Ouweneel 1997 - RH - Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and The Problem Hacienda Labor

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Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and the Problem

of Credits to Hacienda Labourers
Arij Ouweneel
Rural History / Volume 8 / Issue 01 / April 1997, pp 21 - 54
DOI: 10.1017/S0956793300001126, Published online: 31 October 2008
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0956793300001126

How to cite this article:
Arij Ouweneel (1997). Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and the Problem of Credits to
Hacienda Labourers. Rural History, 8, pp 21-54 doi:10.1017/S0956793300001126
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Rural History (1997) 8, 1, 21-54. Copyright 7997 Cambridge University Press
21
Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and

the Problem of Credits to Hacienda
Labourers
ARIJ OUWENEEL
Introduction
The transition to modern, capitalist agriculture is usually marked by the replacement
of traditional forms of farm service by a free labour market based on short-term contracts
and cash payments. This process is often described in terms like 'pauperisation' and
'proletarianisation'. But, of course, proletarianisation is not an inevitable consequence
of the rise of day-labouring in capitalist agriculture; a point emphasized, for example,
with particular reference to eighteenth-century Scotland by Alex Gibson and Alastair
Orr.' Contrary to much of southern England, where the forces of production developed
rather fast, in Scotland traditional forms of farm service survived largely intact well into
the nineteenth century despite the development of capitalist agriculture. As late as 1861
over 60 per cent of the total agricultural work-force in some Scottish regions were
servants on long hires as opposed to day-labourers. Hired by the term or year, the
agricultural servants were not subject to the seasonal unemployment which characterised
day-labouring. Paid largely in kind, they were protected from the worst excesses of a
volatile grain market; and, being provided with at least some land on which to grow
subsistence crops, they were able to enjoy a relatively good standard of living.
The amount of work being undertaken by day-labourers on the Scottish estate of
Buchanan did not involve the central tasks of agriculture. Sowing, ploughing, threshing
and so on were carried out by resident servants, who were specialists in husbandry,
perhaps more akin to craftsmen in their skill than to labourers. Each servant, contracted
by the year, had his cottage rent-free, granted by the estate in exchange for his or his
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Arij Ouweneel
wife's labour, and received a yearly wage. But, although a large part of this wage was
accounted for in money by the year, it was actually paid over in kind weekly. Whatever
seasonal labour was needed was also drawn from a pool of resident cottagers, which
maintained itself in ways other than by labouring for the estate. The day-labourers did
simple work: ditching, dyking and draining. The general turnover of these day-labourers
from one year to the next was bound to be great on the estate of Buchanan. In the early
eighteenth century, for example, a total of 118 different men were employed as
day-labourers. The Scottish historical geographer Alex Gibson calculated that each
day-labourer would have been able to find work for only 79 days; a few days each year.
By the last quarter of the eighteenth century a quite fundamental change in the character
of the unskilled labour market occurred. Now most of this work on the estate was being
directed towards a relatively small group of men. During the period 1772-83 only 13
men appeared in each years' wage-accounts; work for an average of 276 days per man!
These wage-earners came to be totally dependent on this work. The opportunities for
the day-labourers had improved from seasonal to permanent employment; a new labour
demand originating from infrastructural improvements which simply meant more
ditching, draining and dyking. Notwithstanding this, sowing, ploughing, threshing and
so on continued to be carried out by resident servants.
Any Mexicanist who is at home in modern hacienda research would recognise the
colonial agricultural servants in this short description and despite some important
differences with southern England, which are left aside, the process is clear. What had
happened in day-labouring in Scotland was, first, the separation of employers from
employed by the gradual abolition of farm service, second, the substitution of money
wages for payment in kind, and, third, the replacement of annual labour contracts by
short-term weekly or daily engagements. But, recognising this, the new, smaller group
of day-labourers was nevertheless paid substantially in kind as well, had a regular, almost
'guaranteed', annual working year of about 280 days, and cultivated some, rented,
subsistence plots. 'If it was proletarianization', writes Gibson, 'it was not, at least at
Buchanan, accompanied by any obvious or immediate deterioration in living standards'.2
In contrast to the rest of England, the improvement for a small group of day-labourers
led, paradoxically, to a much reduced demand for day-labourers in general. There was
no longer any need to rely on the occasional labour of cottagers who had lived in
communities near the estate and their position must have become very precarious indeed.
And these deprived cottagers, I repeat, are not to be confused with the resident servants.
Capitalism thus could leave a traditional mechanism in tact while transforming it at
the same time. More than half a century ago the French historian Marc Bloch wrote a
few sentences which could be applied directly to this problem. With reference to the
French medieval manoir he concluded in the first place: 'The manor in itself has no
claim to a place among the institutions which we call feudal'.3 A little further on he
added: 'When the relationships truly characteristic of feudalism fell into decay the manor
lived on, but with different characteristics; it became more territorial, more purely
economic'. For decades, Latin American historiography lacked the finesse which Bloch
displayed in his analysis of France, or Gibson recently in his analysis of Scotland. The
Latin American service tenants like inquilinos (Chile), yanaconas (Peru), or gananes
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage
23
(Mexico) would have provided virtually free labour for the landlord in return for a plot
of land for subsistence farming; the main characteristic of labour conditions being 'the
extra-economic extraction of the surplus from the producers by the feudal lords'.4 And
indeed, on Mexican peon life, such stories abound. One was told by the American
journalist Harry Carr in the early 1930s. The word hacienda, he wants us to believe, is
a word that with great gusto has been ushered into the English language.5 Somewhere
in Western Mexico he met a certain Nicolas and asked him about the history of this old
institution. Nicolas just snickered. Real estate agents announced haciendas with tiled
bathrooms and breakfast nooks and Nicolas thought this was very funny. Then the humble
Mexican explained that an hacienda was not a house. It was an estate, more especially
a great farm in active operation. It must be working to be an hacienda. In the 1930s a
Mexican like Nicolas would even have protested when one called cattle-ranches haciendas.
The meaning of the word implied activity, doing, working. An hacienda was an enterprise.
But entering hacienda country Carr felt like slipping back into the Middle Ages. He
observed that the hacendados - as the owners of haciendas were called - ruled like ancient
barons in their castles. Carr asked one of them how many acres were on his estate. The
charming and courteous old gentleman seemed embarrassed: he really did not know.
He had a lot of workers, the peones, but did not know how many. They had been long
on the estate. It was not uncommon, he affirmed, to find a cowboy spurring his bronco
with rowels of embossed silver which his father and his grandfather and his grandfather's
father wore as vaqueros before him. All the peons lived with their families together in
a little village on the estate. It must have been this little farm town, Carr supposed, with
its sleepy streets and adobe houses, that made Nicolas a little homesick, for he had lived
in just such a place in the mountains. But he told his American friend also of an hacienda
which employed more than five thousand peons. So those villages were not always little,
Carr concluded.
The hacienda was not a paradise. Mexico was to Carr a land of tragedy and tears as
well as gaiety and song. Around every peon hut hung the suggestion of dark memories,
of battle against the harassments of rural life and of death. Infant mortality among the
peons was dreadful. The children of the poor faded away like little flowers. They were
called angels. Carr knew why. It was a reflection upon the sorrow and hardship of the
cruel life of the peons that the death of a child was always made the occasion of at least
pretended rejoicing - the little soul was admitted to heaven without having to endure
the sufferings of life. It was so sombre that even the oxen suffered the cruelty of life,
with the yokes fixed on a painsome way. Instead of the heavy yoke that should have
gone over the necks of the animals, the Mexicans fastened the pole of the wagon to a
straight wooden pole, to which the horns of the oxen were tightly lashed with thongs
of rawhide: neither ox could move his head and the whole weight of the load came to
the two animals' heads. There are other stories in Carr's book. Mexican mule-drivers
were proud to urge their animals by picturesque and colorful language. They thought
that mules were especially sensitive to the inspiration that came from swear words. The
ox-drivers twisted the tails of their teams. Carr came across one ox-driver who induced
his beasts to impossible feats of strength by biting their tails with his teeth. 'To an ox
there seems to be something especially inspiring about being bitten on the tail'.
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Arij Ouweneel
A British civil and mining engineer, Reginald Enock, had written about the hacienda
and the peon in much the same way. His book on Mexico was first published in 1909
and contains the pre-revolutionary image.6 The peon was not necessarily a forced
labourer, he thought, although the conditions of his life were such that the peon was
not a free agent as the working men in England or the United States were. The peon
was paid in goods which he was obliged to purchase in the general store of the hacienda,
belonging to the proprietor or by someone licensed by him. It was a species of 'truck'
system. High prices and short weight in accordance with the business principles
underlying such systems - generally accompanied these dealings. Moreover, as the peon
was often granted supplies in advance, against future wages, he was generally in debt
to the store, a condition which was, stated Enock, purposely not discouraged. But the
peon was not unhappy, Enock believed. 'Men who know no other state are contented
with their lot, and the poor Mexican creates matters of pastime in his simple life.' The
engineer referred to bull-fights, horse-racing, cock-fighting, together with dancing and
the consumption of impressive amounts of liquor.
The classical picture of the peon's life seems to be clear: harsh labour conditions,
labourers imported to the premises by force, restriction of the labourers' mobility, and
debts providing a legal basis for coercion. For almost the entire past century, the peons
were seen as chattel slaves. It was thought that such slavery belonged to the colonial
heritage of Mexico and could be modelled as typical for colonialism in general. But in
the 1960s reinterpretation occurred. Since then, peonage has been seen as an improvement
compared to earlier colonial forms of labour systems.7 According to one recent observer,
Mexican peonage embraced two forms: one coercive, according to the conventional
leyenda negra, the other voluntary, in that market pressures rather than 'extra-economic
coercion' underpinned it. The second form appears to have been the more common in
colonial Mexico, hence the designation of 'traditional' peonage. In fact, the 'colonial
heritage' includes modest levels of debts and this for only about half of the peon
population.8 One North American historian, the late Charles Gibson, even noted relative
freedom among the workers, whose object was not to escape but to enlarge indebtedness
by soliciting cash advances when they negotiated with future employers.9 John Tutino
convincingly argued that during the 1810 Hidalgo Revolt - supposedly directed against
Spanish rule in Mexico - peons were predisposed to back the hacienda against the
revolutionaries.10 It follows as well that this form rested upon non-coercive foundations.
But the background of it remains still relatively under-researched. It is clear that
traditional peonage rested upon cash advances that were given to attract labour voluntarily
from the indigenous sector to the Spanish. These workers were not enslaved - as the
Black Legend authors would like us to believe - but induced. This suggests that
exploitation was economic, as in industrial capitalism. However, due to the reliance on
hacienda accounts, investigators have shed more light on hacienda marketing and
profit-maximizing than on the hacienda's internal workings and its relations of production.
It is this lack of insight that leaves room for a microscopic view of the internal workings
of the hacienda. The lack is obvious'and understandable: the data are scarce. At first,
the picture seems to have been set some years ago when North American historian Eric
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25
Van Young introduced his overview on Mexican rural history with the remark that it
was no accident that his review dealt so heavily with studies of the hacienda, for that
was the subject to which most researchers in the field seemed to have devoted their
efforts." But nowadays Mexican rural historiography is in a phase of in-depth study of
indigenous life and culture in native units called pueblos, even using native language
sources. It is as if historians, standing in front of the hacienda gate on the edge of
entering the peons' huts, turned their backs and went to the nearby Indian villages.
This contribution seeks to reconstruct the participation of eighteenth-century peones in
the labour cycle of the altiplano of central Mexico. It does so by reviewing the work
done by one group of labourers employed by one estate in one single year. This seems
microhistory to the extreme. However, because of the state of research in Mexican rural
history, few alternatives could be found. I realise how difficult it is to enter the peons'
huts, but it should be done from the same perspective as much recent research, for about
fifteen per cent of colonial Mexican Indians lived in peon communities on hacienda
territory.
The Region
The region of central Mexico was one of four regional economies of New Spain. These
Michoacan
Guadalajara
regional economies
main cities
"/ road systems
Map 1. Four Regional Economies of Eighteen-Century Mexico
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1.
2.
3.
4.
Arij Ouweneel
Central-Mexico, the hinterland of the cities of Mexico, Puebla, Toluca, Cholula,
Tepeaca, Cuernavaca, and Tlaxcala on the central altiplano;
Michoacan, the mining region of New Spain including the cities of Valladolid,
Guanajuato, San Miguel el Grande, San Luis Potos, Acambaro, and Queretaro;
Oaxaca, including the Mixteca highlands;
Guadalajara and its hinterland, including the northern mining enclaves of Parral
and Zacatecas.
Every regional economy (or region) was characterised by concentric circles, in which
the inner circles were marked by high levels of population concentration, intensive
agriculture, intensive religious and architectural activity, and the like. If one moved out
towards the periphery, population levels and economic activities declined. These four
regional economic entities thus had variegated internal economies, and were separated
by a dry and mountainous landscape that was difficult to traverse. Luxury products and
high-valued goods were intensively transported and sold colony wide, but foodstuffs in
general were not because of the high transport costs involved. A true colony-wide market
for basic commodity products would not develop because of this. Any detailed, in-depth
study of colonial Mexico must limit itself to one of these four regions, because the
differences in time, scope, and character were too great to permit any meaningful analysis
of general themes.
Central-Mexico - I prefer to call it Anahuac'3 - and Oaxaca were ancient indigenous
regions, with many small villages and intensive local market systems. These villages
were geographically and economically complemented by relatively small haciendas that
produced - with the use of intensive methods - basic nutriments and industrial raw
materials (wood, tallow, fat, wool) for the cities. Anahuac was the most populated region
and contained a high number of non-Indians as well. Michoacan and Guadalajara were
generally much more Hispanicised and did not truly develop until the mid eighteenth
century. In both regions, there were few pueblos de indios or indigenous municipalities,
but many rancheros or small farmers. The haciendas were generally larger and produced
cattle, food, and industrial raw materials for the cities as well as for the nearby mining
enclaves. The integrating element of the economy of New Spain, cutting across all four
major regions, was the long-distance trade of silver, sheep, cattle, and repartimiento
products (basically textiles like cotton cloth, cochineal, and cattle and mules for the
Indians). This trade system involved finished manufactured goods rather than luxury
articles imported from Europe. In short, food markets were highly localised; it cost one
real a day for a mule to carry a fanega of maize about twenty-two kilometers.
For the case-study that follows, I will limit my scope to Anahuac, a complex of 51
provinces, which had the highest population density, the largest cities, and a lively
internal basic commodity trade. The region was formed by the three valleys of the central
highlands, 2000-2600 metres above sea level. It extends 180 kilometres in an east-west
direction and 160 kilometres in a north-south direction on the Central Mexican highlands.
The valleys of Toluca in the West, Mexico in the Center and Puebla in the East were
enclosed by rugged and impenetrable mountains which created a degree of isolation with
respect to the other regions in the viceroyalty of New Spain. The mountain area is
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Valleys:
1. Toluca
2. Mexico
3. Puebla
faldas
highland areas
between
2000-1500 metres
Map 2. The Anahuac region

generally referred to as faldas or sierra and although considerably fewer people lived
there than in the highlands, this mountain area was economically and socially integrated
in the life of the highlands. It was a densely populated area accommodating some sixty
per cent of the population of New Spain.
This introduces the question of how many haciendas there were in colonial Anahuac.
The answer is very difficult to find because of the lack of research. Nevertheless the
statistics on the diffusion of the population in the intendencies of New Spain in 1820,
published by Fernando Navarro y Noriega, are informative. These intendencies were
the larger administrative units of the viceroyalty which combined various provinces (first
known as alcaldtas mayores, later as subdelegaciones). These statistics, taken from
approximately 1810 to 1815, were the most up-to-date which Navarro could obtain.14
Following Navarro, I include the haciendas and the ranchos as well as the villas and
pueblos among the settlements (see table I).15 In using Navarro's statistics it should be
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Arij Ouweneel
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Table 1
Haciendas, ranchos, cities and villages in New Spain, 1815 - estimates made by Fernando Navarro y Noriega.
region
Anahuac
Michoacan
Oaxaca
Guadalajara
Cities
no.
2270
429
933
363
totals
3995
and Villages
%
%
56.8
38.8
10.7
14.2
23.3
72.3
9.2
12.4
100
Haciendas
no.
%
1572 47.2
1042 31.5
2.6
88
612 18.5
3314
%
26.9
34.4
6.8
21.0
100
no.
2007
1555
269
1943
Ranchos
%
34.9
26.9
4.6
33.6
5774
100
%
34 .3
51 .4
20 .8
66 .6
no.
5849
3026
1290
2918
totals
%
44.7
23.1
9.9
22.3
13083
100
%
100
100
100
100
Source: A. Ouweneel, Onderbroken groei in Anahuac. De ecologische achtergrond van ontwikkeling en armoede
op het platteland van Centraal-Mexico (1730-1810) Amsterdam, 1989), p. 25.
number: Chalco, Tepeaca, Tlaxcala, Ixtlahuaca
- 35000
- 33000
provinces
Cyoacan
Mexicalcingo
Otumba
Texcoco
Atlixco
Huejotzingo
Chalco
Tepeaca
Tlaxcala
Ixtahuaca
1720
1790
1740
1750
1760
1770
1780
1790
1800
Figure 1. Number of tributarios in ten provinces dominated by haciendas (Anahuac, 1720-1800)
borne in mind that the characterisations of the 'form of settlement' were constantly
changing and that the statistics are therefore not very reliable for other periods. All the
same, Navarro y Noriega calculated 1572 haciendas in Anahuac and some two thousand
ranchos. The haciendas counted for about 27 per cent of settlements in the region.
Michoacan, a much larger region, had about one thousand haciendas, and the two other
regions had significantly less. Elsewhere I have argued that a lot of ranchos in Anahuac
were legalised parts of Indian cacicazgos - demesnes of indigenous lords - and that these
competed with Indian villages.16
A second focus of interest is the demography of the area under study. I limit my
picture to ten provinces of Anhuac that were characterised by haciendas: Atlixco, Chalco,
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Coyoacan, Huejotzingo, Ixtlahuaca-Metepec, Mexicalcingo, Otumba, Tepeaca, Tlaxcala

and Texcoco (see figure 1). Demographic development is clear: growth in the early
eighteenth century, then stagnation and the return of the increase during the latter
decades of the century. The stagnation was caused by epidemics in the mid-1730s.
Despite the fact that growth was rather impressive after the 1780s,17 population density
must have been rather low. Around 1800, some 91,000 adult indigenous men were
counted in those ten provinces. I estimate a number of 1300 haciendas in those provinces.
With only an estimate of about fifteen per cent of the indigenous population living on
the haciendas, this means an average number of 10.5 men per hacienda in that year.
Any hacienda needed at least twice this figure, as I will try to show below. And this was
1800, after a few decades of population growth.
The Hacienda and its Peons

It is difficult to determine a norm for the size of the landholdings of the haciendas.
There were very small haciendas, above all in the densely populated areas, and there
were very large ones in the sparsely populated areas. There were wheat and maize
haciendas (often small estates in the densely populated areas), small livestock haciendas
(in the neighbourhood of the densely populated areas) and large livestock haciendas (in
remote areas of colonial Mexico). But there were also sugar haciendas and coffee
haciendas; the silver mines were connected with haciendas de beneficio where the silver
amalgamation process took place. There were haciendas which served as stopping places
(ventas) on the large roads, and there were haciendas which were nothing more than
grazing lands for the beasts of burden or for sheep and goats during the great trek. An
agricultural hacienda did not always own the best farming land, and as a general rule
its land would be no better than that in the villages in the neighbourhood. All the same,
hacienda land was often worth more than that in the villages because of the irrigation
and drainage systems.
Above all, a hacienda had to be profitable, or, at least, not to cause heavy losses in
the owners' capital stock. This did not necessarily depend on the hacienda itself, because
the functioning of a hacienda within a broader framework played an important part. A
hacienda which could not exist by itself was used to service a larger commercial enterprise
in which a number of different branches of activity were represented. Almost all major
haciendas belonged to a larger complex. The best known examples are the complexes
of the Jesuits, such as that of the Colegio San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City, which
was based on the combination of sheep farming and sugar production, or the Colegio
Espiritu Santo in Puebla, which specialised in handicrafts depending on small livestock
farming (wool, talcum, soap) and the running of a venta. Most private entrepreneurs
could not compete with the large scale of Jesuit financial operations - which gave their
operations a multinational character - nor with their tax exemptions, but they organised
their complexes along more or less the same lines. There is a major difference in the
fact that the Jesuits confined themselves to the production of the complex itself (purely
agricultural production), while the private entrepreneurs combined their haciendas with
the broader activities of commerce and industry. This alone explains why it is necessary
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Arij Ouweneel
to study hacienda accounts in connection with the accounts of the larger commercial
company of an entrepreneurial family. This has hardly been done so far, probably because
the accounts of the merchants have not been preserved intact. At any rate, the haciendas
served a commercial interest and their place within a broader complex provided a better
way of spreading the commercial risks.
Hacendados were motivated by prestige and tradition as well as by practical economic
considerations like avoiding losses. Indeed, some would strive for profits. As a good
entrepreneur, the hacendado was aware of the commercial potential of his estate. He
tried to exploit it as much as possible, even though the prospects of a good result were
impeded by the unreliable climate, the high costs of transport, the shortage of financial
resources and the burden of debt. The last two obstacles brought the hacendado into
contact with the church. Almost all the money he borrowed was lent to him by a religious
body; there were no private banks in Spanish America at this time. However, recent
studies of the provision of loans in the western Mexican region of Guadalajara suggest
that the church was losing financial ground in the last decade of the eighteenth century.
The rich families lent money on an increasing scale, and they were prepared to concede
attractive repayment terms. This increased the hold of the merchants on the colonial
economy.'8 The hacienda economy seems to have expanded towards the end of the
nineteenth century - an increasing influence of the large-scale agricultural estate on the
national economy although this expansion did not assume the same form everywhere.
A number of haciendas in Mexico were bought up by immigrants, colonists who were
familiar with the modern capitalist economy of Europe. They were most interested in
obtaining a maximum profit per unit of invested capital. There was no need to produce
for export to achieve this goal; on the contrary, the largest market for the Mexican
haciendas was in the rapidly expanding cities. This was why the hacienda was of little
or no significance in many regions; most haciendas outside the urban regions were only
livestock estates.
And precisely because the hacienda was operated for profit, its labour force had to be
as cheap as possible. This was reached by contracting formally free but actually tied
labourers. The peons were kept on the estate by means of debt. It is interesting to look
at the origins of the word peon. According to Lockhart and Schwartz:19 'where
[this] term came from is not clear since it was not used during the colonial period, and
peon by itself means just the opposite, a temporary worker.' This statement is an
expression of the confusion which still reigns on the relation between hacienda and
labourers. For example, in the accounts of the colonial haciendas that I have consulted
all the servants are referred to as peones. These are without exception farmhands or
ditch-diggers.
In fact, on the wheat-and-maize haciendas in Anahuac, there were two kinds of Indian
peones: gaiianes, Indians who paid their tribute to the hacendado, a kind of resident
cottager, and tlaquehuales, Indians who paid their tribute to native village officials. As
for the grazing haciendas, particularly those of the Jesuits, a minority in the region,
these estates employed labourers described in the sources as sirvientes, who belonged to
the non-Indian order. Paid monthly, they were rarely deeply in debt and had little
attachment to the estates on which they worked. There are excellent accounts of labour
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on sugar haciendas in the valley of Cuernavaca by Barrett, von Wobeser and Van der
Meer.20 Until late in the eighteenth century a large number of the labourers here were
slaves. Slavery is a separate problem, which I am justified in leaving aside here.
Incidentally, some sugar haciendas switched to contract peones gananes and peones
tlaquehuales as well later in the century. Riley claims that there was a third group of
labourers besides the gananes and tlaquehuales: the indios de cuadrilla, groups of contract
workers who lived in villages and were hired in teams at peak periods. However,
practically all cuadrillas consisted oi peones tlaquehuales in the documentation that I have
examined.21
But antiquarian elements live on for a long time. In 1984, the well-known Italian
historian Romano still defended older views. He neglected much research done during
the 1970s including the overviews by Katz or Bauer and had the following to say
on the peones:
PEONES: these, of course, were nominally free workers paid in cash. But to stop at the name is
the last thing a historian can or should do. In fact peones were not free: once having entered into
the work cycle under a lord, they seldom escaped. The system that created their dependence was
simple: indebtedness. The lord ... paid wages in advance: the peon was obliged to buy (or more
accurately, to acquire) cloth, foodstuffs, and alcohol from the lord. Indebtedness was chronic and
was transferred from father to son.22
It is known that Spanish officials understood free labour to mean work without
compulsion, so that debt did not make a worker juridically unfree - only in practice
perhaps because it is said to impair his mobility, and therefore the economic entrapment
of indebtedness should be understood as involuntary servitude or peonage. One can find
statements that the peones were trapped into indebtedness well into our own times.
Work in the Fields

In a previous publication I tried to encourage the reader to consider Mexican hacienda
labour within its very limited scope for variation in the process of production. 23 In the
highlands, the fixed schedules limited all possibilities for variation and rotation. I
illustrated this with a comparison of the data from surviving records from three
eighteenth-century highland haciendas; Santa Ana Aragon (near Mexico City, 1767 and
1768); San Antonio Palula (Tlaxcala, 1765-6); and San Nicolas de los Pilares (Texcoco,
17914). Figure 2 is reconstructed with these data and represents the labour requirements
of a wheat and maize hacienda in a good year on a four-weekly basis.24 The conclusion
was clear: all the good years on the three haciendas followed the same agricultural
calendar and had the same labour requirements, despite the differences in period and
area which might be supposed to have affected the figures. It was difficult to find precisely
the same data for other haciendas in order to work out a correlation involving more
haciendas (the data had to be grouped in monthly periods and spread out over almost
the whole year). Nonetheless, the accounts of other haciendas, such as those of San Juan
Xaltipan (Tlaxcala, 17347) and San Nicolas Buenavista(Mexicalcingo, 1811-12) suggest
the presence of the same cycle and the same pattern. I think that the schedules ceteris
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32
number of labourers
550
500
450
resident labourers
400
day-labourers
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
1
10 11 12 13
periods of four weeks

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Figure 2. Tentative picture of the average number of labourers on a Central Mexican wheat-maize
hacienda - per period of four weeks, 18th century.
paribus predict the number of labourers, the number of mandays and the amount of
labour costs these haciendas would have used. The limited possibilities meant that there
was no room for extra employment because of the limits of the agricultural cycle.
Obviously, the beat of the peons' life on the hacienda was fixed with its labour scheme.
I will use some space to describe this relationship.
The main crops were wheat (for commercial reasons: it was sold in the urban markets,
like Mexico City, Puebla, Pachuca, Veracruz, and for some time even Havana) and maize
(for social reasons: it was given to the workers as extra wages in the form of rations).
The agricultural year of wheat culture usually began with the preliminary ploughing of
the fields where the new wheat crop was to be sown. The ploughing of adjoining fields
must have been an impressive spectacle, as numbers of ox teams ploughed the fields,
each with a ploughman and a boy who followed to remove stones. The haciendas had
variousfieldswhich were each prepared in a deliberate order according to afixedpattern.
Tilling was done by oxen. There are reports of hacienda managers and even peasants
from the pueblos who used mules for ploughing, but these must have been exceptions.
The use of oxen has an important economic advantage: it does not cost much to feed
them. The production of large quantities of fodder for mules or horses was an expensive
business in New Spain. The tempo of the oxen helped to determine the number of
labourers required. A carga de sembradura (a good 3j has.), the usual sowing unit for a
wheat field, usually meant one day's work for 15 to 20 yokes of oxen, i.e. an average of
0.2 has. per yoke per day. The energy of the animals declined in the course of the
ploughing period. At the start of the period, when the oxen had been given fodder
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intensively, they could work 0.4 has. per day with ease, but after two or three weeks
their performance dropped to less than half. It was sometimes necessary to compensate
for this by putting more ox teams to work.25
Almost without exception the wheat was sown in the winter. This meant that
preparations for irrigation had to be made during ploughing. The fields were irrigated
when necessary: when there was a risk of night frost, drought, and during the period
of budding and maturation of the ears. The number of servants who could be set to
work on the land depended on the type of soil. Heavy soils were ploughed more than
once, while once was enough for light soils. Since the haciendas usually had damp soils
and were situated near the banks of lakes and rivers, this was an extra disadvantage in
addition to the work of having to make drainage channels. The fields on these haciendas
had to be ploughed more than once, both lengthwise and crosswise (called fierros in the
accounts). This took up more man-days than on the few haciendas which were not so
close to the river banks. Ploughing on the various plots of land could go on until
December, but by then the time had come for sowing. Sometimes sowing started in one
corner of the fields while another corner was still being ploughed. The wheat was
ploughed in with a harrow soon after sowing. Once this process had been finished, the
wheat fields were left alone for months. Sometimes a manager would order a few servants
to weed the plots, but this was not common.26
Soon after the rainy season was over in October or November, preparative works for
irrigation began. Two to three peons performed this task until the rainy season returned
in the first days of May. Irrigation was stopped barely two weeks before reaping was
due to begin so that the crop could dry. (May is the hottest month of the year.) This
was a critical period for the hacienda management, which determined whether the ears
of wheat would be properly dry or of inferior quality because of a premature onset of
the rainy season. Once the sign for harvesting had been given, available day-labourers
were rapidly contracted in the surrounding Indian townships to carry out the harvest
as quickly as possible. The migrant labourers and a foreman jointly decided on how
much each labourer would reap. The work was agreed upon for a specific sum, and the
contractor - a cacique from a pueblo (a cacique was an indigenous chief, recognized by
the Spanish Crown as a noble) - often decided how many days the job would take. There
were 88 reapers at work on the Hacienda San Antonio Palula on 4 June 1766, all
day-labourers or so-called tlaquehuales. 27 Threshing was not done until the ensuing
winter, when the rainy season was over and the north winds caused a brief disruption
to the calm weather in February and March. The time of the wheat harvest was the only
time when day-labourers were used. The servants who lived on the hacienda were used
at all other times. My investigations lead to the conclusion that each hacienda had an
average of 15 to 20 permanent servants, plus their wives and children, who provided
additional labour. In fact, the number of permanent servants remained constant on each
hacienda throughout the year. In this respect, the only exception was the wheat harvest.
The method used in the ploughing of the maize-field, called milpas, was similar to
that of wheat. However, the milpas required more labour power than the wheat fields
did. The servants worked on the various milpas of the hacienda in accordance with a
fixed schedule. Maize production was an expensive business for the hacendado: the
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profit was less than that from wheat, while the costs were higher. For example, the
revenue from maize in cash terms was 31 per cent of the total income of the Hacienda
San Antonio Palula in the year 1765-6, while the income from wheat was 59^ per cent
of the total. Maize accounted for 29 per cent of the costs of production, as against 25
per cent for wheat.28 Rural sociologist Simon Miller has demonstrated that it was preferred
practice to leave maize cultivation up to sharecroppers in the nineteenth century,29 but
this practice had not set in yet in the eighteenth century. In general the haciendas
produced their own maize, although there are examples of production by sharecroppers.30
The first ploughing or barbecho of the milpas was carried out in December and January,
sometimes after a single preliminary ploughing in September. The fields were irrigated
during the barbecho. The sowing must not have been carried out too soon. Premature
sowing entailed the risk that weeds, which immediately started growing after light
showers, would spread to such an extent that the land would have to be weeded during
sowing. Besides, it might be too cold in February or March. Maize needs 'the warm,
moist conditions of summer', as Wilken puts it.31 The sowers were servants who made
holes in the furrows at regular intervals with the digging sticks (coas). Four or five seeds
were put in each hole. Most haciendas had selected the seed, and they sold some of it
to other hacendados at a price approximately fifty per cent above the usual price for
maize in the region. The sowers were usually followed by a yoke of oxen, which made
a furrow alongside the seed drills for drainage purposes. Sowing usually occurred in
March; with ox-herds, managed by men and assisted by boys.
Milpa planting was rather intensive, but the really intensive part began after the sowing
was over. Under favourable weather conditions the seed started to sprout after three or
four days, along with the weeds. Ground had to be piled up around the rapidly growing
stalks of the plants to ensure a good harvest, since this gave them enough stability to
withstand strong gusts of wind in the rainy season. Weeds, particularly grasses, had to
be eradicated. This was done a few weeks later to avoid damaging the young maize
plants and because there was some work to be done in sowing the other plots of land.
Yokes of oxen were led past the drills in the milpas during the works to raise the soil
rapidly and efficiently. By comparison with the milpas of the villagers,32 this kind of
cultivation in drills, with yokes of oxen walking between the plants, did not make full use
of the area available. Individual labourers walked behind these yokes of oxen to stamp
the ground down around the stalks and to remove the weeds. The piling up of earth took
place in April, May and June, starting with those milpas which had been sown first.
Once again, all the activities carried out during this busy period were the exclusive
tasks of men and boys who lived on the hacienda. The situation was different during a
special task in June and July, for which hardly any of the resident farmhands were used.
This was a job for some ten to fifteen day-labourers. When the maize started to flower
just before the first summer rains, it was time to pile up the earth firmly round the stalks
again, remove the weeds, get rid of caterpillars and insects, and to bind the stalks together
to prevent them from breaking and to prevent the ears of corn from falling on the ground.
The binding was done by three or four resident hands on the hacienda. They also kept
an eye on the migrant labourers. By now the maize plants stood in a firm ridge of earth.
There was a deep furrow between the rows of plants to drain the large quantities of rain
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35
water which fell on the milpas. As mentioned earlier, this was the most critical period,
because the plants did not reach full maturity if the rains were slow in coming. The
June-July tasks were done by seasonal workers and more or less coincided with the
wheat harvest. Afterwards there was no more work for migrant labourers on the haciendas.
As soon as the last task was done, a few milperos or milpa-guards were appointed to
watch the field against roaming cattle, passing mule trains and robbers. In fact, the
milperos kept up their watch over the fields until the last corn cobs had been plucked
in January or February. I have found no migrant labourers during the maize harvest.
Once the maize had dried properly after a few months in the warm winter sun and the
market price was favourable, the hacienda servants were given the signal to begin the
harvest. There was no need to do the job as quickly as in the case of the wheat harvest,
for the latter had to be completed just before the outbreak of the rainy season.
Some Accounts
The shortage of labour was the major problem facing the hacendados. In the first place,
it was the result of the success of the indigenous economy, which had ensured plenty
of work in the villages for a long time.33 In the second place, and this was above all true
of the valley of Puebla, the shortage was the result of the migration of the small farmers
from the pueblos to the villages and towns in the western areas of Anahuac and in the
faldas.34 The hacendados tried above all to hold on to the gafianes on their haciendas,
although Spanish legislation stood in their way. It was not debt but assets which were
the main instrument at their disposal: labourers who still had wages due to them would
not leave a hacienda so quickly. So, to answer Romano provisionally, peonage did not
entail economic entrapment by debts, but by assets and then only if the workers preferred
to stay at the estate to await their payment.
The precision of the business administration of the hacendados offers insight into the
questions of how much each labourer had worked, what his wages had been, and how
many items he had asked for in kind. These details were recorded both in the hacienda
accounts and in separate labour records (libros de rayas). The latter operated like a labour
contract. The books were balanced once a year, at Easter, to arrive at a final credit or
debit figure. If there was a credit, the peon had the right to back pay of his wages; if
there was a debit, it had to be paid off. The peones were bound to their labour contract,
although they could leave before expiry if they did not have any debts. In the event of
runaways search parties were organised. Servants were not sold; the debt could be
transferred to another hacienda, but only at the request of the peones themselves. These
practices resemble the contracts and transfers of modern European soccer players, who
despite their wealth are not allowed to leave a club during their contract period; even
though they may be involved with major conflicts with the manager and all the other
players in the team. This comparison between an Indian peon and a European soccer
player is not as absurd as it may seem: the peones too had a relatively higher standard
of living than the indios in the pueblos. 33
Some examples of the peones accounts have been published. With a few exceptions,
examination of these sources indicates that the debts of the gananes were not high. But
a closer look at some of the exceptions provides a good way of understanding the working
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of the system. Examples of peculiar indebedness include:

1.
2.
A young ganan who had started a family not long before and had incurred large
expenses in setting up his cottage, paying for the wedding, etc; he had received
mainly household items on credit.
A ganan with an important position in the social hierarchy of the community of
peones (for example, there were members of sodalities like cofradios and hermandades
on the haciendas), had received mainly sheep, goats, drink and large quantities of
maize for celebrations. In many cases a high debt on the hacienda was a sign of the
higher social prestige of the peon concerned.
This distinction emerges clearly from the following two accounts. T h e first concerns
the ganan Salvador Santiago, and was published by Gonzalez Sanchez.3(1 T h e account
consisted of the following items (the figures have been rounded off in whole reales):
Debt from the previous account:
Credit:
loan from the hacienda
to hold a party
meat
reales for the Festival of the Dead
ditto for Easter
ditto for carnival
ditto for Christmas
ditto for confession
church tithe (advance payment)
tribute (advance payment)
Wages: 9 months @ 3p4 per month
338
-222
11
131
4
10
5
12
30
4
3
12
+252
Debt:
-308
This labourer thus had a debt amounting to eleven months' wages. He asked credits for
holding some parties. T h e account of the ganan Marcos Antonio, taken from the same
source, was as follows:
Debt from the previous account
Credit:
reales for the hacienda party
<reales for the Festival of the Dead
ditto for Easter
ditto for Christmas
ditto for family expenses
meat
tools
extra maize
church tithe (advance payment)
tribute (advance payment)
Wages: 9 months @ 3p4 per month
Credit:
57
-176
55
12
4
1.5
40
22
16
9
3
13.5
+252
19
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37
reales
5550-
Hacienda Quimichucan
4540
22 gananes
35-
30-
2520151050-
-10-
credits: 24p1 average: 4p2

debts: 216p2 average: 13p4
s -20-25
reales
75 "
70 65"
60"
55 "
50"
45"
403530"
252015 1050-
x5
10
'
Hacienda Santiago
31 gananes
debts: 485p2 average: 18p4
13 tu
"
0)
-15 -
-20-25
Figure 3. Debt profiles of the labourers of the Haciendas Quimichucan (1762) and Santiago
(1778) in the province of Tlaxcala - in pesos.
This servant could ask the hacendado for these 19 reales at the Easter accounting or to
begin the new agricultural year with a credit. The accounts well illustrate which expenses
the servants allowed themselves. The family expenses of Marcos Antonio consisted
mainly of the costs of church services, a baptism celebration and clothing.
Two hacienda debt profiles have been drawn up in figures 3 and 4 in order to set such
individual cases within a context. Each column stands for the extent of a credit or debt
in pesos per ganan of the hacienda concerned (1 peso = 8 reales). I agree with Herbert
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Arij Ouweneel
Hacienda Temalacayuca
37 gafianes
credits: 2094p7 aver: 4p2
debts: 8p1 aver.: 4p
reales
30-
20-
Hacienda Ocotzocuautla
o-10-20-
-30-40-50-60-
18 gafianes
-70-80-90-

debts: 3p
-100-
Figure 4. Debtprofilesof the labourers of the Haciendas Temalacayuca (1770) and Ocotzocuautla
(1752) in the province of Tlaxcala - in pesos.
Nickel's assumption that the debts of the labourers were low on the whole and that they
could be paid off within a few months. The examples that I have presented were chosen
at random and many more similar cases could be added. They are taken from four
haciendas in the province of Tlaxcala. Two are examples of haciendas where most of
the labourers were in debt, while the other two are examples of haciendas where most
of the labourers had money owing to them.37
More than 75 per cent of the labourers on the Haciendas San Miguel Quimichucan
(1762) and Santiago (1778) were in debt to the hacienda, but in most cases the debt was
IP address: 145.18.82.72
39
not high, see figure 3. The average debt was 13p4 on the former and 18p4 on the latter,
the rough equivalent of four months' work. On Quimichucan there were 16 peones in
debt and 6 with back pay due to them. The highest debt was that of the capitan: 40p7j
(327j reales). His status obliged him to organise various celebrations for the hermandad
of the workers. He was followed by a labourer called Sebastian, who lived nearby in
Topoyanco. He had received 338j reales in wages (225 days' work), but he had borrowed
.to the value of 633 reales. The largest debt owing to a peon was the 89j reales due to
Diego, who had not yet reached the age of adulthood. Diego had worked for 1 real a
day for 186 days, but he had only received 96\ reales. Out of the total of 21 adults and
10 boys on the Hacienda Santiago, there were 26 gananes who were in debt and 5 who
had money owing to them. The largest debt - 481 reales - had been run up by Juan
Jose. His monthly wage was 32 reales, and he received 81 reales for 2j months' work.
His large debt was due to a series of loans amounting to 562 reales. I do not have a
breakdown of these loans. The gafian who had the most money owing to him was Nicolas,
who had only received 2185 reales, while he had the right to 298 reales. It is striking
that a few dead gananes also had debts. They are not included in the debt profile because
they were written off by the haciendas (deuda perdida).
The situation on the Haciendas San Jose Temalacayuca (1770) and San Pablo
Ocotzocuautla (1752) was the opposite. In these cases the amounts owing to the servants
were considerably higher than their debts, see Figure 4. Bartholo, a gafian on
Temalacayuca, was owed a sum of 1440 reales in wages, the equivalent of a good 4 years'
work ! The gafian Juan had 964j reales owing to him, the equivalent of 34 months' work.
The average sum owed to a ganan on this hacienda was 479 reales (the rough equivalent
of 17 months' work). There were only two labourers who were in debt (average debt:
32j reales). The average sum owing to the 17 gananes on Ocotzocuautla was 129 reales,
almost 5 months' work. The largest amount was owed to Lucas: 787 reales, or two
years' work. One gafian, Juan Dionicio, who had not yet reached the age of adulthood,
had a debt of 24i reales.
Explaining the Backlog

It is not difficult to account for the backlog in the payment of wages. It is known that
all entrepreneurs at this time, including hacendados, had a serious shortage of coin.
They therefore encouraged the labourers to buy on credit so that they could settle
accounts with them later on. According to the information in the documents, this included
shops owned by people who were not bound by any relationship of intimacy, such as
ritual kinship, with the hacendados concerned. It is furthermore striking that the prices
were simply based on current market prices; it was only the - few - hacienda shops
which worked with traditionally fixed prices on average level. Before going into detail,
it is necessary to get rid of a deeply rooted misunderstanding: the hacendados did not
use the hacienda shop {tienda de raya) to drive the workers deeper into debt. I have
come across very few shops in the accounts, whether owned by the hacienda or rented,
which used methods of this kind. Nor have I come across much compulsory shopping
elsewhere, a system in which farmhands were obliged to spend a part of their wages in
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Arij Ouweneel,
reales
1200less paid
than
agreed
1000N jwage
in
I reales
wage not yet
paid in cash
500
wage paid
in cash
100
A
F M
Number of weeks from August 1811 to August 1812
Figure 5. Wages and credits of the 348 labourers of the Hacienda Buenavista, province of
Mexicalcingo, August 1811 -August 1812 [Wages according to contract (line) and paid (columns)]
- in reales.
shops owned by the hacienda. The situation was that some hacendados had a shop on
the premises where the labourers were free to buy as they wanted on credit, while others
had a shop of this kind in a neighbouring village or town, or had a contract with a
shopkeeper to sell to the peones from their hacienda. The prices often remained stable
in these shops for months at a time so as not to lose custom. In view of the considerable
fluctuations in market prices, the goods for sale were sometimes more expensive and
sometimes cheaper by comparison with the market prices. Crown investigations
discovered that the hacendados sold their wares in the shops at cost price. Complaints
were often heard about the shops if the quality of the goods was not satisfactory.
Nonetheless, hacendados did not have contacts with shopkeepers all over Anhuac; in
fact, perhaps the majority did not.38
The high wage backlogs indicate that the gananes did not always manage to collect
their wages. Some haciendas owed huge sums to their labourers; for example, in 1740
the Hacienda Ojo de Agua (San Juan de los Llanos) owed the peones a sum amounting
to almost 8,000 pesos (64,000 reales, equivalent to 19 years' work by 10 adult labourers).
The remarkable explanation by historical-geographer Ursula Ewald is that this should
be seen as a form of saving: the gananes could live off their raciones and the produce of
their pegujales, and were prepared to save their wages. However, Herbert Nickel claims
that these backlogs had virtually disappeared on the highland haciendas after 1850. This
might indicate an improved liquidity on the haciendas, but the debts of the peones were
IP address: 145.18.82.72
IP address: 145.18.82.72
wage :
paid
:
advance:
credit :
wage
paid
advance
credit
wage
paid
advance
credit
wage
paid
advance
credit
wage
paid
advance
credit
17
643
168
475
0
18
728
456
304
32
11
865
424
442
1
18
618
92
526
0
26
796
657
261
122
10
606
207
397
-1
11
899
166
733
0
19
312
187
128
3
25
904
559
382
37
24
534
270
313
49
25
668
208
460
Sept
2
1185
797
396
8
1
1087
552
539
4
Jun
Mar
2
659
325
356
22
Dec
1
673
181
498
6
9
826
594
241
9
8
962
535
442
15
9
783
380
418
15
445
0
121
566
16
614
442
179
7
15
535
407
229
101
16
722
392
338
8
15
607
120
495
8
370
247
-79
23
696
22
773
492
310
29
23
775
304
282
189
23
319
139
181
1
708
436
278
6
30
29
896
603
305
12
Jul
31
396
227
572
403
Apr
30
763
368
397
2
Jan
Oct
7
748
435
313
0
6
935
502
445
14
852
381
471
0
7
1096
264
835
3
14
750
388
364
2
1812
total amount of reales that had to be paid according to contracts,

amount of reales actually paid to the labourers,
amount of reales not paid in cash but put on account.
difference between contract and paid and advanced, can also be seen as 'debt'.
Source: AGNM, Tierras 2545, Exp. 1.
3
854
278
579
3
May
4
739
387
361
9
Feb
Nov
4
903
226
663
-14
1811
Aug
12
774
598
200
24
13
924
542
417
35
13
872
394
478
0
13
1036
242
794
0
21
734
337
397
0
20
658
399
271
-15
20
732
306
428
2
27
111
419
364
6
27
685
335
352
2
27
20
972 1156
251 305
321 851
0
-400
28
711
146
333
-232
Aug
3
857
496
331
-30
Table 2
Wages, advances and credits of the 346 labourers of the Hacienda Buenavista, province of Mexicalcingo, August 1811 August
1812 in reales.
42
Arij Ouweneel
generally much higher then. It is possible that a transition took place from the generation
of wage backlogs to the creation of debts, but several historians report that there was
no question of debt slavery at that time either.39
Ewald's suggestion, which, of course, contradicts the traditional idea of economic
entrapment, seems to be confirmed by the material from the Hacienda San Nicolas
Buenavista (Mexicalcingo) for the agricultural year 1811-12.40 The servants on this
hacienda were paid at regular intervals during the year (see figure 5 and table 2). A total
of 348 different peones worked on Buenavista during that year. A small group, comprising
some 25 individuals, worked for the largest part of the year. The others were recruited
temporarily for periods of no more than one or two weeks. The accounts record how
much was paid to each labourer each week, what he should have received, and what was
put on his 'savings account'. The continuous line in figure 5 indicates what the labourers
should have received according to their wage reviews, the columns indicate what they
actually received (the dotted part of the columns), and the weekly accumulation of their
wage backlog (the upper section of the columns).
With the exception of a few periods, the behaviour of the length of the columns
matches that of the labour costs in terms of wage levels. The exceptional periods are
those preceding major events such as the Festival of the Dead (1 and 2 November),
Christmas, New Year's Eve, Easter (in March) and Corpus Christi (in June). These
were the periods when the peones on Buenavista received a large part of what was owing
to them. I do not know whether these payments were made in cash or in kind; the latter
might point towards compulsory shopping, but this is not necessarily the case and would
certainly be strange in regard to other evidence. However, although it is not very clear,
the method of annotation used in the accounts suggests that only a limited payment was
actually made in reales. The peones received remarkably little cash in the period
immediately after the festivals. It seems that weekly negotiations took place between the
hacendado and his personnel as to how much of their wages should be noted in the libros
de ray as, for some peones obviously agreed to put a larger proportion of their wages on
their 'savings account' than others. This might be seen as a way of saving for the next
festival. The most striking feature is the drop in reales paid to the peones between
October and the beginning of May. It looks as though the peones had to make do, or
wanted to, with their rations and the produce of their own pegujales during the dry
winter. In the summer, on the other hand, the liquidity of the hacienda was markedly
improved after the sale of the wheat harvest, and the sums owing to them could be paid
in cash. The rise in the wage backlog is due to the lack of coin. No doubt, an improvement
in the liquidity of the hacienda around 1800 may have encouraged the hacendado to
replace the gananes by tlaquehuales.
The labourers on the Hacienda Buenavista were usually paid in advance every Saturday,
the common practice at this time. Otherwise, they did not turn up to work on the land.
It may not have been characteristic of the situation on Buenavista alone that wages did
not have to be paid back if the week's work could not be completed for some unexpected
reason. For example, no work could be carried out on Buenavista during the two weeks
from 15 to 28 June 1812 because of heavy rains. Most of the peones agreed to have the
wages for these weeks put on their 'savings accounts', but a few of them returned their
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advance wages to the hacienda manager. This caused a lot of deletions in the accounts.
The manager tried to present a clear picture by noting whether the surplus wage was
put on the 'savings account' or returned. The same procedure applied when the peones
were ill, although in cases of illness they were more reluctant to return parts of the
advanced wages. Gregorio Francisco, for example, a labourer from San Lorenzo Tezonco
(a village near the hacienda), was taken ill on 21 January 1812 and was unable to resume
work until 3 February. The wages promised for the three days on which he had intended
to work were put on his 'savings account'. The milpero Cirilo Jose went home ill on
Friday 26 October 1811 after working on his little tower of three ladders placed in the
milpas. He spent a week at home without wanting to receive any payment. All the same,
he retained his right to the weekly radon of maize, which was some consolation for a
sick peon.
The money spent during the festivals on Buenavista was not consumed on food and
drink. Various church services were held during each festival: Christmas, Easter and
Corpus Christi. These were attended by the peones, who paid the priest in cash. No
work was done on the hacienda during these festivals. No work took place either during
the week from 19 to 25 August. Was this a festival too? Two masses were held on the
hacienda, for which the hacendado himself had bought a bottle of wine for the exorbitant
price of 9 reales. However, the holding of two church services in one week was the rule
rather than an exception on this hacienda, and the same applied to many other haciendas
at this time. Holy Mass was said on Buenavista on Saturday and on one of the days in
the week (usually Tuesday or Wednesday). I suspect that the week from 19 to 25 August
was made a holiday because heavy rains put a stop to work. Notes in the hacienda records
indicate that there were particularly heavy rains at the time: peones were repeatedly set
to work (some 23 a week) to dredge the drainage ditches. The situation recurred in May
1812.
The peones went to church a number of times each week during the festival weeks;
they went five times during Christmas in 1811. The hacendado bought candles and wine
for the services on a regular basis and the priest received 2 pesos a week for each mass.
This sum was the tax payment which the peones were obliged to pay as tributarios, and
like the tribute, it was advanced by the hacienda and deducted from their accounts.
Some ninety church services were held during the 52 weeks of the agricultural year
1811-12 on Buenavista, costing a total of 176 pesos (1408 reales). This amount was
probably raised by some thirty families who lived on the hacienda and in the neighbouring
villages. Each of them paid the priest approximately one real a week, the equivalent to
the wage for one morning's or afternoon's work. The only drink which the hacendado
bought for his labourers was the bottle of wine and the pulque. He bought aguardiente
a few times a year, but this was used to cure sick mules.
Payment in kind to the peones was not only a way of paying the wage backlog. A large
number of servants requested maize, drink and poultry for their own celebrations and
religious ceremonies on the hacienda. These loans occupied a separate part of the
administration of the wage backlog, if there was one. In this way it was possible for
labourers to run up a debt to the hacienda while having money owed to them by the
hacienda. The peones repaid these loans in instalments, which they preferred to have
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Arij Ouweneel
spread out over a number of months (by deductions from their wages), or in cash within
a few weeks. I came across a case of repayment in cash in the accounts of the Hacienda
Santa Ana Aragon (Mexico). The peones Gaspar Antonio and Juan Santiago borrowed
20 pesos on 2 August 1766 for 'the expenses of the wedding of their children to one
another'. The loan was repaid to the hacienda in instalments: 5 pesos on 11 October, 5
pesos on 18 October, 5 pesos on 25 October and 5 pesos on 8 November. A few other
peones followed this example on 3 January 1768 when they borrowed 16 pesos for Advent
on 6 January 1768, although most of the labourers on the hacienda 'borrowed on credit'
from the hacienda. The sum was paid back in instalments. It is noteworthy that in this
case the manager of the hacienda charged a 6 per cent interest on the loan: 5 pesos on
9 January, 7 pesos on 16 January and 5 pesos on 23 January. During the same year a
number of peones made cash repayments by instalments of the tribute advanced by the
hacienda. This policy may be influenced by the fact that the peones as residents of the
pueblo Tlatelolco were also the owners of the hacienda.41
Understanding Peonage
Agriculture on the haciendas was carried out in accordance with an efficient and strictly
maintained schedule. The labour on the haciendas continued year round and was
restricted to a fixed number of mandays. Seen from the point of the view of the peons,
they knew that their employer needed them six days a week, mainly for the cultivation
of wheat and maize. There was a slight decline in the number of servants on the fields
in January and a great increase of employees in the summer. In the remaining months
the labour force moved within certain limits. In short, the hacendados relied mainly on
a relatively small permanent labour force resident on the hacienda. Day-labourers could
only find work on the wheat haciendas in two summer months. If the yield had been
larger, it may be surmised, there would have been more scope for migrant labourers.
There was some work for them in the spring and autumn, and even during the rainy
season, as channel diggers or dredgers, it is true. The work of the resident hands was
concentrated on ploughing, carried out by one peon and his son or nephew per yoke of
oxen. Harvest failures were very detrimental to the employment possibilities for migrant
labourers. All the same, it often happened that hacendados hired yokes of oxen with
ploughmen from the neighbouring pueblos during the ploughing period. This was in
fact the only employment prospect for the residents of the pueblos. In short, the resident
peons considered themselves inhabitants of the hacienda and had for about nine months
nothing to do with the Indians of the neighbouring townships. All that time, the work
was done by them, the hacienda was their habitat. This explains why several labourers
agreed to 'save' their earnings on their accounts instead of receiving them in hand. The
hacienda was in constant need of cash and using the accounts this way was an important
solution.
The relationship between the hacendado and his peones can be interpreted by using
the concept of Herrschaft or 'reciprocal dominance'. To understand Herrschaft we have
to rehearse the notion of 'customary economy', discussed in my study Shadows over
An'ahuac. There I defended the use of the concept of'ecological ethic' as the fundamental
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underpinning of the 'customary economy'. It at the same time seeks to relate to E.P.
Thompson's ideas as (re)developed in his recently published collection of essays Customs
in Common, in which Thompson explores the ebullient and contradictory plebeian culture
which preceded the formation of working class institutions and conciousness and its
customs and practices. In the pre-industrial world, access to the means of production
was potentially a cause of bitter disputes between the elite and the peasants. After twenty
years, the important concept of 'the moral economy of provision', also known as 'the
moral economy of the poor', as instigator of peasant revolts ('collective bargaining by
riot') and government policy at the same time, still can come to assistance. The term
'provision' here refers to the character of the economic transaction, while the term 'poor'
refers to the ethic of the poor. In fact, the two terms can be seen as both sides of the
same coin. It was developed to make a distinction with the 'political economy' of
capitalism.42
This is all rather pedestrian nowadays. It is true that the ecological ethic becomes
manifest to the researcher - and the local powerholders in the past - in times of
deprivation, dearth and changing ecological circumstances centring on the relationship
between population and resources, but it also enticed people in periods of calm and
peace. The ethic tells people how the economy ought to function ('normative economies').
It was determined by the religious, biblical ethic, which rested upon powerful social
assumptions undergirded by God's injunction to Adam to work by the sweat of his brow
and not to 'swallow up the needy'. 43 In general, the ecological ethic of the peasants in
Europe, their view of the normative economy and the way in which they had to maintain
themselves, can be seen as to be sustained by what Rude calls the 'mother's milk
ideology', 'based on direct experience, oral tradition or folk memory, and not learned
by listening to sermons or speeches or reading books.' Thompson's well-known
description is more precise. He remarks that although views of this kind emerged during
periods of unrest and rebellion, they formed a substantial component of popular ideology,
a consensus as to what were legitimate or illegitimate practices in social and economic
performances. An outrage to these moral assumptions was the usual occasion for direct
action. This is therefore a socio-cultural pattern of values which has grown historically,
based on the necessity of survival in ecologically difficult circumstances, which directly
affects the operation of the economy. It is a pattern of values which adapts to the needs
of the times and may be labelled as characteristic of an agrarian economy which has not
yet been penetrated by industrialisation or some proto-agrobusiness. 44
One should never forget that this was a world full of uncertainties and anxiety. By
anxiety psychologists mean the unpleasant emotion characterised by terms like 'worry',
'apprehension', 'dread', and, of course, 'fear' that humans - and, indeed, animals experience at times in varying degrees. Any situation that threatens the well-being of
the organism is assumed to produce a state of anxiety and to find its way out into a
'discourse of anxiety'. In my behaviourist or learning approach I focus not on internal
conflicts but on ways in which anxiety became associated with certain situations via
learning. The stimulus outlined here is starvation. Recurring bad harvests did not just
mean a shortage of food. In general, once established, a fear or 'anxiety discourse' is
difficult to eradicate, because it produces avoidance behavior. Consequently, the person
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Arij Ouweneel
hardly has an opportunity to learn that the conditioned stimulus might really have lost
its danger and he tends to make continuous withdrawal responses to situations that might
not be harmful any more. Because starvation is a 'state anxiety', a transitory response
to a specific situation, people are bound to develop a collective ideology to canalise or
avoid such withdrawal responses. Of course, being with others who are also fearful about
a forthcoming danger like starvation helps to alleviate fears. Therefore, the central
collective tenet of the ecological ethic is the 'right to live'. With the trauma of starvation
in the background, the main problem was how to materialise this tenet and to impose
on society a system of obtaining the basic necessities of life. The problem tended to be
solved rationally, that is, by taking into account the evidence, the alternatives, and the
consequences of each of the alternatives. That is why the peasants, for instance, treated
collective security discourse as the main 'defense mechanism' and tried to materialise
this discourse in attempting to achieve a maximal income from the household to avoid
risking the food supply. But logical decision-making was hampered by the person's own
emotions and the uncertainty of the future. There were always anxiety producing
unknowns and risks that had to be taken.43
The relations of exchange, reciprocal or not, into which peasants entered on an informal,
individual or collective basis, were fed by the ecological ethic: the society in which one
lived was expected to support the struggle for survival. Direct support was expected
from the more well-to-do villagers, the landlord and the government representatives in
times of need. The power of the members of the elite in a specific region was based on
their control of important means of production which the residents of the region needed.
According to sociologist Michael Mann, their powers ' derive from their ability to mobilize
the resources of that collectivity.'46 The social balance could depend on the extent to
which this group was prepared to meet the peasants' demands. In times of shortage, it
was considered the duty of the lord - in our case: the hacendado - to implement a
favourable food policy for the poor, starting with the control of market prices and
culminating in free handouts of foodstuffs. Transfer of income was a form of insurance
against crises, and the peasants regarded it as an inevitable necessity. The relation of
exchange legitimated the rule and social prestige of the elite, but this legitimacy
immediately collapsed if the guarantee of subsistence was no longer forthcoming. The
relation of exchange was thus marked by a reciprocity of obligations.
The ecological ethic determined the attitude of the peasants, the ' crofting 'mud farmers
and the agricultural workers to what was regarded as exploitation and what was not.
The peasants concluded informal patronage agreements with the local elite in order to
remain within the limits of what they viewed as acceptable. It could even happen that
their standard of living dropped while the exchange relation with the lord improved.
This was the case after a bad harvest, for example, when the lord (or the state) doled
out food to the hungry peasants. In view of the extremely precarious nature of the
agrarian economy, with the enormous fluctuations in prices due to the unstable quality
and quantity of the harvests, the legitimacy of the social prestige and rule of the elite,
the lord and the state was permanently open to discussion. It was accepted at the outset
that the exercise of power and the accumulation of wealth were to some extent arbitrary
and had only been surrendered by the peasants under the pressure of necessity. The
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peasants constantly checked the rich and those in power in the abuse of their position.
Precisely because so little was laid down by l a w - the normative economy was usually
based on informal agreements - there was an incessant conflict over the nature of this
exchange relation. The government, the elite and the lords defended the legitimacy of
the relations of patronage and their rule at every available opportunity with the assistance
of patronage activities and the use of religion as an ideological basis. Changes in the
agreements that had been made led to resistance, but changes were inevitable, since the
needs and desires of the lords, the elite, the state and the peasants themselves changed
in the course of time. Historian David Sabean concluded: 'In the dialectic between
arbitrariness and legitimizing lies one of the central mechanisms for the continual forming
of historical consciousness. (...) Within the lord/subject relationship, new 'needs' are
continually being generated and old 'needs' denied.' 47 Needs as defined by the lords
were uninterruptedly at conflict with needs felt by subjects, so that most of the costs of
legitimacy were to be found in the continual round of redefinition of needs or their
suppression. Therefore, one should argue that 'lords' and 'subjects' formulated
discourses about legitimacy, rights and duties, and power relations.
This brings me to the concept of reciprocal dominance and the lordship of the
hacendado in Mexico. The focus upon a changing legitimacy in time points to personalised
and concrete relationships of authority and power. This should not be confused with
the more abstract and impersonal structures of domination in a modern state. Sabean
recalled the German term Herrschaft here, referring to specific relationships of power,
rooted in customary law - or sometimes written down - and entailing reciprocal
obligations. Such domination was understood concretely, that is, for instance, Herrschaft
over land, over serfs, over manorial economy, or courts. In short, as Robisheaux affirms,
although with each of these authorities came the right to extract certain surpluses, like
rents, dues, labor services, or the right to command obedience and loyalty from those
under a jurisdiction, 'lords had always to provide protection {Schutz und Schirm) in
exchange for these rights, or their authority could be called into question.>48 The legitimacy
of Herrschaft is embodied in specific historical symbolic public forms and discourses; thus
in acts as well as speech. Where legitimacy broke down, the subjects developed a discourse
of resistance based on these same particular historical forms and discourses, but this time
expressed in rumours, in unflattering folktales and stories about the lords, in 'up-sidedown' festivities like carnival, and, eventually, in open, violent rebellion.
The translation of the German term Herrschaft as reciprocal dominance and lordship
brings another, very important and elementary, feature to the surface. The offering of
protection in the form of clientage, justice, general tranquility, order, or military
protection was just as central to the institution. The sum total of all forms of Herrschaft
was seen together as offering protection and guaranteeing the reproduction and survival
of the rural household units, making it unnecessary to question any one form. But,
precisely because of the changing relationships through time, most forms of Herrschaft
appeared very unbalanced. Subjects sometimes put one or other forms of Herrschaft
into question because it did not offer any correlative service any longer. The specific
factor of time resulted in a vision upon Herrschaft as always in part arbitrary, not always
correctly balanced by an adequate return, too costly, and sometimes maintained by a
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Arij Ouweneel
degree of violence and coercion. This necessitated a continuing process of legitimisation.

Indeed, when one examines the daily practice of reciprocal dominance in colonial
Mexico, it becomes clear that legitimisation was integral to it. Villagers and estate
labourers demanded a just treatment from colonial, religious or local magistrates. It was
accepted at the outset that the exercise of power and the accumulation of wealth by
magistrates and elite members was to some extent arbitrary and that its arbitrariness
had either to be justified or masked: Herrschaft as the evocation of obedience, the
satisfaction of mutual interests, and the fulfilment of needs. The arbitrariness and
legitimising of wealth and power should be considered one of the central mechanisms
for the continual forming and reforming of historical consciousness. It is good to repeat
that new 'needs' were continually generated and old 'needs' denied. Needs as defined
by the officials and lords were uninterruptedly at conflict with needs felt and defined by
subjects, so that the costs of Herrschaft were not just to be found in the payment schedule
of, for example, tributes and rents, but also in the continual round of redefinition of
needs or their suppression. 49
Where the maintenance of subsistence activities prevailed, the bargaining position on
the part of peons must still have been strong, especially when these peons lived in an
agrarian society which was relatively sparsely populated. 30 In a situation of population
growth or high population density, the bargaining position of the lords, elite and state
with respect to the peons is better than that of the peons with respect to the lords, etc.
The peons will have to modify their demands. In a situation of low population density
or a decrease in population, in which alternative sources of income are available to the
peons, the situation is the reverse. This is an important point for the interpretation of
labour conditions in the countryside and for dealing with the question of peonage. The
relations of exchange within the normative economy changed considerably when there
were changes in the variable 'population'. The situation changed in modern times, after
a large period of population growth had altered the relationship between landlord and
peons. The modern period saw not just the ideological triumph of political economy.
According to historian Alan Macfarlane, we deal with the triumph of a new culture: the
ethic of endless accumulation as an end, not as a means. This was gaining momentum
over the subsistence ethic. In Mexico, this change was introduced in the late eighteenth
century and the nineteenth century. It forced the peons to describe the features of their
ecological ethic more precisely. Their horizontal links with each other had to be reinforced
in order to resist the increasing pressure of the elite and the state. The vertical links
were strengthened too, for it could sometimes happen that both the landlord and the
peons saw their wishes satisfied within a system of patronage. The precise way in which
this was regulated varied from state to state, from region to region.3'
It means that in Anahuac during most of the eighteenth century population density
was not pressing upon the traditional system. The hacendado depended upon his peons
and their bargaining position was still very strong. This explains the mechanisms of
peonage described in this article. It was not 'oppression' as defined by journalists, social
scientists and historians some decades ago. However, the situation in Anahuac began to
change during the nineteenth century. Population growth inspired the hacendados to
abolish the system of peonage and replace it by plain wage labour. According to
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researchers like Ricardo Rendon Garcini, the hacendados did not even succeed then,
obviously because the 'ecological ethic 1 of their peons was not altered yet and no sufficient
alternative labour was at hand.32 To sum, Mexico needed a political revolution (1910)
and the subsequent abolition of the hacienda-system to replace traditional forms of farm
service by a free labour market based on short-term contracts and cash payments.
AGI
AGNM
AGET
BNMa
FMMN
Notes
Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain
Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City
Archive General del Estado de Tlaxcala, Mexico
Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain
Microfilm archive, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico City
1. A. Gibson, 'Proletarianization? The transition to full-time labour on a Scottish Estate,

1723-1787", Continuity and Change 5 : 3 (1990), 357-389; referring to A. Orr, ' Farm servants
and farm labour in the Forth Valley and the South-east Lowlands', T.IVI. Devine (ed.), Farm
Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1770-1914 (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 29-54.
2. Gibson, 'Proletarianization?' pp. 374-5, quote from p. 387, and passim.
3. M. Bloch, Feudal Society: Volume One: the Growth of the Ties of Dependence (2 Vols.;
London, 1961; transl. from the French), I, 279, also 241-54.
4. See the discussion in C.E. Searle, 'Custom, class conflict and agrarian capitalism: the
Cumbrian customary economy in the eighteenth century', Past and Present 110 (1986),
106-33, esp. 108-9.
5. 11. Carr, Old Mother Mexico (Boston and New York, 1931), pp. 63-71.
6. R. Enock, Mexico. Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation, History and Political Conditions,
Topography and Natural Resources, Industries and General Development (London, 1909), see
for example pp. 213-14.
7. See, for example, the essays in S. Miller, Landlords and Haciendas in Modernising Mexico:
Essays in Radical Reappraisal (Amsterdam, 1995). Any study of Mexican colonial haciendas
should include: I. Altman and J. Lockhart (eds.), Provinces of Early Mexico: Variants of
Spanish American Regional Evolution (Los Angeles, 1976); M.J. Amerlinck de Bontempo,
'From Hacienda to Ejido: The San Diego de Rioverde Case' (Ph.D. diss., State University
of New York, Stony Brook, 1980); B. Badura, 'Biografia de la hacienda de San Nicolas de
Ulapa', lbero Americana Pragensia 4 (1970), 75-111; E. Barrett, Land Tenure and Settlement
in the Tepalcatepec Lowland, Mexico (Ann Arbor, 1970); J. Bazant, Cinco haciendas mexicanas:
Tres sighs de vida rural en San Luis Potos't (Mexico City, 1975); U.B. Beltran, 'La hacienda
de San Pedro Jorullo, Michoacan, 1585-1795', Historia Mexicana 26 (1977/104), 540-575;
R.W. Blood, 'A Historical Geography of the Economic Activities of the Jesuit Colegio
Maximo de San Pedro y San Pablo in Colonial Mexico, 1572-1767' (Ph.D. diss., University
of Minnesota, 1972); D.A. Brading, Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajo: Leon
1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1978); F. Chevalier (ed.), Instrucciones a los hermanos jesuitas
administradores de haciendas (manuscrito mexicano del sigh XVIII) (Mexico City, 1950); E.B.
Couturier,' Hacienda of Hueyapan: The History of a Mexican Social and Economic Istitution,
1550-1940' (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1965); K. Duncan and I. Rutledge (eds.),
Land and Labour in Latin America: Essays on the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge, 1977); U. Ewald, 'Versuche zur Anderung
der Besitzverhaltnisse in den letzten Jahreszehnten der Kolonialzeit. Bestrebungen im
Hochbecken von Puebla-Tlaxcala und seiner Umgebung zur Riickfiihrung von Hacienda-land
an Gutsarbeiter und indianische Dorfgemeinschaften', Jahrbuch fur Geschichte ...
Lateinamerikas 7 (1970), 239-251, 'Das Poblaner Jesuitenkollegium San Francisco Xavier
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und sein Landwirtschaftlicher Grossbesitz', Jahrbuch fur Geschichte ... Lateinamerikas 8
(1971), 39-73, and, Estudios sobre la hacienda colonial en Mexico: Las propiedades rurales del
Colegio Espritu Santo en Puebla (Wiesbaden, 1976); Ch. Harris III, A Mexican Family
Empire: The Latifundio of the Sanchez-Navarros, 17651867 (Austin, 1975); R. Hoekstra,
'Profit from the waste lands: Social change and the formation of haciendas in the Valley of
Puebla (1570-1640)', European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 52 (Amsterdam, 1992), 91-123; F. Katz (ed.), Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in
Mexico (Princeton, 1988); R.G. Keith, 'Encomienda, hacienda and corregimiento in Spanish
America: a structural analysis', The Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (1971), 431+6,
and, R.G. Keith (ed.), Haciendas and Plantations in Latin American History (New York,
1977); H.W. Konrad, 'Life in a Jesuit hacienda in colonial Mexico: Santa Lucia, 1576-1767',
in ACTAS International Conference of Americanists 42:2 (1976), 460-76, and, A Jesuit
Hacienda in Colonial Mexico: Santa Luc'ta, 1576-1767 (Stanford, 1980); R. Liehr, 'En-
tstehung, Entwicklung und sozialokonomische Struktur der hispanoamerikanischen Hacienda', in H.-J. Puhle, Lateinamerika: Historische Realitat und Dependencia-Theorien (Hamburg, 1977), pp. 105-146; J. Lockhart, 'Encomienda and hacienda: the evolution of the great
estate in the Spanish Indies', The Hispanic American Historical Review 49 (1969), 41129,
'Capital and province, Spaniard and Indian: the example of late sixteenth-century Toluca',
in Altman and Lockhart (eds.), Provinces, pp. 99-124; D. Lopez Sarrelangue, 'La hacienda
de San Jose de Coapa', in Florescano (ed.), Haciendas, pp. 22341, 'Santa Ana Aragon: Una
hacienda comunal indigena de la Nueva Espana', Historia Mexicana 32:1 (1982), 1-38;
C.E. Martin, Rural Society in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque, 1985); C.J. Maya Ambia, 'Tres
ensayos sobre la hacienda mexicana del siglo X I X ' (Tesis L i e , Universidad Autonoma de
Mexico, 1974), and, 'Estructura y funcionamientode una hacienda jesuita: San Jose Acolman
(1740-1840)', Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv nf 8 (1982), 329-59; R. Melville, Crecimiento y
rebelibn: El desarrollo econ'omico de las haciendas azucareras en Morelos (1880-1910) (Mexico
City, 1979); C. Morin, Michoac'an en la Nueva Espana del siglo XVII1. Crecimiento y
desigualdad en una economa colonial (Mexico City, 1979), and, 'Techniques et productivite
sur les haciendas mexicaines au XVIIIe siecle', Nord-Sud 4 (1979/7), 1-20; M. Morner,
'The Spanish American hacienda: a survey of recent research and debate', The Hispanic
American Historical Review 53 (1973), 183-216; H.J. Nickel, Soziale Morphologie der
Mexikanischen Hacienda (Wiesbaden, 1978), 'Reclutamiento y peonaje de los gananes
indigenas de la epoca colonial en el altiplano de Puebla-Tlaxcala', Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv
nf 5 (1979), 71-104, 'Las deudas pasivas de los gananes en las haciendas de Puebla-Tlaxcala
(epoca colonial)', Jahrbuch fur Geschichte ... Lateinamerikas 16 (1979), 245-65, Peonaje e
inmovilidad de los trabajadores agricolas en Mexico (Bayreuth, 1980), 'Elemente der 'Moral
Economy' inde Arbeitsverhaltnissen Mexikanischer Haciendas', Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv
nf 14:3 (1988), 357-400; M.E. Romero and E. Villamar, 'San Jose Acolman y anexas
(1788-1798)', in E. Semo (ed.), Siete ensayos sobre la hacienda mexicana, 1780-1880 (Mexico
City, 1977), pp. 151-87; W. Schell Jr., Medieval Iberian Tradition and the Development of
the Mexican Hacienda (Syracuse, 1986); E. Semo and G. Pedrero, 'La vida en una
hacienda-aserradero mexicana a principios del siglo XIX', in Florescano (ed.), Haciendas,
pp. 273-306; S.L. Swan, 'Climate, Crops and Livestock: Some Aspects of Colonial Mexican
Agriculture' (Ph.D. diss., Washington State University, 1977); W.B. Taylor, Landlord and
Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, 1972); W. Trautmann, Las transformaciones en el
paisaje cultural de Tlaxcala durante la epoca colonial: Una contribucion a la historia de Mexico
bajo especial consideracion de aspectos geografico-economicos y sociales (Wiesbaden, 1981); J.M.
Tutino, 'Hacienda social relations in Mexico: the Chalco region in the era of Independence',
The Hispanic American Historical Review 55 (1975), 496-528; E. Van Young, Hacienda and
Market in Eighteenth-century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region,
1675-1820 (Berkeley, 1981); G. Wobeser, San Carlos Borromeo: Endeudamiento de una
hacienda colonial (1608-1729) (Mexico City, 1980).
IP address: 145.18.82.72
Eighteenth-century
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
Mexican
Peonage
51
See A. Knight, 'Mexican peonage: what was it and why was it?', Journal of Latin American
Studies 18 (1986), 41-74, esp. pp. 43, 45.
C. Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico,
1519-1810 (Stanford, 1964), pp. 249-256.
J.M. Tutino, 'Life and labor on North Mexican haciendas: the Queretaro-San Luis Potosi
region, 1775-1810', in E.C. Frost, M.C. Meyer, and J. Zoraida Vazquez (eds.), El trabajo
v los trabajadores en la historia de Mexico (Mexico City and Tucson, 1979), pp. 339-77,
esp. p. 363.
E. Van Young, 'Mexican rural history since Chevalier: the historiography of the colonial
hacienda', Latin American Research Review 18:3 (1983), 5-62, esp. p. 6. My own conclusions
on the Central-Mexican hacienda can be found in my articles 'Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan
agriculture: diary 9 of the Hacienda San Antonio Palula, 1765-1766', in R.T.J. Buve (ed.),
Haciendas in Central Mexico from Late Colonial Times to the Revolution (Amsterdam, 1984),
pp. 1-83, 'Schedules in hacienda agriculture: the cases of Santa Ana Aragon (1765-1766)
and San Nicolas de los Pilares (1793-1795), Valley of Mexico', Boletin de Estudios
Latinoamericanosy del Caribe 40 (Amsterdam, 1986), 63-97, and, 'Don Claudio Pesero y la
administracion de la hacienda de Xaltipan (17341737)', in A. Ouweneel and C. Torales
Pacheco (comps.), Empresarios, indios y estado: Perfil de la economia mexicana (Siglo XVII1)
(Amsterdam, 1988; repr. Mexico City, 1992), pp. 165-185. See also J. Cuello, 'El mito de
la hacienda colonial en el norte de Mexico', in Ouweneel and Torales (comps.), Empresarios,
pp. 186-205.
For references, see A. Ouweneel and C.C.J.H. Bijleveld, 'The economic cycle in Bourbon
Central Mexico: a critique of the recaudaci'on del diezmo liquido en pesos', The Hispanic
American Historical Review 69: 3 (1989), 479-530, esp. p. 488.
The term 'Central Mexico' is not without difficulties for it is generally used to refer to a
region stretching from coast to coast - from Veracruz to Acapulco and from Tampico to
Mazatlan - and might therefore cause misunderstanding. To avoid this confusion it seems
appropriate to use its more popular name 'Anahuac'.
F. Navarro y Noriega, Memoria sobre la poblacibn del reino de Nueva Espana (Mexico City,
1820; reprint, 1954), p. 31. It is not entirely clear what the terms haciendas and ranchos
precisely meant, but the statistics can still be used for comparative purposes because the
terminological confusion was the same in every region.
The statistics for the intendencies have been combined for each of the four regions mentioned
to arrive at a standardised presentation. Thus Anahuac consists of the intendencies of Mexico,
Puebla and Veracruz and the gobierno Tlaxcala (this area was governed by a governor, not
an intendant), resulting in a region which is larger than it actually was. But this presentation
of Anahuac contained a vast area of sparsely inhabited provinces in far off mountain areas.
The Michoaain region is formed by the administrative units of Valladolid, Guanajuato and
San Luis Potosi. This included an extensive area of northern Mexico which was dominated
by huge livestock estates. The intendency Guadalajara and Zacatecas form the third region,
while the region of Oaxaca consists of no more than the intendency of the same name.
A. Ouweneel, Shadows over Anahuac. An Ecological Interpretation of Crisis and Development
in Central Mexico, 1730-1800 (Albuquerque, 1996).
See A. Ouweneel, 'Growth, stagnation, and migration: an explorative analysis of the tributario
series of Anahuac (1720-1800)', The Hispanic American Historical Review 71 :3 (1991),
531-77.
L. Greenow, Credit and Socioeconomic Change in Colonial Mexico: Loans and Mortgages in
Guadalajara, 1720-1820 (Boulder, 1983); R.B. Lindley, Haciendas and Economic Development.
Guadalajara, Mexico, at Independence (Austin, 1984); A.J. Bauer, 'The church and Spanish
American agrarian structures, 1765-1865', The Americas 18 (1971), 78-98; 'Rural workers
in Spanish America: problems of peonage and oppression', The Hispanic American Historical
Review 59 (1979), 3463; 'The church in the economy of Spanish America: censos and
IP address: 145.18.82.72
52
Arij Ouweneel
depositos in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries', The Hispanic American Historical Review
63 (1983), 707-33; 'Jesuit enterprise in colonial Latin America: a review essay', Agricultural
History 57 (1983), 90-104; G. von Wobeser, San Carlos Borromeo: Endeudamiento de una
hacienda colonial (1608 1129) (Mexico City, 1980), one of the better introductions to the
problem. See also her La formaci'on de la hacienda en la epoca colonial: El uso de la tierra y
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
el agua (Mexico City, 1983), 'Mecanismos crediticios en la Nueva Espaiia: El uso del censo
consignativo', Mexican StudieslEstudios Mexicanos 5 :1 (1989), 13-18. Also, J.F. Schwaller,
Origins of Church Wealth in Mexico: Ecclesiastical Revenues and Church Finances, 15231600
(Albuquerque, 1985); M.P. Costeloe, Church Wealth in Mexico: A Study of the 'Jusgado de
Capellamas' in the Archbishopric of Mexico, 1800-1856 (Cambridge, 1967); J. Kicza, Colonial
Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque, 1983); and, J.M.
Tutino, 'Creole Mexico: Spanish Elites, Haciendas and Indian Towns, 1750-1810' (Ph.D.
diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1976), and From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico.
Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750-1940 (Princeton, 1986).
J. Lockhart and S.B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America
and Brazil (Cambridge, 1983), p. 142.
P.L.G. van der Meer, 'Suikerrietcultures in koloniaal Mexico: Bedrijf en beheer van
Xochimancas en Barreto' (Doctoraalscriptie, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1986), 'Jezuietenhaciendas in koloniaal Mexico', Leidschrift 8 (1987), 35-50, and, 'El Colegio de San Andres
y la produccion del azucar en sus haciendas de Xochimancas y Barreto (1750-1767)', in
Ouweneel and Torales (comps.), Empresarios, pp. 138-164. For Barrett and von Wobeser,
see elsewhere.
The work of J.D. Riley, 'Crown law and rural labor in New Spain: the status of gananes
during the eighteenth century', The Hispanic American Historical Review 64 (1984), 259-85,
esp. p. 262. See also his Hacendados jesuitas en Mexico: El Colegio Maximo de San Pedro y
San Pablo, 1685-1767(Mexico City, 1976); 'The wealth of the Jesuits in Mexico, 1670-1761',
The Americas 33 (1976), 226-66; 'Landlords, laborers and royal government: the administration of labor in Tlaxcala, 1680-1750', in Frost, Meyer, and Zoraida (eds.), Trabajo, pp.
221 41; and, 'Santa Lucia: desarrollo y administracion de una hacienda jesuita en el siglo
XVIII', in Florescano (ed.), Haciendas, pp. 242-73.
R. Romano, 'American feudalism', The Hispanic American Historical Review 61 (1984),
121-34. p. 126. But see as well F. Katz, 'Labor conditions on haciendas in Porfirian Mexico:
some trends and tendencies', The Hispanic American Historical Review 54 (1974), 1-47; also
Bauer, 'Rural workers.'
Ouweneel, 'Schedules in hacienda agriculture', pp. 813.
Using data from: Ouweneel, 'Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan agriculture', and, 'Don Claudio
Pesero.' Further documentation BNMa, Ms. 2449, Exp. 5; FMMN, AJP, Rollo 28 (Rancho
Nopala); AGNM, Colegios, Vols. 12, 30, 31, 33. Interesting are R.S. Loomis, 'Agricultural
systems', Scientific American 235 : 3 (1976), 99-105, esp. p. 99; Trautmann, Transformaciones,
pp. 166, 168-170; Swan, 'Climate', pp. 130, 143-47; and, Gibson, Aztecs Under Spanish
Rule, pp. 322-5, 331. The correlation between these series was expressed in high coefficients;
low correlation in a few cases was explained as the result of disappointing or even bad harvests.
The data for Figure 1 from Ouweneel, 'Schedules in hacienda agriculture', p. 95, Appendix
2 and Figure 3.
Mortality from exhaustion was high among oxen, and the hacendado purchased additional
oxen all year round (at a price of 10 pesos, the equivalent of 40 to 50 man-days) or made
more use of hired oxen and laborers from the pueblos de indios than earlier in the year.
Ouweneel, 'Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan agriculture.'
Miller, Landlords and Haciendas.
FMMN, AJP, Rollo 29, Number 6; the Hacienda San Juan Mixco (Tlaxcala) produced
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Eighteenth-century
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
Mexican
Peonage
53
wheat and maize with the help of sharecroppers.

G. Wilken,' Management of productive space in traditional farming', in ACT AS International
Conference of Americanists 42:2 (1976), 409-19, esp. p. 414. See also his Good Farmers:
Traditional Agriculture and Resource Management in Mexico and Central America (Berkeley,
1987).
Ouweneel, Shadoivs over Anahuac.
This is underscored in Ouweneel, Shadows over Anahuac.
Ouweneel, 'Growth, stagnation, and migration.'
This is well-known, see Morner, 'Spanish American hacienda.'
1. Gonzalez Sanchez, Los trabajadores alquilados de Tlaxcala para las haciendas foraneas, sigh
XVIII (Mexico City, 1976), Cuadro 1.
FMMN, Tlaxcala, Rollo 32; AGET, 1762, Leg. 3; AGET, 1778, Leg. 2, Exp. 71; AGET,
1770, Leg 1, Exp. 1; AGET, 1752, Leg. 1, Exp. 121. Also, Badura, 'Biografia'; Nickel,
Peonaje, pp. 32, 54, and, 'Deudas pasivas', pp. 249-259.
An investigation conducted by a Spanish official on shopkeeping in the province of Chalco
is telling in this respect. See, AGI, Audiencia Mexico, Leg. 2096.
Nickel, Peonaje, p. 13, 35-6; Ewald, Estudios, p. 35.
AGNM, Tierras, Vol. 2545, Exp. 1.
AGNM, Tierras, Vols. 917 and 964.
The 'customary economy', or better known as the 'moral economy', is discussed by E.P.
Thompson in his Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963), pp. 68-73, 'The
moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century', Past and Present 50 (1971),
76-136, and Customs in Common (London, 1991). For a discussion of this notion in the Latin
American context, see my Shadows over Anahuac.
See the excellent discussion in J.O. Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in SeventeenthCentury England fPrinceton, 1978), pp. 52-72.
Thompson, 'Moral economy', pp. 78-9, also for a political statement. Also G. Rude, Ideology
and Popular Protest (New York, 1980), p. 28. A similar argument in G. Rude, The Crowd
in History (New York, 1964).
For some generalisations, see G. Lindzey, C.S. Hall, and R.F. Thompson, Psychology (New
York, 1975); or, E.R. Hilgard, R.C. Atkinson and R.L. Atkinson, Introduction to Psychology
(New York, 1975, 6th ed.). Also, N. Frijda, The Emotions (Paris and Cambridge, 1986).
M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power: Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning
to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 51-5.
D.W. Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern
Germany (New York, 1984), pp. 23-6, 37-93, quote from p. 25. See also T. Robisheaux,
Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1989), esp.
pp. 6-9. I have used the ideas expressed in these studies for my 'Altepeme and pueblos de
indios: Some comparative theoretical perspectives on the analysis of the colonial indian
communities', in A. Ouweneel and S. Miller (eds.), The Indian Community of Colonial Mexico :
Fifteen Essays on Land Tenure, Corporate Organisations, Ideology and Village Politics
(Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 1-37. A further elaboration can be found in Rik Hoekstra's book
on the changing relationships between Indian lords and Indian commoners in the Valley of
Puebla, during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Two Worlds Merging: The
Transformation of Society in the Valley of Puebla, 1570-1640 (Amsterdam, 1993).
Robisheaux, Rural Society, p. 9. For an extended discussion of Herrschaft see also O. Brunner,
W. Conze and R. Kosseleck (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur
politischen-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stutgart, 1982) Volume III, 1-102.
Sabean, Power, pp. 20-27.
See also J. Scott, 'Exploitation in rural class relations. A victim's perspective', Comparative
Politics (1975), 489-532, esp. p. 494. The effect of population growth in this context can be
expressed by a formula to understand peon-hacendado - vassal-lord - relationships, see
IP address: 145.18.82.72
54
Arij Ouweneel
Chapter One of my Shadows over Anahuac, and my 'Altepeme and pueblos de indios'. Since
it is known that the collective mentality adjusts to changes in socio-economic circumstances,
in a situation of population growth or a relatively high population density we can state:
a)
P | = pi -> b > pb - 1,
where P stands for the volume of population (f = growth or high population density;
I = decrease or low population density), p stands for 'power of, that is, a dominant bargaining
position, 1 stands for 'the lords, elite and state', and b for the 'peons'; the -> sign indicates
who exercises power over whom. In a situation of low population density or a decrease in
population, in which alternative sources of income are available to the peons, the situation
is the reverse:
b)
P j = pi -+ b < pb -> 1.
51.
For Europe, see Thompson, 'Moral economy', p. 78; Sabean, Power in the Blood, p. 13;
Appleby, Economic Thought, pp. 242-79; Alan Macfarlane, The Culture of Capitalism (Oxford,
1987), pp. 223-7.
52. See among others, R. Rendon Garcini, Dos haciendas pulqueras en Tlaxcala, 18571884
(Mexico City, 1990). For changing relationships after further population growth, see S.K.
Loete, 'Aspects of modernization on a Mexican hacienda: labour on San Nicolas del Moral
(Chalco) at the end of the nineteenth century', Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos
v del Caribe 54 (1993), 45-64.
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Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and the Problem

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Rural History (1997) 8, 1, 21-54. Copyright 7997 Cambridge University Press

Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

"/ road systems

Map 1. Four Regional Economies of Eighteen-Century Mexico

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

Map 2. The Anahuac region

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Figure 1. Number of tributarios in ten provinces dominated by haciendas (Anahuac, 1720-1800)

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

Coyoacan, Huejotzingo, Ixtlahuaca-Metepec, Mexicalcingo, Otumba, Tepeaca, Tlaxcala

The Hacienda and its Peons

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

Work in the Fields

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periods of four weeks

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

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of the system. Examples of peculiar indebedness include:

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

credits: 24p1 average: 4p2

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credits: 546p6 average: 16p1

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

Explaining the Backlog

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Number of weeks from August 1811 to August 1812

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total amount of reales that had to be paid according to contracts,

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage

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degree of violence and coercion. This necessitated a continuing process of legitimisation.

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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage