San Sebastian del Oeste Part 6 of 6: The fascinating historical artifacts of Hotel Hacienda Matel

A cow's skull decorates a well near the entrance of the hotel. We visited Hotel Hacienda Matel during our day-trip to San Sebastian del Oeste. While there are a number haciendas in the area dating to the colonial and early-Republic eras, this one was built in 2008. It is a product of San Sebastian's growing tourist trade. The architectural design of the hotel imitates historical haciendas and the owners have filled it with artifacts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hotel Hacienda Matel is an interesting place in a lovely setting and is worth a visit if you get to San Sebastian. To find the hotel on a Google map of San Sebastian del Oeste, click here.

Hacienda Matel's Exterior

The hotel's centerpiece is a fair imitation of an historic casa grande. Like the casas grandes (big houses) it simulates, the rectangular building is built around an open central courtyard, accessed through an impressive gate. On each corner are cylindrical stone structures which imitate the bastions found on many historical haciendas. However, Hacienda Matel's bastions do not contain the gun slits used to defend against indigenous warriors or roving bandits. 

This cannon is one of several that guard the approaches to the casa grande. The hotel is situated near the head of a heavily-wooded arroyo about half a mile from San Sebastian's central plaza. Some might find it odd for a civilian hacienda to possess artillery, but this was not uncommon in the old days. Regular troops were scarce on the frontiers of Nueva España and the early Mexican Republic. Such troops were usually poorly paid and indifferently led. In addition, they were often posted at a considerable distance from the haciendas and settlements that might need their help. 

To respond to frontier security needs, while keeping costs down, the Spanish Crown sometimes awarded military commissions to hacendados (hacienda owners). In return they were required to form militia units from among their own workers and the men of nearby pueblos. These irregular cavalry units were often the only real protection from bandits and native revolts. This method of maintaining order dates back to Medieval Europe. The more remote the hacienda, the more the hacendado came to resemble a feudal lord in his manor. 

A luxurious carriage sits in the entrance to the casa grande's courtyard. In a classic hacienda, an entranceway like this is called a zaguan. The carriage is one of two at the hotel. Vehicles like this would have been used to transport the hacendado and his family. Such a carriage would have been considerably more comfortable than traveling by horseback or by the two-wheeled oxcarts called carretas. Normally, a stable with fine horses would have been situated close to an historic casa grande. I didn't see anything resembling a stable at the hotel, but I presume that guests wanting to go for a horseback ride can make arrangements through the staff.

The courtyard has an authentic feel, except for the kiosco. The surface is cobblestone and the four sides are bordered by open-air arcades supported by arched portales. Just like an historic casa grande, most of the rooms can be accessed from the arcades. The kiosco (gazebo) in the center of the courtyard is an anachronism. At the 100+ historic haciendas I have visited, I can't recall ever finding one of these in the courtyard of a casa grande. 

A kiosco (gazebo or bandstand) is typically found in the central plaza of a pueblo, town, or city. During the French Intervention of 1862-67, an Austrian nobleman named Maximilian and his wife Carlota briefly ruled Mexico as Emperor and Empress. It was they who popularized the idea of placing kioscos in plazas. Today, from the tiniest pueblos to the greatest cities, almost every plaza has one. However, you will rarely, if ever, find a kiosco in the casa grande courtyard of an authentic Mexican hacienda.

A handcrafted bench sits against an arcade wall. This antique piece of furniture is typical of the rough furnishings found at the more remote haciendas. More elegant furniture was prohibitively expensive to import. Hacendados often had to make do with what could be produced by their own craftsmen in the hacienda's workshops. Self-sufficiency was a necessity. In addition to a carpenter. there might also be a blacksmith, a leatherworker, and various other kinds of skilled workers, depending upon the hacienda's focus of production. 

These craftsmen often lived with their families in small, one-room cottages within the boundaries of the estate. They were called peones acasillados because their housing was provided as part of their compensation. Field workers and day laborers generally lived in pueblos some distance away rather than on the hacienda itself. The workers at today's Hotel Hacienda Matel all live in or around San Sebastian. No accommodations for peones acasillados were included by hotel's designers.

Interior of the casa grande

A spacious dining room was one of a casa grande's typical feature. A hacendado and his family dined on food produced at the estate, along with venison, fish from local streams, or game birds. They might be joined at their table by a resident priest or a school teacher employed by the hacienda, as well as any passing travelers who might provide news of the outside world. 

The floor is covered by the same tiles found in the arcades. Tile floors, often in artistic designs, can be found in most haciendas, even those in ruins. Made from clay that has been fired and glazed, the tiles could often be locally manufactured. The floors they covered were easy to sweep and mop and were not susceptible to termites or other insect damage.

One of the hotel's eight bedrooms.  The layout and furnishings are similar to those I have seen in historic casas grandes. Until the 20th century, central heating by gas or electricity was practically unknown in rural Mexico, so a fireplace would have been important for chilly evenings. The small round table under the window is made in a style known as equipale that dates back to Aztec times.

A large wood and metal armoire serves to store clothes and other items. Given its blue-green patina, the metal is probably copper sheeting. You generally don't find clothes closets in haciendas from the 19th century or earlier. Instead, hacendados furnished their casas grandes with armoires. This kind of furniture dates back to the 17th century and the name comes from armorium, a Latin word for a chest used to store armor and weapons.

A cash register from the late 19th or early 20th century. Given the dollars and cents denominations, this one was clearly imported from the U.S. The cash register was invented in America by James Ritty, a saloonkeeper in Dayton, Ohio. He received a patent in 1878 for what he called an "incorruptible cashier". Apparently he was fed up with employees of his saloon pilfering his profits. A few years after its founding, Ritty's cash register company was bought out by John Patterson, one of its first customers. He renamed it the National Cash Register Company. Around the turn of the 20th century, one of Patterson's agents named Parker introduced the cash register to Mexico, selling 118 of them to various companies.

A highly decorated telephone sits on a small table in the hotel's lobby. The first telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, who later formed the American Bell Telephone Company. A subsidiary of that company began operations in Mexico City on May 14, 1883. The first telephone in San Sebastian del Oeste was installed in the late 19th century at Hacienda Jalisco, a silver ore processing center just outside of the pueblo. The telephone above is obviously a product of the early 20th century, because the first rotary-dial phone was not invented until 1919.

A Victor III disc phonograph, circa 1907, with its huge tuba-like speaker. The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. An improved version, called a gramaphone, was produced by the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory in the 1880s. In the 1890s, Emile Berliner transformed the gramaphone again by introducing flat, grooved, vinyl disks on which the sound was recorded. The flat disks came to be called "records" and the gramaphone that played them became known as a "record player". The first sound recordings in Mexico were made in Mexico City in 1903. 

An early Singer sewing machine.  Isaac Singer first established his sewing machine company in 1851. His early focus was on large machines for textile manufacturing. In 1890, the Singer Company began operations in Mexico. In 1910, Singer revolutionized the business by introducing the electric-powered sewing machine for the home. However, the Mexican Revolution also began in that year, and foreign-owned corporations were often the focus of revolutionary ire. Singer solved this problem by associating its machines with "modern womanhood", thus gaining favor with the new revolutionary government.

Charcoal heated iron, also called a "box" iron. The charcoal iron was used in Mexico and many other countries for centuries. The heat was produced by raising the lid on top and placing glowing coals inside the iron. Holes on the sides allowed the charcoal smoke to escape. The idea of using heat to smooth cloth goes back at least 2000 years. In the first century AD, the Chinese used pans filled with hot coats to press cloth smooth. The Dutch imported the idea in the 17th century and produced the first "box" irons. Some of these early irons probably reached colonial Mexico in the 17th or early 18th century.

Hacienda Matel's small chapel. The chapel is located on a ledge just above the casa grande and can seat about a dozen people. Since the Church was always closely associated with the power of the ruling class in Mexico, it should be no surprise that nearly every hacienda had a capilla (chapel) attached to, or close by, its casa grande. After the Revolution, such chapels often were adopted by local people as the churches for the pueblos that grew up around the ruins of the old haciendas. Like Hacienda Matel, this chapel is an invention of the 21st century. 

A bit of anti-clerical Mexican humor. An obviously inebriated skeleton figure paws at a priest sitting in his confessional box. The use of skeletons to poke fun at the pretensions of the powerful has a long history. Guadalupe Posada was a 19th century political cartoonist who invented the famous skeleton figures known as catrinas. Posada's cartoons must have struck a nerve, because he had to flee his hometown of Aguascalientes as a result of his work.

While strong religious beliefs (primarily Catholic) still exist within much of Mexico's population, there has long existed an undercurrent of hostility toward the organized Church. This is the result of the close relationship between the Church hierarchy and secular power. Church organizations were allowed to use forced indigenous labor to build their cathedrals and convents. In addition, some religious Orders (particularly the Jesuits) owned haciendas where workers were treated no better than on estates that had secular owners.

A tough-looking group of Mexican revolutionaries. The man holding the sword may be an officer. The rifles they are holding are mostly Winchesters, the favored weapon of revolutionary soldiers. Regular army soldiers were generally better-armed with Mauser rifles made in Mexico or Germany. This is one of several photos from the Revolution that are posted on the walls of the small cantina next to the chapel.

A heavily-armed soldadera sits demurely on a porch railing. She clutches a Winchester and wears two cartridge belts across her shoulders and three around her waist. Clearly this soldadera means business. On the other hand, her expression is one of a quiet pensiveness. Perhaps she is wondering why the men around her always seem a little nervous.

General Emiliano Zapata (front, center) surrounded by his officers and advisors. Emiliano Zapata was perhaps the only true social revolutionary among the top leaders during the Revolution. While a lot of the others seemed more interested in personal power than revolutionary ideals, Zapata really believed in his slogan "Tierra y Libertad" (Land and Liberty) and put it into effect in the areas under his control. 

Zapata's followers adored him. One of his most famous quotes was "I'd rather die on my feet than live always on my knees." Like many other leaders of the Mexican Revolution, Zapata died violently. In 1919, he was lured into an ambush and assassinated by conspirators linked to his rival, Venustiano Carranza. For many years afterward, campesinos in southern Mexico insisted that he was still alive and could sometimes be seen riding the hidden mountain trails of his home state of Morelos.

Another carriage, this time a convertible. It was not unheard of for a hacendado to possess more than one carriage. At Hacienda Calera, near Guadalajara, there is a carriage house with spaces for ten. This vehicle is parked in front of the chapel above the casa grande.

Brass bell with the hacienda's name and an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Similar bells were essential features of hacienda life from the earliest years of colonial Mexico. They were not only mounted in church steeples but often on the casa grande itself. Few peones possessed watches, so bells were used to summon them to work, to call meal breaks, and to end the day. They were also used to warn of dangers such as fire or the approach of bandits.

This completes Part 6 of my San Sebastian del Oeste series and ends the series itself. I hope you have enjoyed this posting, as well as the previous five. If so, please leave any thoughts or questions in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim