The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's RecordBartlett, Paul Alexander
History
The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record
Bartlett, Paul Alexander
Bartlett, Paul Alexander, 1909-1990; Haciendas -- Mexico -- Pictorial works; Haciendas in art
Villa raided most of the northern states. His armed forces sometimes
had an international character with a menagerie of professional
adventurers: Tom Mix, Pascual Orozco, Óscar Creighton, Guiseppe
Garibaldi, Tracy Richardson, and Hector Worden, the first American
barnstormer to participate in armed hostilities. Villa, as military
governor of Chihuahua, stripped the fourteen haciendas of the Terrazas
family, haciendas totaling 17 million acres. His cronies hanged
Terrazas until he revealed where cash was concealed.
Both Villa and Zapata were known as "horse bandits"--through robbery
they financed their troops or buried their loot for tomorrow. Sonorans
and Chihuahuans winked at the _entierros_ (loot) they concealed in
Sierra Madre caves. Villa and Zapata commanded thousands--killed
thousands.
Reed, in his book _Insurgent Mexico_, describes the fighting at the
Hacienda Santa Clara:
Massed columns of the army halted and began to defile to the left
and right, thin lines of troops jogging out under the checkered sun
and shade of great trees, until six thousand men were spread in one
single front ... Bugles blared faintly far and near and the army
moved forward in a mighty line.... In the center, came the cannon
car; beside that Villa rode with his staff....
From Reed's reports, we learn that haciendas were headquarters for
insurgents. Men were stationed at the Hacienda la Cadena: Maderistas
slept on the tiled floor of the patio, saddles, bridles, sabers,
rifles, and ammunition against the wall, dirty blanket rolls in a
corner.
Reed writes:
Sheep were baaing to be let out of the corral; little knots of
peons were gathered in front of the hacienda, pointing. A little
running horse appeared on the rim, headed our way. He was going at
a furious speed, dipping and rising over the rolling land. As he
spurred wildly up the little hill, where we stood, we saw a horror.
A fan-shaped cascade of blood poured from the front of him. The
lower part of his mouth was shot away. He reined up beside the
Colonel and tried earnestly, terribly, to tell him something; but
nothing intelligible issued from the ruin. Tears poured down the
poor fellow's cheeks. He gave a hoarse cry and driving spurs deep
into his horse, fled.
One after another, haciendas disappeared in flames or were pillaged and
left to rot into windowless, doorless, roofless buildings. Trainloads
of connoisseur furniture and irreplaceable antiques were sold or
forsaken. A squatter, with no home of his own, claimed a room or two,
patched the roof, and blocked a doorway with adobes. Cattle were fed
and watered in the patio. Overnight, abandoned mill and refinery
machinery was stripped and sold. The revolutionaries had stolen the
horses, the thoroughbreds, the mules, donkeys, oxen, and cattle.
Phaetons, buggies, wagons, and cars had vanished. Poverty moved in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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