titles, and this arrangement was encouraged by the Crown since it benefited the treasury.
The hacendado (or his representative) employed or coerced native workers to build a residence, church or chapel, storage buildings, mills, dams, aqueducts, fences, and roads. ”

“ Farming received an impetus at the hands of Spaniards, and the small farms and livestock ranches, which dated from the sixteenth century, expanded their landholdings. Many new sources of water were tapped, and a resident labor force was developed. These steps encouraged production and supplied the regional as well as the continually growing metropolitan markets.
The increase in hacienda production and in the number of hacienda workers made it necessary to expand the sixteenth-century facilities, which, with the exception of those of the sugar plantations, had been very modest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was not until the twentieth century that Mexico came to the forefront internationally. Respect for the country grew as Mexico undertook to restore its pre-Columbian sites, assembled comprehensive anthropological collections, and established a University City and a dynamic, original metropolitan architecture. Famous artists contributed to this period of awakened cultural awareness: Roberto Montenegro, Covarrubias, Orozco, Rivera, O'Higgins, Tamayo, and Siqueiros. ”

“ Hacienda de Sodzil, Yucatán: 19th-century residence.
Hacienda de los Molinos, Tlaxcala: 16th-century chapel. Cholula pyramid in the distance.
Hacienda Quinta Carolina, Chihuahua: main residence.
The revolution had achieved an important goal. Men and women were free to live in a more congenial environment: Rurales (police) would no longer pursue them. The four-century-old illusion of a patrón (master) had vanished; in its place the workers found themselves unshackled. They were hungry but no longer whipped. Mexico began to say goodbye to the culture of poverty. ”

“ Mexico's pre-Columbian culture had mastered concepts of intellectual and practical value, had a knowledge of astronomy, a number system, metropolitan and temple architecture, and made advances in writing, surgery and medical skills, sculpture and mural art, irrigation, and the construction of a system of highways. ”

“ 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
A neighboring hacienda is architecturally imposing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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
In the state of Hidalgo, the Hacienda de San Francisco—a pulque estate—was refurbished in 1880. ”

“ All the holdings that are larger than what the Agrarian Code permits are subject to distribution if there are peasants nearby who do not have land to till. Each landowner, however, is permitted to retain 370 acres, whether he is a foreigner or a Mexican.
By 1940, approximately 45 million acres of hacienda land had been turned over to the homeless and the landless by President Cárdenas (1934-1940) . Three hundred haciendas in the country could claim more than 1 million acres apiece, and then only for a brief period.
Hacienda de Esperanza, D.F.: residence. Cattle stalls on ground floor. ”