9 - The formation and economic structure of the hacienda in New Spain

Summary

The study of the hacienda as a productive unit in the creation of new forms of exploitation of the soil and of labour is a relatively recent phenomenon in Mexico. Lesley B. Simpson, Exploitation of Land in Central Mexico in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1952) illustrates with quantitative data the impressive, early conversion of Indian lands into agricultural and stock-raising enterprises owned and run by Spaniards. François Chevalier, La formation des grands domaines au Mexique (Paris, 1952; Sp. ed., 1956; Eng. ed., Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966) continued the traditional interest in forms of land tenure – for example Helen Phipps, Some Aspects of the Agrarian Question in Mexico (Austin, Tex., 1925); George McCutchen McBride, The Land Systems of Mexico (New York, 1923); Silvio Zavala, De encomienda y propiedad territorial en algunas regiones de la América espanola (Mexico, D.F., 1940; reprinted in Estudios Indianos, Mexico, D.F., 1948; 2nd ed., 1984); Jesús Amaya Tapete, Ameca: Protofundacidn mexicana (Mexico, D.F., 1951) – and gave a new dimension to studies on land ownership and agriculture. Using a wide variety of private and official archives, Chevalier reconstructed the main processes which influenced the formation of the latifundia, traced their development over time, and related the expansion of the hacienda to the general development of the colony and in particular to the establishment of a new economic structure.