Tapalpa Plateau Part 5 of 6: Hacienda La Media Luna

The ruined casa grande of Hacienda la Media Luna (The Half Moon). This hacienda was once part of several large estates located on the Tapalpa Plateau that functioned until the first couple of decades of the 20th Century. Last July, I organized another of my Hacienda Hunts for a group of friends to visit the La Media Luna. Even though it was mid-summer, the chilly, blustery weather occasionally spattered us with cold rain. However, ours was a hardy group and we took it all in stride.

Hacienda La Media Luna was one of the settings in Pedro Páramo, a novel by Juan Rulfo. He has been acclaimed as Mexico's greatest author, even though this book and another book of short stories are the only major works he wrote. Rulfo invented the style of writing known as Magical Realism, which later inspired Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, another masterpiece. 

Where is ex-Hacienda la Media Luna? The site is 16.5km (10.3mi) southeast of the town of Tapalpa. The hacienda's casa grande (big house) and other ruined structures sit on a low rise overlooking the western tip of a lake called Laguna Grande. A small pueblo called La Lagunilla grew up around the ruins of the old hacienda. For specific directions with an interactive Google map, click here. 

The Tapalpa Plateau rises to about 2130m (7000ft). This altitude captures the moist air moving in from the Pacific Coast and gives the area a cool, misty, alpine feel. The gently rolling countryside is covered with pine forests and shallow lakes. These are interspersed with fields of maiz (corn), orchards, and pastures filled with sheep, cattle and horses. Tapalpa is the most important town on the plateau. The others tend to be small pueblos like La Lagunilla. 

La Casa Grande

View of the casa grande from its southeast corner. Several members of our party can be seen near the main entrance. The casa grande was once a two story structure although only the exterior walls of the second story remain. Running along the front of the structure you can see a line of holes where rafters extended out. These supported the roof of the arcade which once shaded the walkway underneath. The open doorway in the middle of the second floor probably provided access to a broad porch.

La Media Luna was founded about 250 years ago, during the latter half of the 18th century. Eventually, the hacienda became one of several in the area that were owned by Juan Rulfo's family. The ruined structure above was originally built in 1884 by his maternal grandmother. It is not clear whether Rulfo ever lived at La Media Luna, but his visits clearly impressed him enough for him to make it one of the key the settings of Pedro Páramo.

View of the capilla (chapel) along the arcade walkway. Like many of the haciendas I have visited, this one has a capilla attached to one end of the casa grande. The structure shown above is not the original capilla, which later become the church of the local community, following the breakup of the hacienda. Over time, however, the old capilla deteriorated and was replaced in 1982 by the one seen above. 

La Media Luna and its casa grande may have been destroyed during the Cristero War (1926-29), one of the aftershocks of the Mexican Revolution (1910-17). Another possibility for its demise may have been the land reform carried out between 1917 and the late 1930s. This process was also accompanied by considerable violence. Today, the ruins stand as a lonely reminder of a vanished era, with only occasional visits from hacienda enthusiasts like those in my group.

Photographing the carriage gate. I am the photographer shown above. To the left is the casa grande and to the right is the beginning of the capilla structure. Like most of the carriage gates of Mexico's old haciendas, this one leads into an interior courtyard where the horse-drawn vehicles were once loaded and unloaded. (Photo by Jerry Brown)

Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno was born in 1917, at the Hacienda de Apulco. That estate was owned at the time by his maternal grandfather, Carlos Vizcaíno Vargas. It is located approximately 54km (34mi) southwest of Hacienda La Media Luna. The casa grande of Hacienda de Apulco can still be found in the middle of the modern-day pueblo of Apulco. However, the old structure has been occupied by the Monasterio de la Virgen de la Paz for the last 25 years. 

Main entrance of the casa grande. I concluded that this was the main entrance from its size and from the steps leading up to its double wooden doors. The other doors along the hacienda's front have smaller doors and no steps. A large wood beam--almost certainly an original feature--forms the lintel of the door. 

The estates of Apulco and La Media Luna were once part of a constellation of haciendas that surrounded the town of San Gabriel, where Rulfo's family moved when he was two years old. The town became the other major setting in Pedro Páramo.  However, in his book, the author renamed San Gabriel, calling it Comala. This has caused much confusion, because there is a real town of Comala, which is a Pueblo Magico located just outside the city of Colima. 

View into the casa grande from an entrance along the arcade. It is likely that this room was the comedor (dining room). I concluded this because of a second door  connects to a rear room which was probably one of the two cocinas (kitchens) that were once part of the structure. Why two? Not a clue. Notice the framing of the doorway, which is made from dressed cantera stone. The walls surrounding it are adobe brick covered by plaster. 

Rulfo's stories are set between the beginning of the Mexican Revolution and the late 1930s, a violent and chaotic period. At an early age, the author was himself directly affected by the violence. In June 1923, his father Juan Nepomuceno Pérez Rulfo (known as "Cheno") was shot in the back of the head by Guadalupe Nava over a land dispute. Not long after, two of Rulfo's uncles were also murdered.

In 1953, Rulfo wrote a book of short stories called El Plano en Llamas (The Plain in Flames), which drew its title from his father's tragic death. As a six-year-old boy, little Juan had stood in the darkness at Hacienda Telcampana (just south of San Gabriel) while he watched the approach from afar of the flaming torches held by the escort of the cart carrying his father's body. Thirty years later, when titling his book of stories, this searing memory was still powerful.

Interior of a rear room, possibly a bedroom. The room is now overgrown with brush. The walls are made from adobe bricks, which were once covered by layers of plaster. Adobe is made from mud, with straw as a binder. This form of construction was favored by many of those who built Mexico's rural haciendas because the materials could be obtained locally and labor was cheap. 

After his father's death, Rulfo and his mother María continued to live in San Gabriel, where he attended a local religious school for the next three years. Rulfo's life changed again in 1927, when his mother died and then the school closed due to the chaos of the Cristero War. He was left an orphan, but his grandmother took him to live in Guadalajara where he spent the rest of his childhood and youth. However, many of the places and personal names in Rulfo's writing reflect his early life in San Gabriel.

Thick layers of plaster still cover the adobe walls of this room. This is the cocina connected to the comedor seen previously. Above the rafter holes are the walls of a 2nd floor room, which was probably a bedroom. The opening in the wall is a window which has become a door by the addition of a stack of bricks used as a stair. Through this opening, you can see part of the courtyard.

Rulfo continued his schooling in Guadalajara and graduated with a degree in bookkeeping, although he never practiced that profession. He wanted to attend the University of Guadalajara, but was unable to do so because of a labor strike and a lack of preparation on his part. Next, he moved to Mexico City, where he briefly attended the National Military Academy, but left after only three months. 

Following that, Rulfo sought a law degree at the National Autonomous University but, again, nothing came of it. However, he was able to audit courses in literature at the university while working as an immigration agent. This informal educational effort was the beginning of his literary career. He began writing and, in 1944, co-founded a literary journal call Pan (Bread).

View from the courtyard into a possible living room. The rough wooden lintel over the door opening above, as well as the wooden door across the room, are probably original features of the casa grande's 1884 construction. Adobe is one of the earliest construction materials in the history of human architecture and structures built with it can survive for centuries. 

After a few years working as an immigration agent, Rulfo took a job as a sales agent for a private company. Both jobs enabled him to travel widely in Mexico and deepened his understanding of the country. Rulfo then landed a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at the Centro Mexicano Escritores (Mexican Writers' Center). It was during this two-year period that he wrote both El Plano en Llamas and Pedro Páramo, published in 1953 and 1955, respectively. 

Corner of the back wall of the casa grande. The niche in the wall probably once contained a religious statue, most likely one of the many versions of the Virgin Mary. Above the niche is the truncated remains of another old wooden lintel. This shot was taken from the passageway leading from the carriage entrance to the courtyard.

Although he is most famous for the two great works of literature he published in the early 1950s, Juan Rulfo was also involved in other artistic work, including screenwriting and photography. From 1962 until his death in 1986, he was an editor for the National Institute for Indigenous People. Some of Rulfo's other literary work has been published posthumously, but none of it has approached the fame of his earlier masterpieces. 

La Capilla de la Virgen de Guadalupe

View of the capilla from the rear. The adobe wall to its right is part of an old bodega (storage building). The hacienda system was broken up during the two decades that followed the end of the Revolution. The re-distribution of lands to campesinos and indigenous villages often meant that the former hacendados (owners) could no longer afford to maintain their casas grandes and other structures. 

Often such buildings were simply abandoned and then cannibalized by a hacienda's former workers for materials to build homes and small shops. Many of the pueblos that now dot the countryside grew up around the ruins of old haciendas. Quite often, the only structure to remain intact was the capilla, because it was maintained by the local people as their church. Over time, an old capilla might be replaced because of deterioration, as was the case in La Lagunilla.

The front of the bodega, the capilla's porch and an atrial cross. An open area directly in front of a church, bordered by a low wall, is called an atrium. A stand-alone crucifix found in this area is called an atrial cross. These spaces were used for religious activities that were too large to be conducted inside the church itself. In the earliest times, this included evangelization and mass conversions of the native people.

In Juan Rulfo's novel, the owner of Hacienda La Media Luna was a man called Pedro Páramo. He ruled over his hacienda and the surrounding region like a feudal baron of the medieval era.  Páramo regularly exercised le droit de seigneur (the right of the lord) to have sex with any woman who caught his fancy. The population of Comala (San Gabriel) was thus full of his illegitimate offspring.

Front view of the atrial cross. It is covered with symbols representing the Passion of Christ (the crucifixion events). Since the illiteracy rate in pre-Revolution Mexico was high, the Church went to great lengths to create murals, images, and other visible symbols. Richard Perry, an expert on old Mexican religious architecture, told me that the cross is probably not from an earlier era but may be a 20th century copy of an older version located elsewhere.

In the novel:

While Pedro Páramo relentlessly pursued his lustful adventures, his true love was his childhood sweetheart, Susana San Juan. However, she had married another man and was thus unavailable to him for many years. After she was widowed and returned to Comala, Páramo was finally able to marry her. However, Susana's obsession with  her dead husband led to her into insanity, leaving him once again unfulfilled. While this is one of the central ironies of the book, the story itself begins long after Páramo's death.

The altar of the capilla is devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe. She is the Patroness of Mexico and its poor and indigenous people. The majority of Catholic churches I have visited in Mexico are either devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe, or at least have a side chapel or special altar set aside for her. She was the first version of the Virgin to appear in colonial Nueva España, and was unusual because she was dark skinned and spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec man who first encountered her.

In the novel:

Pedro Páramo had a son named Juan Preciado by a woman named Dolores. At the story's beginning, Juan follows the deathbed advice of Dolores to go to Comala in search of his father. Upon his arrival, he finds that Pedro died long ago and that the town is mostly deserted except for the ghosts of its former inhabitants. From these apparitions, we learn the brutal and violent history of Páramo family. 

A message printed on a rough sack hangs on the wall next to the altar. The Spanish printing translates "Consecrated  by the (?) Señor Dr. D. Pedro Loza, 1878". Why this humble sack should be given such an elaborate frame and place of honor is a complete mystery to me, as is the identity of Sr. Dr. D. Pedro Loza. The date on the sack is six years before Rulfo's grandmother built the casa grande at La Media Luna and 104 years before the capilla's re-construction. 

In the novel:

Miguel Páramo, was the father of Pedro and grandfather of Juan Preciado. Miguel was a violent man involved in rape and murder. Upon Miguel's death Juan's father Pedro inherited La Media Luna, along with Miguel's penchant for violence. When Pedro's beloved Susana returned to Comala, Pedro decided to win her favor by secretly murdering her father and then offering to comfort her. He succeeded in marrying her, but she later descended into madness and died.

A spiral staircase leads up the steeple to the campanario (belfry). A man who was repairing the capilla kindly retrieved a key to let us in. I asked if we could climb to the campanario and he agreed, but only after warning us to be careful. I also quizzed him about the hacienda and its casa grande, but he was from another town and could provide little information beyond what I already knew.

In the novel:

When Susana died, Pedro was devastated and decided to hold a grand funeral for her. However, the people of Comala decided not to attend. This enraged Pedro and he took revenge on them by withholding food, causing them to starve en masse. Thus, they became the ghosts from whom we learn much of the story.

One of the belfry's several bells. At the bottom of the photo, you can see part of the casco wall that surrounds the chief buildings of the hacienda. Casco translates as "helmet" in Spanish. The walls of a casco protect the casa grande, bodega, and stables, which together form the nerve center of the hacienda. 

In the novel:

One of the first of Comala's inhabitants that Juan encounters is Abundio, his half-brother by one of Pedro's many conquests. Through him, Juan learns how their father met his own violent end. When Abundio's wife had died, he went to his father for help in paying for her funeral. However, Pedro refused and Abundio's anger was such that he murdered his own father. Throughout the novel, the themes of murder and revenge reflect the violent and chaotic times of Rulfo's childhood.

A horse grazes in one of the pastures enclosed by the casco wall. The casa grande and capilla are visible in the distance. This concludes Part 5 of my series on the Tapalpa Plateau. If you enjoyed it and have any thoughts or questions, please leave them in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments section, please remember to include your email address so that I can respond in a timely manner.

Hasta luego, Jim