Biography of a Hacienda: Work and Revolution in Rural Mexico by Elizabeth Terese Newman (review)

Elizabeth Newman skillfully weaves together data from multiple disciplines to explore conditions that led to the Mexican Revolution and to reflect on postrevolutionary change. By integrating archival, archaeological, ethnographic, ethno-archaeological, and oral historical research for the Hacienda Acocotla (near Puebla) and a neighboring village, Newman critically examines what she calls the master narrative—the standard textbook version—of the Mexican Revolution, its subsequent reforms, and its lasting impacts from the perspective of hacienda workers and their descendants. Newman uses a narrative style that is a “mosaic of academic prose, memoir, and fiction” (p. 3). The result is an insightful analysis that is accessible to a wide audience.

The book begins with an introduction to the historical background, the theoretical context, and the geographical setting for the study. Key elements of the historical master narrative include modernization policies in late nineteenth-century Mexico that resulted in the loss of community lands and growing inequalities, eventually leading to the Mexican Revolution and the subsequent implementation of agrarian reforms. Theoretical perspectives of social rebellion and radicalism provide the context for understanding the lives of Hacienda Acocotla’s workers and, more generally, the underlying causes for the Mexican Revolution and its long-term impacts. The Hacienda Acocotla is then introduced, and Newman makes the case that it is ideally suited for this study because it can be considered average or unexceptional. Newman also notes that work at the hacienda was initiated by the archaeologist Harold Juli, who invited Newman to participate; following his untimely death in 2007, she continued and expanded the project.

Newman then summarizes the various data sets compiled from hacienda and village sources. First, she reviews archival data that include details about relations between owners and workers of the Hacienda Acocotla and neighboring communities and demographic profiles of these communities. The following chapter focuses on the ethnographic, ethno-archaeological, and oral historical data collected in the village of La Soledad Morelos, where many residents or their elders worked on the hacienda and acquired rights to hacienda land following the Revolution. This research documents domestic architecture and daily life in the village and allows Newman to identify the patterns that guided archaeological excavations in the calpanería, the living quarters of the hacienda’s workers. The final data set comes from the archaeological survey and excavations at the hacienda. Although the hacienda was in ruins, the rooms of the calpanería were easily identified, allowing for the investigation of living quarters and exterior spaces.

Analysis and interpretation begin with a discussion of what architecture can reveal about relations between the hacienda’s owners and its workers. In the late nineteenth century, the Hacienda underwent a major redesign that restricted access to the owner’s living quarters and resulted in greater control over workers. Residents of the calpanería now had little independence: there were no family kitchens; meals were prepared elsewhere by hired cooks, residents had no direct access to water, and they had little privacy. A comparison of ceramic and faunal data between the calpanería and contemporary La Soledad Morelos reveals that while general foodways have changed little, hacienda residents had greater access to higher-quality tablewares, and they consumed a greater diversity of foods. Finally, the analysis of “small finds” (unique artifacts) provides details about life in the calpanería: residents had little access to artificial lighting, children may have had few toys (only marbles were found), and some women spun cotton in their quarters.

The multiple lines of evidence cited in this study expose certain flaws in the master narrative of the Mexican Revolution and its consequences. Many of the reforms implemented after the Revolution failed to survive into the twenty-first century; Newman discovered a “dissonance between that master narrative and the reality we found in the streets of the village...