Valladolid Adventures Part 7: Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman

 

A two-wheeled carreta stands in front of the hacienda's casa grande. Carretas were the "pickup trucks" of Mexico from the colonial period well into the 20th century. They were usually pulled by a pair of oxen. I still occasionally see one when I travel along the back roads in rural areas. The hacienda's 18th century casa grande has been transformed into a boutique hotel, but has preserved many of its original architectural features. This posting will focus on the hacienda itself, while the next one will take a look at its cenote, which has become the property's main tourist attraction.

Historical information about Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman is surprisingly scarce. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it raised livestock and cultivated maiz (corn). However, in the mid-19th century it became a hacienda henequenera. This was the name given to haciendas in Yucatan that grew the sisal plant. Henequen fiber was extracted from the sisal leaves in order to make rope and twine. In the posting below, I'll explain what brought about the great boom in henequen production and why this "green gold" created huge fortunes as well as great abuses.

Overview

The leaves of the sisal plant are stripped to produce henequen fiber. Notice the plant's trunk where leaves have been cut in previous harvests. The use of this fiber dates back very far into pre-hispanic times, possibly even into the early days of human habitation in Yucatan. Sisal is native to Yucatan and the Maya utilized it to make cord, sandals, bags, and clothing. The sharp end of the leaf was used as a needle and the Maya also produced an alcoholic beverage by fermenting the pulp inside the trunk. 

When I first researched Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman, some sources mentioned that agave was its primary crop, but other sources mentioned sisal. I am very familiar with the agave azul that is grown in the state of Jalisco to make tequila. I therefore assumed that both henequen and mescal (similar to tequila) were produced at the hacienda. Later, I discovered that sisal is formally known as Agave sisalana and is a distant relative of Jalisco's agave. However, unlike the Jalisco plant, Yucatan's Agave sisalana was used by the hacienda's owners to produce henequen fiber. (Photo from Wikipedia).

Google map with the route to Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman. From the Parque Principal (Valladolid's main plaza) take Highway 295 south about 3 km (1.8 mi). Take your next right after the sign pointing toward Mérida. This will put you onto Highway 180, the Libramiento Sur de Valladolid. Drive about 2 km (1.2 mi) until you see a sign on your right for "Cenote Oxman". 

The sign doesn't mention San Lorenzo, probably because most visitors come for the cenote. Turn right on a smoothly graded dirt road and proceed for approximately 300 m (328 yds) to the parking area. Access to the hacienda is free, but there are charges to swim in the cenote. There is also a restaurant on the property restaurant. Click here for information about the cenote.

The hacienda's entrance

The main gate forms the transition from the parking area to the hacienda's grounds. The gate opens onto a broad walkway that leads to the casa grande, which can be seen in the background. A number of years have passed since our visit and recent internet photos show that both the gate and the casa grande have been repainted to other colors. However, the basic structures appear to be the same. The broad, open, lawn area between the gate and the back of the casa grande was most likely the work area where sisal leaves were transformed into henequen fiber and then into string and rope. 

When the hacienda was founded in 1746, large scale production of henequen was still far in the future. The property was initially used to raise livestock. As in the rest of Nueva España (colonial Mexico), the native population had crashed during the first two centuries after the Conquest. This created a labor shortage and cattle required far fewer workers than farming. As the population recovered, increased labor availability enabled large-scale maiz (corn) production. Valladolid and Mérida would have been the hacienda's primary markets for both cattle and maiz. However, at the beginning of the 1830s, things began to change.

A visitor walks his bicycle up toward the casa grande. People arrive at the  hacienda in a variety of ways. Some come on bikes, a few on foot, and others by car. In recent times, a lot of folks have been arriving by tour bus after visiting the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza. This means that in the mid-afternoon, mobs of tourists show up, eager to cool off in the sparkling water of the cenote. If you want to avoid the crowds, the best time to arrive at the hacienda is during the morning. The hours are 8 AM - 5 PM, seven days a week. 

The beginning of the 19th century was full of turmoil in both Mexico and Europe. The Mexican War of Independence lasted from 1810 to 1821. Europe had been almost continuously at war from the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 through the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. Sea trade had suffered greatly during this period. During the decade of the 1820s, trade was beginning to recover and, with it, demand for ships. In those days, sailing ships required large amounts of good strong rope for rigging. Shipbuilders looking for this essential product discovered Yucatan's henequen. A market soon developed.

The Casa Grande's work area

The ruins of a building stand off to the right of the walkway. The structure is made of limestone, the most plentiful building material in Yucatan. Notice the old wheel leaning against the front wall. It is probably a remnant of a carreta or a four-wheel wagon. 

There is nothing to indicate what the building was used for, but it was almost certainly involved in the henequen operation. One possibility is that this was a supervisor's office. It is certainly too small to fit all of the machinery needed for processing henequen fibers. 

In addition to space for a supervisor, it might also have contained the tienda de raya (company store). That was where workers were paid, usually in script or coinage produced by a hacienda. This "money" could only be spent for goods sold in the tienda de raya. Thus, a highly profitable closed system was developed, one which was widely employed among the haciendas. An additional benefit of this closed system is that it helped stabilize the labor pool, for reasons I will explain below.  

A doorway opens into one of the ruined structure's rooms. Plaster still coats the interior walls. The rooms were empty of furniture or other remains. If this was a tienda de raya, it would have contained the daily necessities for a worker and his family. Since he was paid very little, he soon had to rely on credit to make his purchases. The tienda de raya would have kept the records of his pay and any debts owed. Most of the workers were illiterate and had no way of knowing whether or not these records were accurate.

A worker could not legally leave the hacienda while owing money. If he ran away, the rurales (rural police) would hunt him down and return him to the hacienda. Once back, he might be flogged and/or thrown into the jail that many haciendas maintained. If the worker became disabled or died while owing money, the debt passed to his wife and children. This kind of debt-slavery helped maintain a stable work force. Altogether it was an excellent and profitable arrangement, as long as you were on the right end of it.

A sisal worker struggles under the crushing weight of his burden. This painting is part of a series of murals in the Palacio Gobierno (Government Palace) in Mérida. The various murals highlight the oppression experienced by the Maya in the colonial period and later, during the henequen boom. In the mural, a heavily muscled worker strains to lift the bale of henequen, while shadowy figures reach their hands toward it. Perhaps these are the ghosts of former workers trying to help him in his struggle.

While hacendados (hacienda owners) began to cultivate sisal in the 1820s to meet the demand for ship's rope, the real boom was launched in 1831. In that year a blacksmith in the US named Cyrus McCormick invented his famous McCormick Reaper. For millennia, wheat had been harvested by teams of men wielding hand scythes in the fields. McCormick's machine cut, thrashed, and bundled the wheat, and tied it in sheaves. This reduced the time required to produce a bushel of wheat by 95%, from slightly over 3 hours down to 10 minutes. Instead of a field full of workers, only two men and a team of horses were required.

A row of machines turn henequen fiber into twine. Large numbers of machines like this would have filled much of the work area. The early versions were probably hand-cranked, then later driven by steam engines. Toward the end of the 19th century, electrical power was introduced. The work area would have swarmed with men and bustled with activity from dawn to dusk. (Photo from Yucatan Living website)

Twine was the connection between the haciendas henequeneras and the farmers in the US who were avidly adopting the McCormick Reaper. However, a major problem emerged when the Reaper was first put to use. Metal wire for binding the sheaves was tried, but it proved too stiff. Twine made of mixed fibers was also attempted, but it had weak spots and tended to bunch up in the machinery. Also, mixed fiber twine could be damaged by weather and insects. The men working with the Reapers soon discovered that twine made from the henequen was smooth, strong, didn't bunch, and was resistant to insects and weather.

A carreta stands on the lawn near the casa grande. Carretas were so ubiquitous a feature of Mexico that B. Traven (author of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre") gave one of his books the title of "The Carreta". It was about a young man who left the hacienda where he was born to make his way in the world. He eventually acquired a carreta and became a transporter of goods. Unfortunately, back at the hacienda, his father fell ill. Because the father was heavily indebted to the tienda de Raya and couldn't work, the young man had to give up his promising business and return to the hacienda to work off the family debts.

The McCormick Reapers were the beginning of industrialized agriculture, resulting in massive farms operating numerous Reapers. All those Reapers required huge amounts of henequen twine. Yucatan's haciendas were transformed from sleepy local operations into economic powerhouses, reaping millions of dollars for their owners. Splendid mansions in Mérida still display the opulence of that time. Of course, the tens of thousands of Maya workers saw barely a trickle of all that wealth. Hennequen demand resulted in more seizures of Maya land. Labor shortages led to one of the most shameful chapters in Mexican history.

Yaqui people being marched into slavery at the haciendas henequeneras. Yaquis were the last indigenous tribe to be conquered in Mexico. Their homeland is in the Sierra Madre Occidental in northwest Mexico. The Yaquis had resisted conquest from their first encounter with the Spanish in the 16th century until their final defeat by the Mexican government in 1927. During the regime of the dictator Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911), the government pursued a policy of enslavement. The owners of the henequen haciendas were eager for cheap labor and Yaqui men, women, and children were sold to them at 60 pesos per head. By 1908, at least 5000 had been sold, in spite of the abolishment of slavery in Mexico back in 1829. 

While I can't definitely say that Yaqui slaves worked at Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman, their use was widespread at henequen producing haciendas throughout northern Yucatan. After all, what hacendado could pass up something as cheap as slave labor when demand for henequen was so high? The Yaquis were forced to work from dawn to dusk in harsh tropical heat to which they were unaccustomed. They were given little food and locked up at night. They were trapped far away from their homeland, so escape was almost impossible. Two-thirds of the Yaquis died in their first year of captivity. (Photo from the Palacio Gobierno)

Casa Grande

View from the back terrace of the casa grande toward the main gate. Several staircases like the one above lead up from the broad lawn where the work area once stood. Carretas full of harvested sisal leaves once passed through the gate in one direction. Others full of finished twine would have passed through in the opposite direction, on their way to the port of Sisal on Yucatan's north coast.

On June 4, 1910, only two years after the peak of Yaqui enslavement, an insurrection broke out in Valladolid against the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship. It has been described as "the first spark of the Mexican Revolution", which didn't formally begin until five months later on November 20, 1910. Over the previous 35 years, Diaz had held a series of rigged elections which he always won. Those who opposed him rallied behind the Anti-Reelection Party. In Valladolid, this was led by Maximiliano Bonilla, a Yucateca (non-Maya Mexican). 

The back terrace and rear side of the casa grande. This terrace would have provided additional space for work as well as a good place to view the operations being performed below. The rear side of the casa grande is rather plain. There are doors on either side which lead into two wings, each having two stories. The two arched openings in the middle lead into an arcade which opens onto a terrace facing out into the front yard of the building.

Although Maximiliano Bonilla and the other leaders were Yucatecas, the Maya laborers on the haciendas surrounding Valladolid rallied to the cause. It is very likely that some of them came from Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman. As I have shown, the Maya on the haciendas had been brutally oppressed for centuries. However, they also had a long history of resistance against their oppressors. The Caste War (1847-1915) had been going on for more than 60 years by 1910. Most of eastern Yucatan (now the State of Quintana Roo) had been under Maya control during that time. The Maya around Valladolid were more than ready to act.

View through one of the arched openings toward the front staircase. The arcade and its terrace run along the front of the casa grande and the staircase leads down to the front yard. The architectural floor plan of this casa grande is unusual. I have never encountered one like it among the several I have seen in Yucatan nor in any of more than 100 that I have visited elsewhere in Mexico. 

Initially, the revolt was a success. The Anti-Reelectionistas seized the city, tore up the railroad tracks to Mérida, and entrenched themselves. Luis Felipe de Regil, the chief local politician, was killed along with several soldiers. Porfirio Diaz saw the revolt as a dangerous development, so he sent 600 troops to Valladolid to crush the uprising. In spite of their superiority in numbers and armament, it took Diaz' troops four days to recapture Valladolid. The untrained Maya fought bravely, although most were armed only with machetes. They were finally defeated, leaving dozens of Maya fighters and Diaz soldiers lying dead in the streets.

View of the front side of the casa grande. While the back side has no windows, the front does. The upper parts of the structures on either side of the central arcade have two windows each, with balconies. Below the windows on each side are what appear to be bricked up doors, or possibly floor-to-ceiling windows. Why they were closed up is a mystery to me. I am assuming that the upper floors contain bedrooms. The lower floors may contain a kitchen and dining room and possibly a salon, but I could not determine that at the time.

After Valladolid's Anti-Reelectionista revolt was crushed, things settled down in Yucatan for several years. However, in the rest of the country, they were heating up. Within a year Porfirio Diaz was defeated and driven out of the country. This was followed by several years of conflicts among the revolutionary leaders. During this period, a young man named Salvador Alvarado steadily rose in rank from captain to general. In 1915, after Venustiano Carranza consolidated power and became President of Mexico, Salvador Alvarado was sent to Yucatan as Military Governor. Along with him, the Revolution arrived.

General Alvarado was a true social revolutionary, unlike many of his contemporaries who were essentially opportunists out for themselves. Alvarado was from Sonora, in northwest Mexico, and knew little about Yucatan. So, he spent his first six months studying the situation and consulting with people of all social classes. His first act was to liberate the Maya from serfdom. He cancelled their debts, outlawed debt-slavery, set minimum wages,  and established laws for health, safety, and child labor. Alvarado's goal was to end the feudal system under which the haciendas had operated for centuries.

In a far corner of the front yard is a large well. It stands near the entrance of the tunnel that descends into the cenote. Over the opening of the well there is a rusty mechanism that contains a wheel which probably functions in some way to bring up water. As I have mentioned previously, water is a critical issue in northern Yucatan. Without above ground rivers or lakes, the only sources are the cenotes and the wells dug following the Spanish Conquest. Hacienda San Lorenzo Oxman has the benefit of both.

Salvador Alvarado also set up a system of military courts to mete out justice swiftly and fairly. He legalized unions and halted abuses of the Sedition Law, historically used against workers who questioned their working conditions. Agrarian Committees were set up to oversee land reform and farm worker issues. Government agents were appointed to report abuses against common people by the landed class. Education became mandatory, secular, and free. Schools for agriculture and the arts were set up, along with a free institute for teaching law. The list of reforms is long. Amazingly, Alvarado did it all in under three years!

Presidente Carranza recalled Alvarado in 1918 for another assignment. After he left Yucatan, one of his supporters named Felipe Carrillo Puerto carried on the work. Carrillo Puerto, was of mixed Maya and Yucateca blood. He  become Governor of Yucatan in 1922 and gave his first speech in the Maya language. During his tenure, he returned land to the Maya that had been illegally seized by hacienda owners, promoted new farming techniques, gave women political rights, started family planning programs and opened 417 public schools. Unfortunately, Mexico was plagued with revolts in the 1920s. During one of them, Carrillo Puerto was captured by rebels and, in 1924, was executed by firing squad.

Above the well is a large windmill tower. The windmill provides the power for lifting water from the depths of the well. It wasn't apparent to me whether this windmill mechanism was still functioning. There may have been a more modern system somewhere out of sight, but I didn't see it. Fortunately for henequen growers, sisal required very little water since it is native to Yucatan and grew in the wild before it was ever cultivated for profit.

Both Salvador Alvarado and Felipe Carrillo Puerto attempted to reform the hacienda system, while still keeping the henequen business functioning. However, decline set in when some hacienda owners abandoned their properties rather than accede to reforms. Others had borrowed and over-invested and went out of business in the 1929 Depression. The end of the haciendas henequeneras came in 1937 when Presidente Lazaro Cardenas initiated land reforms which turned the haciendas over to ejidos (farmworkers' collectives). The final blow to the henequen business itself came when synthetic fibers replaced henequen in the 1940s.

This completes Part 7 of my Valladolid Adventures series. I hope you enjoyed seeing this old hacienda and learning about the role it played in the henequen business. Please leave any thoughts or questions in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question, please include your email address so that I can respond in a timely fashion.

Hasta luego, Jim