Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T05:30:41.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Crucible of Zapatismo: Hacienda Hospital in the Seventeenth Century”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Cheryl English Martin
Cheryl English Martin*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Readers of John Womack's monumental Zapata and the Mexican Revolution are familiar with the names of the great Morelos sugar plantations whose drive for modernization in the late nineteenth century eventually pushed desperate peasants to revolt. Many of these haciendas bore names of Indian villages long since destroyed by indigenous population decline and the hacendados' thirst for land: Cuahuixtla, Chinameca, Zacatepec, Atlacomulco, Cocoyoc; others had religious appellations testifying to the piety or ecclesiastical status of their founders: Santa Inés, Santa Clara, San Vicente; an occasional hacienda, such as Casasano, even carried the name of its founder. Yet one hacienda that figures prominently in Womack's account bore the curious designation Hospital. Though considerably smaller than many of its neighbors, Hospital emerges from Womack's narrative as perhaps the most villainous of all Morelos latifundia. To the land-starved villagers of Anenecuilco, its owner scornfully suggested that they “farm in a flowerpot,” and Hospital became a principal target of zapatista revenge.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , July 1981 , pp. 31 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Womack, John, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, 1970), p. 63 Google Scholar and passim.

2 See Martin, Cheryl E. “The San Hipólito Hospitals of Colonial Mexico, 1566–1702,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Tulane University, 1976.Google Scholar

3 Chevalier, François, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963),Google Scholar passim, especially pp. 78, 251, 261 and 273; Inclán, Jesús Sotelo, Raiz y razón de Zapata: Anenecuilco (México, 1943), pp. 63–64 Google Scholar; Womack, , Zapata, pp. 42–43.Google Scholar

4 Riley, James D., “The Wealth of the Jesuits of Mexico, 1670–1767,” The Americas 33 (1976), pp. 226–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 A caballería was equal to about 100 acres, a sitio de ganado menor equalled about three square miles, and a sitio de ganado mayor, about 6.76 square miles. For the evolution of these terms, see Chevalier, , Land and Society, Chapters Two and Three, and pp. 321–22.Google Scholar

6 Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla (hereinafter cited as AGI), Audiencia de México, legajos 111 and 114; Zavala, Silvio and Castelo, María eds., Fuentes para la historia del trabajo en la Nueva España (México, 1939–1945), 3, 165 Google Scholar; IV, 375; Ramírez, Carmen Venegas, Régimen hospitalario para indios en la Nueva España (México, 1973), pp. 92–93.Google Scholar

7 Archivo General de la Nación, México (hereinafter cited as AGN), Mercedes, Vol. 30, f. 55v; Vol. 35, f. 82; AGN, Clero Regular y Secular, Vol. 168, exp. 7; Zavala and Castelo, Fuentes, IV, 375, 467, 487–88; V, 27, 104; Sandoval, Fernando B. La industria del azúcar en Nueva España (México, 1951), pp. 52–75.Google Scholar

8 AGN, Mercedes, Vol. 26, f. 81; AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exp. 1, ff. 71–83; Sotelo Inclán, Raiz y razón, pp. 63–64. In a lease for one portion of these lands there is a clause indicating the lands' ties to the village of Anenecuilco. The document, dated 1626, mentioned that the land in question carried an obligation to provide twelve Indian workers on a given day each year to assist in cleaning acequias, or irrigation ditches, in Anenecuilco.

9 AGN Mercedes, Vol. 34, ff. 149v–150; Vol. 35, ff. 6–6v, 10–10v, 44–44v.

10 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 892, exp. 4; Vol. 1116, exp. 2; Vol. 1215, exp. 1, f. 214.

11 Land and Society, p. 78.

12 Riley, James D. “The Management of the Estates of the Jesuit Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo in the Eighteenth Century,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Tulane University, 1972, pp. 17–21 Google Scholar; Berthe, Jean-Pierre “Xochimancas: Les travaux et les jours dans une hacienda sucrière de Nouvelle-Espagne au XVIIe siecle,” Jahrbuch für geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Latein-Amerikas, Band 3 (Koln, 1966), pp. 88–117.Google Scholar

13 Israel, J.I. Race, Class and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610–1670 (London, 1975), p. 84.Google Scholar

14 AGN, Clero Regular y Secular, Vol. 60, exps. 2, 3 and 4; Vol. 65, exp. 6.

15 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1116, exp. 2; Vol. 1215, exp. 1, ff. 71–83; AGN, Clero Regular y Secular, Vol. 168, exp. 7.

16 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exp. 1.

17 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 892, exp. 4.

18 Ibid.; AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exp. 1; Chevalier, , Land and Society, p. 273.Google Scholar

19 AGN, Hospitales, Vol. 73, exp. 2; AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exp. 1.

20 AGN, Hospitales, Vol. 73, exp. 2; AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1116, exp. 2.

21 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exp. 2.

22 AGN, Hospitales, Vol. 73, exp. 2.

23 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exps. 2 and 3. Gómez's inventory of the plantation affords an interesting glimpse into the plantation’s labor force, which numbered forty-eight including children. Slaves were entrusted with many tasks involving considerable skill and responsibility. Particularly interesting is the number of slaves married to free persons. Of eighteen adult males for whom marital status is indicated, six had free wives. Two female slaves had free husbands.

24 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 860, exp. 4; Vol. 1010, exps. 4 and 5.

25 AGN, Hospitales, Vol. 73, exp. 2; AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 444, exp. 13.

26 AGN, Hospitales, Vol. 73, exp. 2; AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 136, exp. 26; Vol. 145, exp. 20.

27 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exp. 1.

28 AGN, Hospitales, Vol. 32, exp. 15; AGN, Clero Regular y Secular, Vol. 98, exp. 1; AGN, Tierras, Vol. 3082, exp. 2.

29 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1215, exp. 3.

30 See Footnote 12, above.