The Division of Some Mexican Haciendas During The Liberal Revolution 1856 1862 Jan Bazant

The Division of Some Mexican Haciendas during the Liberal Revolution, 1856-1862
Author(s): Jan Bazant

Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (May, 1971), pp. 25-37
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 3, I, 25-37 Printed in Great Britain 25
The Division of Some Mexican Haciendas

during the Liberal Revolution, I856-1862
by JAN BAZANT
In the middle of the nineteenth century, ecclesiastical wealth in Mexico

consisted basically of real estate and mortgages. The Church avoided invest-
ments in mining, industry and commerce. There were regional differences,
the Church being richer in some parts of the country than in others: in the
two most important cities, Mexico and Puebla, the different ecclesiastical
corporationsowned about half of the total real estate, whereas in some of the
smaller cities, such as Veracruz, Jalapa, Orizaba, C6rdoba and San Luis
Potosf, the Church was proportionately much poorer. The urban real estate
consisted of houses rented on fairly favourable terms to both rich and poor,
monastic buildings and churches. In the countryside, the Church was con-
siderably poorer than in the cities: its haciendas were few compared to the
number of those privately owned, and their value amounted to about 5 per
cent of that of all rural estate. Real estate formed about one-half of Church
possessions; the other half consisted of mortgages. Capital was loaned at the
rate of 5 and 6 per cent per annum to urban and rural property-owners,and
many hacendados owed to the Church enormous amounts which were
guaranteed by their estates.' By 1856, the total wealth of the Mexican Church
amounted to about Ioo million pesos.2 This is about one-fifth of the total
national wealth at the time, much less than the Church is usually thought
to have held.
Mexican politics between the establishment of independence, in I82I, and
I855 can be described basically as the struggle between the Liberals and the
Conservatives. In 1855, the Liberals succeeded in forming what seemed to
be a stable government. A year later, the Liberal Finance Minister, Lerdo
de Tejada, decreed the disentailment of corporate property: all real estate
belonging to the Church was to be sold, and the corporations were to
1 On the function of the Church as a banker, see Michael P. Costeloe, Church Wealth in
Mexico. A Study of the 'Juzgado de Capellanias' in the Archbishopricof Mexico, 8oo0-
i856 (CambridgeUniversity Press, I967).
2 One Mexican
peso = one U.S. dollar.

26 Jan Bazant
become only mortgagees. The Lerdo law was not a confiscatory measure.
However, in December 1857, the Conservatives revolted against it, drawing
the country into a civil war which ended with their defeat at the end of
December i860. At the beginning of i86I, the Constitutional Government
under the presidency of Benito Juarez proceeded to a complete confiscation
of ecclesiastical property, which was then sold. The Conservatives sought,
and obtained, help in Europe, and the French invaded Mexico towards the
end of I86I. After protracted fighting, the expeditionary force occupied
the Mexican capital in June 1863, but the Church was bitterly disappointed
in its hopes of recovering its lost property: both the occupation authorities
and, later, the Emperor Maximilian confirmed the validity of the nationali-
zation and the sales of nationalized property. Hence, after its return to
Mexico City in June I867, the Republican Government simply continued its
unfinished work, and ended by selling whatever was left of Church wealth.
The sale price amounted, on average, to about two-thirds of the property
value, fixed in most cases by the capitalization of rents at 5 or 6 per cent;
40 per cent of the price was payable in monthly instalments, 60 per cent in
government bonds. The terms of payment, converted to cash, meant that
buyers paid, in most cases, only 20 to 25 per cent of the property values.
These sales of Church properties have been much criticized, but it should
not be forgotten that they took place during periods of civil war, when the
demands of the Treasury were large, and the fiscal strain was so much
greater since the government did not have any credit. It was, therefore,
necessary to sell at any price and in the shortest possible time.
The social strata which benefited most from the nationalization of eccle-
siastical wealth were, in the first place, the hacendados: they were able to
redeem mortgages on their estates at a low rate. The second group consisted
of financiers who had made loans to earlier Conservative governments, and
who were now in a position to pay for their purchases with government
bonds. The third group consisted of foreign merchants and Liberal lawyers.
The exact share of each group cannot now be ascertained, but the point is
not important since eventually all these groups were fused into an oligarchy
which became the backbone of the dictatorship of General Porfirio Diaz.
Liberal reformers planned to create a strong middle class by selling
Church-owned houses to their tenants, and by dividing ecclesiastical rural
properties and selling the lots on easy terms to those who needed them,
thereby helping to solve the agrarian problem. The programme was success-
ful in the cities, at least in part, but, as a consequence of unforeseen
circumstances, it failed in the countryside. It is true that, as a result of a
series of measures enacted after the nationalization of ecclesiasticalproperty,
considerable economic progress took place in Mexico, mainly in mining,

Division of Mexican Haciendas during Liberal Revolution, 1856-1862 27
transport, industry and sanitation. But this modernization of the economy

did not diminish social inequality; nor did it dissolve the rigid social struc-
ture. Rural technology remained stagnant, and this was both a cause and an
effect of the consolidation of the haciendas in the countryside. In effect, the
modernization of economic life was basically an urban, industrial pheno-
menon. The contradiction between the developing industrial economy and
the backward rural society finally led to the Revolution of I9IO.3
There are, however, some exceptions to the general statement that the
Liberal programme failed to effect social reform in rural areas, and it is
with these exceptions that this article is concerned.
Guanajuato provides the first example. The state was known not only for
its silver mining, but also as the heart of El Bajio. A broad valley reaching
roughly from Queretaro to the lake of Chapala, comprising parts of the
states of Guanajuato, Queretaro, Michoacan and Jalisco, El Bajio was
famous for its agriculture; its farms grew maize during the rainy season,
lasting normally from June to the end of October, and corn, with irrigation,
during the dry season. El Bajio was considered as the richest area of the
country and its haciendas as the most prized, with the exception of the
sugar cane estates south of Mexico City. As for Guanajuato itself, its rural
property was estimated as the most valuable part, with the possible exception
of Jalisco, a much larger state.4
In the middle of the nineteenth century, Guanajuato was the most densely
populated state of the nation, and despite being one of the smallest states,
it ranked in absolute population figures as the third. No wonder that the
Church wealth of Guanajuato was very large. According to the list of
nationalized goods, drawn up by the Imperial Government in I866, the
nationalized and sold Church property in the Federal District amounted to
20 million pesos, in the state of Puebla to more than io million
pesos, in
Jalisco and Michoacan to some 4-6 millions each, and in Guanajuato to
5,29I,000 pesos, thus making Guanajuato richer in ecclesiastical property
than its neighbour states.
Guanajuato City, capital of the state, was small, and its development was
rather new: other towns of the state were smaller still. Hence, it can be
deduced that clerical urban real estate was not very valuable, and that the
Church wealth of Guanajuato consisted mainly of rural properties. The list
of nationalized properties drawn up by the Imperial Government in i866,
detailing the sales of urban and rural property by state districts, confirms
3 These opening paragraphs are, in effect, a brief
summary of my book, Alienation of
Church Wealth in Mexico. Social and Economic Aspects of the Liberal Revolution, I856-
1875 (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1971).
4 Memoria de Hacienda Crldito Publico
y (Mexico City, I870), p. 995.

28 Jan Bazant
this view. For example, in the district of Salamanca ecclesiastical rural

property was worth almost I49,000 pesos, but urban property worth only
3,200; the corresponding figures for Salvatierra are 304,000 and I,600, and
for Penjamo, I30,000 and 9,500 pesos. As far as real estate is concerned,
Church wealth obviously consisted of haciendas. Some of these were disen-
tailed as early as I856, and the information was included in the Memoria de
Hacienda of I857 (quoted hereafter as the I857 Memoria). If we consider
only properties sold for 25,000 pesos or more, then eleven clerical haciendas,
six of them belonging to Augustinians, were disentailed in Guanajuato for
i million pesos. A single case is doubtful: Augustinian 'lands' in the
district of Celaya were sold for 40,000 pesos, a price too high for urban real
estate in a town where all clerical houses were worth only 4,000 pesos, and
it is probable that the 'lands' were an hacienda. The total for the whole
nation was 3-3 million pesos.5 As for capital, the list of 1866 does not distin-
guish between mortgages on urban property and those on rural property.
But if the small size of towns is considered, then it is easy to see that
mortgages were borne mainly on privately owned haciendas. In the district
of Celaya, for instance, the Church owned capital of 622,000 pesos; in San
Miguel, Allende, 380,000; in Silao, 137,000; in Acambaro, I34,000; and in
Irapuato, 258,000. Privately owned haciendas in Guanajuato must have been
very valuable in order to be able to bear mortgages for such high totals.
There were two kinds of haciendas in mining districts, de campo-farms
and de beneficio-metallurgical enterprises for the extraction of metals from
the ore. Near Guanajuato City, there were more than two dozen haciendas
de beneficio, some belonging to local people, some to foreigners. One was
the property of the Guanajuato municipality, another belonged to the
hospital for the poor and was administered by a committee of prominent
citizens. Until 1856, civil corporations in Mexico were quite wealthy, and
financed their activities from the profits on their investments. It should be
noted that civil corporations, and much less ecclesiastical ones, did not own
any mines, since they were interested in an income which would be subject
to the least variation, and haciendas de beneficio were thought to be less
speculative than mines. As the law of 1856 proposed to disentail the property
of ecclesiastical and civil corporations alike, the two haciendas de beneficio
of Guanajuato were also sold, possibly to those who were renting them.
An examination of notarial registers 6 from I856 to 1863 reveals, among
other things, that several foreign entrepreneurs-miners, of course, in a
5 See
my article, 'La desamortizaci6nde los bienes corporativosde 1856 ', Historia Mexicana,
xvI, No. 2 (Oct.-Dec. 1966).
6 Called Libros de Protocolo de Cabildo and deposited in the Archivo Historico de Guana-
juato of the University of Guanajuato.

mining community such as Guanajuato-purchased farms, and that estates

mortgaged to the Church were sold in auction rather frequently to persons
other than owners. There was nothing new in this, as these practices also
existed in other Mexican states. But here a new phenomenon stood out
distinctly from the beginning and has not been observed elsewhere-a
division of several clerical haciendas into smaller units.
Five cases will be described. (i) On 20 February 1857, Vicente Rodrfguez,
jefe politico, sold in auction the hacienda San Roque, of the Juzgado de
Capellanias, for 57,000 pesos to the Liberal merchant, Encarnaci6n Serrano.7
In I86I, Serrano ceded his rights for the same price to Alexander Cumming,
owner of a hacienda de beneficio.8 Later, the hacienda was divided into two
parts, San Roque and Sonaja, probably between the same two buyers.9(ii) In
the second case, Encarnaci6n Serrano, the merchant, Modesto Cos, and the
lawyer, Octaviano Zabre, bought in an auction on 17 April I857 in Silao the
hacienda Cerritos, belonging to the Congregation of San Felipe Neri, for
30,700 pesos. Four years later, they redeemed its value by each paying one-
third, that is I0,233.33 pesos.10Possibly they divided it amongst themselves
afterwards. (iii) The third case concerns the Augustinian hacienda of Santa
M6nica, near Salvatierra. In the middle of the nineteenth century, there
were at least four persons renting different sections of the hacienda. When
disentailment was decreed by Lerdo de Tejada on 25 June 1856, these persons
were naturally ready to claim the land for themselves. With the obvious pur-
pose of preserving the property for the Order, however, the Head of the
Province now declared that he had leased the whole hacienda on I2 April
1856, in Morelia to a quite different person, apparently a priest, who could
be trusted to acquire and hold it on behalf of the Augustinians. The register
of the notary Valdovinos, before whom this alleged lease was made, is miss-
ing for the first half of 1856, and it cannot be ascertained if, in fact, the
contract actually existed, but, in any event, when the new lessee appeared on
I2 July 1856, the four tenants complained to the Minister of Finance." Lerdo
left the decision to the tribunals but, apparently, because of their traditional
slowness, the matter was still pending at the end of 1856, to judge from the
omission of the hacienda Santa M6nica from the I857 report. The final result
of this case is not known, but clearly it was not easy to deprive existing
7In August i860, Serrano was to be Jefe Politico under the Liberal governor Manuel Doblado.
See Jesus Rodriguez Frausto, Guia de Gobernantes de Guanajuato (Mexico City, 1965),
p. 199.
8 E. Maillefert, Gran
Almanaque Mexicana y Directorio del Comercio de la Republica
Mexicana (Mexico City, I868), p. 296.
9 Protocolo de Cabildo,
I857, f. 105.
10 Protocolo de Cabildo, I858, f. 124, and I86I, f. 5II.
11 Memoria de Hacienda (I857), p. 66.

30 Jan Bazant
tenants of their rights, even though their contracts may not have been
certified by notaries or have been written at all.
(iv) There were also problems in another case. In 1856, the Augustinians
sold their hacienda of San Nicolas, near Salvatierra-such sales, under cer-
tain conditions were allowed by the disentailment law-to the merchant,
Gregorio Lambarri, for the sum of 240,000 pesos. In the 1857 Memoria, a
certain Juan Arnaiz appears as the purchaser, with the same price quoted,
but it was revealed later that he, in fact, bought it on behalf of Lambarri.
Lambarri had leased the property on 3 April 1856, though other persons
were also renting different parts of the hacienda at the same time. This case
appears to be similar to that of the hacienda Santa M6nica: Lambarri was
a Spaniard and, as such, was, perhaps, trusted by the Church. It was,
however, difficult to erase the vested interests of the settlers, and the
Augustinians' attempt to evade the disentailment gave rise to several law-
suits.1
(v) There is ample information in the fifth case of division of haciendas in
Guanajuato.3 In September I856, the San Camilo padres of Mexico sold
their hacienda of Cueramaro, near Penjamo, to Jose Maria Martinez Negrete
and Primitivo Serrano, probably its lessees, for the very large amount of
3Io,000 pesos. As was customary, the buyers did not pay anything in cash
and, therefore, they mortgaged the property for the total amount, and
obliged themselves to pay an annual interest of 5 per cent of the purchase
price. At the same time, they signed a secret agreement with the sellers by
which they reserved the right to annul the purchase, return the hacienda
and, if they so wished, continue as lessees of the property. In fact, they
returned the hacienda in May I858, alleging that its poor soil did not even
yield enough to meet the stipulated interest they had contracted to pay. It
may, however, be suspected that their decision was motivated more by
political factors, given the uncertain future of the state of Guanajuato which
was then governed by Conservatives. Five months after the hacienda had
been returned, the Fathers sold it for 3Io,ooo pesos, and under the same
conditions as before, to Agapito de Anda, a lawyer of Guanajuato City,
who thought that it might be better business to divide the property and sell
the lots for annual payments. Several lots had already been sold when the
Liberal Manuel Doblado again became governor of the state in August I86o
and annulled these transactions, thus giving Martinez Negrete, an original
lessee, an opportunity to claim the property. Agapito de Anda then appealed
to the Federal Government, which felt obliged to recognize the faits accom-
12
Ibid., pp. 133 and I39.
13 Protocolo de Cabildo, I858, f. I34; I86I, fs. 14 and 21; Archivo General de la Nacion,
Bienes Nacionales, Leg. 734, unnumbered.

plis, at least in part, and some of the sales which de Anda had made were
finally declared valid. A large number of purchases of other lots then
followed. Thus, in time, a settlement grew up where the estate had existed,
to become eventually, by a decree of the state government, the municipality
of Cueramaro.l4
All these cases have one thing in common, the division of large landed
estates, whether as rented lots, or granted in emphyteusis in smaller units to
different persons already before 1856, or divided up later, either during or
after the civil war. In marked contrast to the rest of the country, in Guana-
juato the alienation of Church property resulted in the emergence of a
number of farms in the place of one ecclesiastical estate. This was certainly
no coincidence in the light of the traditional and well-known strength of the
rural middle class in El Bajzo.
In the same period, I856-63, several privately owned haciendas were split
up and offered for sale in San Luis Potosf, Michoacan and Zacatecas, states
surrounding Guanajuato. In San Luis Potosi, the hacienda of Gallinas,
situated on waterless land near the boundary with the state of Zacatecas,
was mortgaged for 224,693 pesos to Juan Goribar, one of the most important
financiers of Mexico City. This example indicates that not only the Church
but also private persons loaned money on the security of a landed estate.
The owners of the hacienda, however, could not meet their payments, and
in I857 a company was formed with the object of selling Gallinas in lots.
The first sale took place on 30 December I857, and the ninth on 23 March
i858. Business was then suspended, owing to disagreements between the
partners in the company and also because of the civil war which broke out
at the beginning of 1858. Sales were resumed at the end of May i860, when
the Liberals were already in firm control of San Luis Potosi.
The first sale in i860 took place on 29 May and the last on 5 November,
and there were no sales in i86i. The deeds were signed on behalf of the
company by Agapito de Anda, the same lawyer who was engaged in similar
activities with clerical estates in Guanajuato. Altogether, 29 lots of unequal
size were sold in i86o, the smallest being one-half of a caballeria and the
largest 20 caballerias, though the average size was between one and six
caballerias. In all, 125 caballeriaswere sold, that is, some 5,300 hectares. The
buyers obtained, on average, plots of 200 hectares each, an area considered
at that time to be small property, and they paid for each caballeria approxi-
mately 300 pesos in cash. The sales, therefore, produced 37,500 pesos. The
most valuable part of the hacienda, however, was not divided, to judge from
14 Decree of I2 November
1869. Decretos expedidos por el Congreso Constituyentedel Estado
libre y soberanode Guanajuatoen los anos de 1869 a 1871.

32 Jan Bazant
the fact that the map of the Comision Geogrdfico-Exploradoraof I903, with
a scale of I: Ioo,ooo still showed the hacienda of Gallinas. The colonists had
to face many obstacles, since the region lacked springs and trees, but they
were eventually successful.15In 1874, the scattered group of farms became a
municipality called Villa de Arriaga.'6 When, in I9II, the governor of the
state of San Luis Potosf, Jose Encarnaci6n Ipifia, submitted a proposal to the
local congress for dividing up the large estates, he mentioned that, despite
the total lack of irrigation on their land, the farms in the district of Villa
de Arriaga were fetching higher prices for the same area than all the
neighbouring haciendas.7
In the state of Michoacan, south-east of Guanajuato, the division of the
hacienda of Cojumatlan took place in I86I-2.18 The estate, which consisted
of approximately 50,000 hectares, was leased to a single person who farmed
the better half himself and sub-let the other, and poorer, half to a great
number of people, mostly cattlemen of Spanish blood. Their ancestors had
colonized the hitherto empty land in response to an invitation from its
owner. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Cojumatlan was heavily
mortgaged both to the Church and to private moneylenders, and the pro-
prietors decided to sell it in order to save their other, more valuable,
haciendas. Hence, Cojumatlan was sold in more than fifty lots of unequal
size in i86i and 1862, years of Liberal triumph, for a total sum of IIo,ooo
pesos, paid mostly in cash. This figure compares favourably with the valua-
tion of 55,000 pesos for the estate made in 1837 but, on the other hand, it
had been leased in 1836 for 4,700 pesos a year, a high figure considering that
rents were normally capitalized at 5 per cent. Perhaps the rents the lessee
expected to receive from tenants were too high.
The former leaseholder purchased the best lands and the buildings of the
hacienda for 25,000 pesos, and several merchants of neighbouring towns paid
smaller amounts for their purchases. The inhabitants of the hacienda, almost
all of them tenants, were able to buy oo00to ,000o hectare properties for 200
to 2,000 pesos each. This was probably enough for them since what they
wanted was to improve their social status by becoming landowners, for
which they were willing to pay the price.
Again in i86i, in the silver-mining state of Zacatecas, north-west of
Guanajuato, the hacienda of Valparaiso was sold in lots.l9 Situated in an
15 Octaviano CabreraIpifia, San Luis Potosi (San Luis Potosi, I970), p. 288.
16 Rafael del Castillo, Cuadro Sindptico del Estado de San Luis Potosi (San Luis Potosi, 1878).
17
Joaquin Meade, Semblanza de Don Jose EncarnacidnIpina (San Luis Potosi, I956), p. 25.
18 See detailed description in Luis Gonzalez, Pueblo en Vilo (Mexico City, 1968), pp. 85-98.
19 See governor's report of 1874, Memoria presentada por el C. Gabriel Garcia, Gobernador
Constitucionaldel Estado de Zacatecas(Zacatecas,I874), pp. 67-74.

Division of Mexican Haciendas during Liberal Revolution, I856-I862 33
isolated valley, near the boundary with the state of Jalisco, Valparaiso had
been the property of a certain J. M. Anza towards the end of the colonial
regime, and in I8I9 it had been mortgaged for 200,000 pesos, apparently its
total value. After an incident, which will be mentioned later in a more
appropriate context, the creditors, who were mostly private moneylenders,
took possession of the hacienda in 1838. Its many tenants then decided to
purchase the estate: they formed an association for this purpose and in the
eight years up to 1855 they managed to save the considerable sum of I30,000
pesos. The civil war, however, postponed the implementation of their plans,
but in i86i these were finally carried out. The 250 or so farms were, again,
of unequal size, ranging from around one hectare to 250 hectares, and, the
last mortgage for 13,000 pesos having been paid to a member of the Fagoaga
family, the association went into voluntary liquidation. The town of Valpa-
raiso emerged in place of the former hacienda.
In 1874, the state government of Zacatecas was considering the division
and sale of the hacienda Valdecainas,an embargoed property of an insolvent
mining company.20 Since it was valued at 15,000 pesos, it could not have
been very large. It was pointed out in the report of 1874 that the demand
for fractions of haciendas was high and that the public was willing to pay
cash for them, but in this case it is doubtful that the proposal for division
and sale was actually carried out since Valdecainasstill existed as a hacienda
in 1891, when the Diccionario Geogrdfico of Garcia Cubas was published.
Both Cojumatlan and Valparaiso were sold to people who had been living
there a long time. Here, then, was a group of people who were neither
village peasants nor hacienda labourers, but who were more akin to
rancheros, independent cattlemen and farmers living in isolated rancherias,
but distinguishable by the fact that the land they worked did not belong to
them. From the legal point of view, they could be either tenants-with or
without a written contract-or squatters, who had occupied the land without
the owner's permission. Their condition was precarious, and they had little
incentive to improve the land they worked. The poorer ones were share-
croppers or even seasonal' labourers on a hacienda, the wealthier ones,
farmers and, more especially, cattle raisers. A proud people by nature, they
dreamt of owning the land on which they lived. The seller, on the other
hand, might well have reasoned as follows: the hacienda consisted of poor
land and, besides, it was heavily mortgaged; the mortgages could not be
redeemed precisely because the soil was poor or there was a shortage of
water, and with creditors pressing hard, the sale of the property was the only
way out. Moreover, however much urban capitalists wished to own an
20
Ibid., pp. 58-67.
L.A.S.-3

34 Jan Bazant
estate, they preferred to wait for an opportunity to purchase one which
would be productive; in short, to make a good investment. Thus, the
hacienda was sold to its tenants, who were, apparently, willing to pay high
prices. Opportunities to invest in landed estates finally presented themselves
in I856-6x, when nationalized haciendas were offered for sale. Even though
the Church was not very rich in rural properties, their number must have
been sufficient to satisfy the demand coming from a limited number of
merchants and financiers desirous of becoming large landowners, and per-
haps also from some hacendados who wished to buy more estates. Further-
more, former Church properties could be purchased for 20 to 25 per cent of
their real value. The discount was, of course, proportionate to the risk, and
yet it must have been held sufficient to induce capitalists to invest in
nationalized properties. Consequently, it is not surprising that Juan Goribar,
mortgagee of the hacienda of Gallinas, tried to get rid of it in i86o, and
that, in the following year, he purchased through the Disentailment Office
of Mexico City unspecified nationalized property for 89,200 pesos. Clearly,
the proceeds of the sale of Gallinas may have been invested by Goribar in
former ecclesiasticalproperty, and Gallinas must have seemed to him a poor
hacienda in comparison with his sugar-caneestates of Cocoyoc and Casasano,
in the neighbourhood of Cuautla.
Other factors were probably involved in the parcelling of former ecclesias-
tical and private estates. In the first place, some progressive hacendados had
accepted the principle that medium-sized units were the best to guarantee
agricultural prosperity. For example, the hacienda of San Jacinto in the
small state of Aguascalientes, between Guanajuato and Zacatecas, was leased
in lots to a number of farmers, and the experiment was successful.21
Secondly, a vague fear of revolution or, at least, of an agrarian reform was
spreading among the landowning classes. The first attempt at a redistribu-
tion of land had been made by Francisco Garcia, the Liberal governor of
Zacatecas, in I828-35. Garcia conceived the idea of buying land by the state
government and of granting it to landless peasants; with this purpose, he
acquired the hacienda of Valparaiso, to which reference has already been
made, then considered to be the most important hacienda in the state.22
Garcia, however, was deposed in I835 by the Conservative president Santa
Anna, and the parcelling of Valparaiso was finally carried out in a different
way, a generation later, as already described.
Garcia himself remained an isolated figure in his time, but the situation
21 Francisco Pimentel, La economia politica aplicada a la propriedad territorial de M6xico

(I865), included in his Obras Completas (5 vols., Mexico City, I903-4), II, 228.
22 Diccionario Universal de Historia
y Geografia (7 vols. and 3 appendixes, Mexico City,
1853-6), appendix 3.

Division of Mexican Haciendas during LiberalRevolution, 1856-I862 35.
changed in I847 as a result of the war with the United States. Social unrest
was spreading in the country, as the agrarian revolt in the Sierra Gorda in
the states of San Luis Potosi, Guanajuato and Queretaro testifies. Even
though this uprising and other revolts were suppressed, they made respon-
sible Mexicans ponder on the future of their country and on the ways to
prevent a social revolution. For example, Luis de la Rosa, a Liberal of
Zacatecas, who had been active in his youth under Francisco Garcia, wrote
that the basic cause of the calamities that befell the nation was a bad distri-
bution of landownership, that large landowners had a duty to sell land for
the foundation of new settlements and villages and, further, that if he were
elected state governor, he would set other hacendados an example by grant-
ing under emphyteusis and in lots most of his own propertiesin Zacatecas.23
De la Rosa died in 1856, never having been governor of Zacatecas, but he
might well have discharged his promise for the following reason: judging
by their location, his four estates were not very productive. The district was
known for the manufacture of a 'firewater 'distilled from wild agave plants,
not for its agriculture, and it obviously needed a larger population. This
might well explain the favourable terms offered by de la Rosa to those wish-
ing to colonize his lands. As late as I889, one of the four haciendas was
known not for its farming but for its modern distillery.24
Various projects for agrarian reform were discussed in the Constitutional
Congress of I856, but they were all rejected. The following act of the
Congress, however, was important: in 1853, the Conservative regime had
prohibited the transformation of haciendas into villages without the consent
of the landowners concerned, and the Congress repealed this prohibition in
May I856.25Probably encouraged by this decree, on 7 November 1857, the
governor of Guanajuato ordered the transformation of the hacienda of El
Jaral into a village, though he specified an indemnity or an 'arrangement'
with the proprietor.26Actually, one square league-I7.6 square kilometres-
with its centre on the plaza of El Jaral, was to be divided between the local
people. However, as the plaza was near the hacienda buildings and these
were surrounded by the most valuable parts of the property, the decree
meant, in fact, the destruction of the estate. Oddly enough, El Jaralwas the
23 Observacionessobre la administracion publica del Estado de Zacatecas (Baltimore, I85I),

pp. 5-Io.
24 Jose A. y Bonilla, Memoria sobre la
agricultura y sus productos en el Estado de Zacatecas
(Zacatecas, I889), pp. 134 and 144.
25 M. Dublan
y J. M. Lozano (eds.), Legislacion mexicana o coleccion completa de las dispo-
siciones legislativas expedidas desde la independencia de la repriblica(58 vols., Mexico City,
I876-I912), vii, i85.
26 Decretos
expedidos por el Congreso Constituyentedel Estado libre y soberano de Guanajuato
en los aios de 1857 a I86I (Guanajuato, I86i), p. 25.

36 Jan Bazant
only large private property attacked in such a way in Guanajuato. The

explanation may lie in the fact that its proprietor was the former Marques
del Jaral de Berrio, one of the best-known descendants of the colonial aristo-
cracy, and hence an easy target for Liberal attacks. This was nothing new:
for example, he had headed the long list of citizens who were subjected to a
forced loan decreed by the Liberal Government at the end of I846.27And,
although in 1857, a member of the former nobility was singled out, it was
evident that the attack could be then turned against other large landowners.
But the civil war broke out before the decree could be implemented, and in
I86I the Liberals of Guanajuato were busy nationalizing and selling Church
properties. El Jaral was saved. On the other hand, the Liberals of Aguasca-
lientes, that little state which had belonged to Zacatecas until I835, attacked
large landed estates precisely in 1861. A decree signed by the governor on 17
August established a heavily progressive and practically confiscatory tax on
large rural properties.28
It is true that none of these projects came into effect, but they were suffi-
ciently serious to cause apprehension in the minds of the propertied people.
It is small wonder that some hacendados were offering their estates for sale
and, as rich people were unwilling to pay the full value for an estate, the
hacienda owners sold them in fractions.
Up to this time, the splitting-up of haciendas was hampered by mortgage
contracts which prohibited mortgagors from making any changes with
regard to the property so long as the debt was unredeemed and until all the
interest was paid.29 Now, by the middle of the nineteenth century, almost
all landed estates were mortgaged-not always for large amounts-and
their redemption seemed illusory. The Liberal Revolution of 1855 changed
the situation completely. Lerdo de Tejada took the first step with his law of
disentailment on 25 June I856. Under article 22 of that law, buyers of both
urban and rural corporate real estate were authorized to parcel it out in as
many portions as they deemed fit, despite the opposition of the mortgagee.
No doubt, this article made possible the splitting-up of some clerical
haciendas in Guanajuato in I856 and 1857, as has been described above.
During the civil war of 1858-60, the Liberal Government proposed to
broaden the scope of Lerdo's law. In its general manifesto to the nation of
7 July I859, the government recognized the need for a division of landed
property, but it also stated that such redistribution should take place as a
27 Dublan y Lozano, Legislacion mexicana, v, 214.
28 Exposicidn que elevan al soberano Congreso de la Unidn varios proprietarios,pidiendo la
insubsistenciade la llamada ley agraria que se publicd en el Estado de Aguascalientesel 17
de agosto-ltimo (Mexico City, I86I).
29 Costeloe, Church Wealth in Mexico, pp. 92 and ioo.

Division of Mexican Haciendas during LiberalRevolution, I856-I862 37
long-term development and as a result of economic and population growth.

The government promised to issue as soon as possible a law to permit the
parcelling of rural estates, and it fulfilled its promise on 6 February I86I,
little more than one month after the decisive defeat of the Conservative
army. The new law specified that owners of both nationalized and private
real estate might divide it, even against the wishes of the mortgagee. The
tax of 5 per cent of the value of the sale was abolished in the case of sales of
divided properties.30Clearly, this was helpful in making sales involving
hacienda lots attractive. In El Bajio and its surroundings, at least, the
nationalization and sale of ecclesiasticalproperties, combined with their divi-
sion, was accompanied by a partition of some private estates into smaller
units, thereby strengthening, in the districts where it took place, the middle
strata of society.
30 L. G. Labastida, Coleccion de leyes, decretos, reglamentos, circulares, ordenes y acuerdos

relativos a la desamortizaci6n de los bienes de corporaciones civiles y religiosas y a la
nacionalizacion de los que administraronlas ultimas (Mexico City, I893), p. 68.


The Division of Some Mexican Haciendas During The Liberal Revolution 1856 1862 Jan Bazant

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The Division of Some Mexican Haciendas during the Liberal Revolution, 1856-1862

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