Biography of a Hacienda: Work and Revolution in Rural Mexico

5. San Miguel Acocotla: The Archaeology of a Central Mexican Hacienda

84 chapter five San Miguel Acocotla The Archaeology of a Central Mexican Hacienda * * * I smiled to myself as the truck crested the edge of the barranca, and I caught my first glimpse of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla. I was eager to see how the site’s crumbling walls had fared in the year since I’d last visited, but I put the pickup truck in park and clambered out to talk to my students who were perched in the back on top of our excavation equipment . I pointed to the structure across the fields, reminding the students about the tower that had been built during the Revolution. I told them to look to the north as we came closer. They’d see the hacienda’s chapel there and, across the road, what remained of the threshing floor fronting the hacienda’s east wall. I climbed back into the truck, putting it into four-wheel drive, which was necessary to make it through the last bit of “road” during the rainy season. MaryCarmen would be waiting with don José, and I couldn’t afford to take any more time. Don José lived at the hacienda as a child just before the implementation of the post-Revolutionary reforms. He would be taking us on a tour of the casco, explaining what each space had been used for when he and his family worked there during the first decades of the twentieth century. It was the fourth such interview I had participated in but the first for this group of students. The students were equipped with clipboards, pencils, paper, and numbered maps (fig. 5.1). Using the preassigned numbers, they would take detailed notes of the old man’s reminiscences. At the end San Miguel Acocotla • 85 of the workday, we would compare notes, putting together a comprehensive picture of how the hacienda’s buildings had functioned. I glanced in my rearview mirror as we approached the hacienda’s chapel , noting that my students were pointing to it and taking notes. I had discussed the results of our archival research in class earlier. Based on the documentary record, the chapel served the entire hacienda community from at least the early seventeenth century onward, but the architectural style’s close match to the rest of the hacienda suggested that it had been remodeled during the mid-nineteenth century with the casco.1 We turned to the left, passing the casco’s east façade and the remains of the threshing floor. Following the road, we turned toward the right, passing the last of the wheat storage sheds and nine of the calpanería’s rooms, arriving finally at the casco’s south-facing main entrance. MaryCarmen was sitting with don José and his daughter in the archway leading into the hacienda’s casco. Don José, dressed in his finest for the outing, was sitting in his wheelchair, ready to take center stage. I parked the pickup nearby, climbing out of the driver’s seat as the students leapt Figure 5.1. The Hacienda Acocotla at the beginning of the twentieth century. 86 • Chapter Five out of its bed. The students were looking curiously at the ruins around them. It was their first visit, and they would be spending the next month digging here. MaryCarmen made the introductions while don José’s daughter stood up and prepared to push him over the grass through the casco. We were ready to begin our tour. * * * A Tour of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla During the latter years of the nineteenth century, thirty-seven small rooms flanked the imposing entrance we found ourselves in front of that morning (fig. 5.1, no. 27; fig. 5.2).2 The remains of these rooms, Acocotla’s calpaner ía, are still visible along the south-facing wall. They would be the focus of our investigations during the coming month. The architecture today appears to be limited to adobe complemented by a few stones and bricks, but the nineteenth-century façade of the hacienda would have Figure 5.2. Calpanería, Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla. San Miguel Acocotla • 87 been finished in white plaster, and the rooms of the calpanería would have been roofed in red pantile. Both the pantiles and bricks were likely produced in the hacienda’s brick kiln located to the north of the casco (fig. 5.1, no. 7). The hacienda’s resident...