Introduction: Haciendas and Agrarian Change in Rural Mesoamerica

These articles address socioeconomic change produced by variation in the relationships between haciendas and other kinds of agrarian landholdings in rural Mesoamerica. The goals of this volume are to reassess the variability in the institution known as the hacienda, its role in the expansion and growth of rural market economies, and its mutual relationships with indigenous institutions and rural populations. To this end, this volume brings together recent research from cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians with common interests in the agrarian history of Mesoamerica between 1521 and 1900. An interdisciplinary and comparative regional perspective enables generalization about the processes of rural change, even though the outcomes of market expansion across diverse ecological zones and among varied indigenous and immigrant populations are not readily predictable. The historical and anthropological literature on haciendas and agrarian systems in Mesoamerica is vast, and I have not attempted a thorough review. Instead I have outlined a few of the familiar issues surrounding the study of haciendas in order to situate the articles within a larger context of research.

The hacienda has become a touchstone for a broad range of topics dealing with social, political, and economic continuity and change in the colonial and national periods of Mexico and Central America. Haciendas are "agricultural estates, operated by a dominant land-owner and a dependent labor force, organized to supply a small-scale market by means of scarce capital, in which the factors of production are employed not only for capital accumulation but also to support the status aspirations of the owner" (Wolf and Mintz 1957: 380). This classic definition of the institution indicates its preeminent role in structuring power relations, production, and class formation in the countryside. Following on the heels of the encomienda and the repartimiento, the hacienda was the last of a succession of New World labor institutions that capped an evolutionary process of market expansion and provided a catalyst for the emergence of capitalism (Borah 1951; Florescano 1987; Frank 1979; Wolf 1956). Further investigation of this developmental scheme, especially the Borah-Chevalier correlation of hacienda expansion with labor scarcity and indigenous population decline (Borah 1951; Chevalier 1963; Frank 1979), necessitated a shift in the focus of research from the estate itself to the sources of its labor, particularly the Indian community (e.g., Gibson 1964). In theory the hacienda eventually supplanted the indigenous village as the principle social unit in rural areas (Gibson 1964; Wolf 1956). Consequently, traditional studies of the hacienda have fostered a view of the rural landscape divided between the great estates and closed-corporate Indian villages. These original formulations, however, begged the question of what was happening elsewhere in the countryside, beyond the hacienda.

Over the last two decades, scholars have questioned most, if not all, of the original assumptions, formulations, and evolutionary explanations of the hacienda (see Van Young 1983). Latin American rural history and anthropology have adopted a cultural-historical perspective that places the institution within a larger temporal context related to the variable impact of capitalism on its peripheries and political-economic relations of dominance and subjugation for indigenous peoples in the New World (Wolf 1982; Frank 1978, 1979). As scholars have delved into specific and detailed historical sources of individual estates and explored regional variants, they have encountered increasing numbers of "atypical" establishments. This approach has amplified greatly views of the composition and function of the estates (Altman and Lockhart 1976; Charlton 1986; Jones 1980; Konrad 1980; Ouweneel 1984; Taylor 1972). Accordingly, variables thought to affect the hacienda's form have multiplied and currently include production, prestige, available credit, market access, the quantity and availability of land and labor, and the configuration of indigenous agrarian production (Brading 1977, 1978; Florescano 1969; Ouweneel 1984; Taylor 1972; Wolf and Mintz 1957).

Not surprisingly, however, much of the recent research on the hacienda has focused less on the institution itself and more on the local context in which it became embedded. Studies of rural communities suggest that traditional...