The hacienda, called Hacienda Cuautotolapan, in La Gloria looms over the end of the main street.
We were standing on the corner of the street across from the hacienda when Jim took this. You can see people going in the small door in the wall at the left. This is because the main courtyard of the hacienda, now a playing field, is also enormous enough to serve as a landing field for a helicopter and everyone wanted to see the helicopter to take off.
(Jim's picture)
A crowd of government people was waiting. This time the only person of note visiting La Gloria was the secretary of the state Department of Health. We wondered if they would in fact in the face of such tempestuous wind. But they did. Below, my picture, seen through my lens cover which would not open all the way.
Still, you get the idea.
Below are some shots of the hacienda taken by Jim (my lens cover no funcionó.)
Part of the exterior wall.
Inside, looking at the exterior wall of the original chapel.
A crop planted in a courtyard. Note the stack of corn stalks at the right rear of the planted area.
The tower of the new capilla de San Francisco peeking over a hacienda wall.
The front of the old hacienda church.
The hacienda is now the property of the federal government. After we left the hacienda grounds, we came upon two of the women we'd walked with earlier, a mother and daughter. They were dueñas of a small tienda and they offered us bottles of wonderfully cold water. We asked about the hacienda, and they immediately called in el dueño. He was interested in the history and happy to share some of it. First, he told us that his bisabuela had had a tienda actually inside the hacienda at one point that people in and outside the hacienda shopped in. He also told us that during the Revolution of 1910, the hacenderos added to the original towers to make a total of nine, if I remember correctly, to repel an attack by the Federales who were out to seize rich people's lands. He said that five hundred horsemen came to try to take it over, but they failed. Finally, the government set up a siege which finally drove the owners away.
I googled Hacienda Cuautotolapan and could not find very much. I did find some interesting information, however. It seems that there is also a Hacienda Cuautopolan and a town called La Gloria along the coast. Perhaps this was the first site, or maybe not: I don't know. The coastal La Gloria's hacienda was sold to an English firm at some point and was (and still may be) a sugar plantation. The La Gloria of the dry mountains where we were existed at least as far back as the middle of the 19th century because Ignacio de la Llave, for whom the state whose full name is Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave commemorates, vacationed there as a young man. La Llave grew up with the Revolution of 1810, the one fought for independence from Spain, and its consequences and was a leader in his state and in the country.
There is a town called Cuautotolapan not to far from La Gloria. It's quite small -- around 1500 people -- and it is an ejido, that is, comprised of land distributed by the federal government to ordinary people when haciendas were seized. Land distributed for ejidos was not always the land right at the hacienda Our colonia Ursulo Galván was created in this way: a hacienda was seized and land promised to the people who worked on it. However, according to my neighbor, the hacendero was a powerful man, so he got to keep his land and the govenment gave the workers land where we now live, some distance from the original place.
I asked him how the hacienda made its money. Gold, he said. And waved off in the direction of some hills. The mines are exhausted, of course, but you can still go in them, and sometimes he does. He mentioned that turistas came with metal detectors to go through themine and the hacienda, but although a long time ago someone found a real treasure trove, only very occasionally in recent years has anyone found anything like a centenario, a gold coin, worth keeping, and that even more occasionally as the years go by.
The dueño of the tienda who told us all this said there was an archive in La Gloria we could look at the next time we came.
Next post (up): A bit more of La Gloria