About the Hacienda Molino de Guadalupe

Hacienda Molino de Guadalupe

This is Roger here. I have another set of photos to post to Picasa (click here), but I felt I needed to research the subject first. It took a while, but I finished this explanation and I hope some of you find it of interest.

Hacienda Molino de Guadalupe is the ruin we visited our third day in Tlahuapan. I found a reference to it on the Internet, in Spanish, but if you Google the name you can get a rough translation.

I surmise the property was farmland until the 1870s. The source does not say much about the earlier activity, other than a flour mill operated there (molino is Spanish for mill). The hacienda was purchased by Marcelino G. Presno in 1888 – the “MGP” visible on the highest tower at the administrative complex. Apparently he used his influence to have a rail spur built into the area. He also must have cut a deal with with the brothers Juan and Manuel Garcia, who built a spinning and weaving factory, "San Felix," in 1898. This facility had 5,056 spindles and 154 looms. Another factory was built in 1899, "La Asturiana," and a third was built later, "San Juan," bringing the total to 12,748 spindles and 424 looms.

La Hacienda Molino de Guadalupe was one of the largest and most important in the region, incorporating an area of over 13,000 hectares, about 50 square miles. Besides textile mills, it also had a faïence and porcelain factory, and a sawmill which provided a lumber and furniture factory in the city of Puebla.

The hacienda system developed in the colonial era. At first, the conquistadores were granted the "encomienda," the right to tribute labor from the Indians. In practice, this became a form of slavery. As the Indian population rapidly declined, the elite were given large landgrants to replace the value of tribute labor. They concentrated the surviving population onto them, making the newly landless Indians peones. The Indian way of life became debt peonage.

A hacienda's operation had some similarities to Appalachian coal company towns, but without the restraint our liberal tradition provided us. While the powerful in our culture were restrained by the Enlightenment values of the Founding Fathers, the powerful in Hispanic culture were only restrained by their individual distaste for cruelty and their respect for the Church.

Like company towns here, the workers owned little of their own. Coal towns had script, the haciendas had a credit system. Company stores were run by mining management, hacienda stores were run by hacienda owners, and both charged inflated prices. While miners "owed their soul" to the company store, the peons were effectively slaves. Like slaves, enforcement was by beatings. The debts of peons were passed onto their children, and to any buyers of the land. Escape in either system was difficult, especially for a family, since transportation was relatively undeveloped both in the Appalachians and Mexico. Even if the Mexican peon could get away, there was hardly any place to go. The haciendas occupied much of the available land in rural areas, and the owners cooperated in returning escapees.

In 1900 the General Census of Mexico counted 1236 inhabitants at Hacienda Molino. The 1910 census saw a decrease to 986 souls. Possible causes of the decline are the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, and a general decline in business. La Hacienda Molino de Guadalupe was among the first of the the estates to disappear after President Venustiano Carranza took power from Diaz (more about Diaz, perhaps the archtypical corrupt Mexican politician, later). As the source says, "from the beginning [of] the Revolutionary Movement Hacienda Molino de Guadalupe was the hardest hit in the region [and] Presno abandon[ed] [his] property…. The Hacienda was destroyed, its hull used as barracks for the army of General Domingo Arenas, and much of their lands distributed among the peasants [who] founded Agricultural Colony 5," that is, a communal farm

Despite the unrest, the factory "San Felix" continued to operate until the thirties, and the military use of the facility ended in the 1940s.

To me, the importance of the ruins is its connection to perhaps the most transformative parts of Mexican history, the end of the post-colonial period and the beginning of modern Mexico. I'll just quote a couple of paragraphs from Wikipedia:

"During the Porfiriato (1876–1911) [the period of Diaz' presidency], Mexico underwent rapid but highly unequal growth. [...] Taking "order and progress" as its watchwords, the Porfirian dictatorship established political stability and at least an image of social peace and the rule of law. The apparent stability of the Porfiriato brought increased capital investment to finance national development and modernization. Rural banditry was suppressed, […] foreign investment in mining boomed; and communications and transportation facilities were modernized as the Mexican railroad system, now owned almost exclusively by foreign investors, expanded …."

"The technocratic economic advisors of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship ... were quite satisfied with the advances that the Mexican economy made between 1876 and 1910. Under the surface, however, popular discontent was reaching the boiling point. The economic-political elite scarcely noticed the country's widespread dissatisfaction with the political stagnation of the Porfiriato, the increased demands for worker productivity during a time of stagnating or decreasing wages and deteriorating work conditions, the cruel repression of worker's unions by the police and army, and the highly unequal distribution of wealth. When a political opposition to the Porfirian dictatorship developed in 1910, it quickly gave way to a popular insurrection against the economic foundations of the country's entrenched inequality."

That insurrection was the bloody, 10-year Mexican Revolution. The hacienda is a bridge across the days before and after the Revolution. We were fortunate to visit it. 

 

There is a labeled aerial photo of the complex here.