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Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and the Problemof Credits to
Hacienda Labourers
Arij Ouweneel
Rural History / Volume 8 / Issue 01 / April 1997, pp 21 - 54DOI:
10.1017/S0956793300001126, Published online: 31 October 2008
Link to this article:
http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0956793300001126
How to cite this article:Arij Ouweneel (1997).
Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and the Problem of Credits
toHacienda Labourers. Rural History, 8, pp 21-54
doi:10.1017/S0956793300001126
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Rural History (1997) 8, 1, 21-54. Copyright 7997 Cambridge
University Press 21
Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage andthe Problem of Credits to
HaciendaLabourers
ARIJ OUWENEEL
IntroductionThe transition to modern, capitalist agriculture is
usually marked by the replacementof traditional forms of farm
service by a free labour market based on short-term contractsand
cash payments. This process is often described in terms like
'pauperisation' and'proletarianisation'. But, of course,
proletarianisation is not an inevitable consequenceof the rise of
day-labouring in capitalist agriculture; a point emphasized, for
example,with particular reference to eighteenth-century Scotland by
Alex Gibson and AlastairOrr.' Contrary to much of southern England,
where the forces of production developedrather fast, in Scotland
traditional forms of farm service survived largely intact well
intothe nineteenth century despite the development of capitalist
agriculture. As late as 1861over 60 per cent of the total
agricultural work-force in some Scottish regions wereservants on
long hires as opposed to day-labourers. Hired by the term or year,
theagricultural servants were not subject to the seasonal
unemployment which characterisedday-labouring. Paid largely in
kind, they were protected from the worst excesses of avolatile
grain market; and, being provided with at least some land on which
to growsubsistence crops, they were able to enjoy a relatively good
standard of living.
The amount of work being undertaken by day-labourers on the
Scottish estate ofBuchanan did not involve the central tasks of
agriculture. Sowing, ploughing, threshingand so on were carried out
by resident servants, who were specialists in husbandry,perhaps
more akin to craftsmen in their skill than to labourers. Each
servant, contractedby the year, had his cottage rent-free, granted
by the estate in exchange for his or his
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22 Arij Ouweneel
wife's labour, and received a yearly wage. But, although a large
part of this wage wasaccounted for in money by the year, it was
actually paid over in kind weekly. Whateverseasonal labour was
needed was also drawn from a pool of resident cottagers,
whichmaintained itself in ways other than by labouring for the
estate. The day-labourers didsimple work: ditching, dyking and
draining. The general turnover of these day-labourersfrom one year
to the next was bound to be great on the estate of Buchanan. In the
earlyeighteenth century, for example, a total of 118 different men
were employed asday-labourers. The Scottish historical geographer
Alex Gibson calculated that eachday-labourer would have been able
to find work for only 79 days; a few days each year.By the last
quarter of the eighteenth century a quite fundamental change in the
characterof the unskilled labour market occurred. Now most of this
work on the estate was beingdirected towards a relatively small
group of men. During the period 1772-83 only 13men appeared in each
years' wage-accounts; work for an average of 276 days per man!These
wage-earners came to be totally dependent on this work. The
opportunities forthe day-labourers had improved from seasonal to
permanent employment; a new labourdemand originating from
infrastructural improvements which simply meant moreditching,
draining and dyking. Notwithstanding this, sowing, ploughing,
threshing andso on continued to be carried out by resident
servants.
Any Mexicanist who is at home in modern hacienda research would
recognise thecolonial agricultural servants in this short
description and despite some importantdifferences with southern
England, which are left aside, the process is clear. What
hadhappened in day-labouring in Scotland was, first, the separation
of employers fromemployed by the gradual abolition of farm service,
second, the substitution of moneywages for payment in kind, and,
third, the replacement of annual labour contracts byshort-term
weekly or daily engagements. But, recognising this, the new,
smaller groupof day-labourers was nevertheless paid substantially
in kind as well, had a regular, almost'guaranteed', annual working
year of about 280 days, and cultivated some, rented,subsistence
plots. 'If it was proletarianization', writes Gibson, 'it was not,
at least atBuchanan, accompanied by any obvious or immediate
deterioration in living standards'.2
In contrast to the rest of England, the improvement for a small
group of day-labourersled, paradoxically, to a much reduced demand
for day-labourers in general. There wasno longer any need to rely
on the occasional labour of cottagers who had lived incommunities
near the estate and their position must have become very precarious
indeed.And these deprived cottagers, I repeat, are not to be
confused with the resident servants.
Capitalism thus could leave a traditional mechanism in tact
while transforming it atthe same time. More than half a century ago
the French historian Marc Bloch wrote afew sentences which could be
applied directly to this problem. With reference to theFrench
medieval manoir he concluded in the first place: 'The manor in
itself has noclaim to a place among the institutions which we call
feudal'.3 A little further on headded: 'When the relationships
truly characteristic of feudalism fell into decay the manorlived
on, but with different characteristics; it became more territorial,
more purelyeconomic'. For decades, Latin American historiography
lacked the finesse which Blochdisplayed in his analysis of France,
or Gibson recently in his analysis of Scotland. TheLatin American
service tenants like inquilinos (Chile), yanaconas (Peru), or
gananes
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 23
(Mexico) would have provided virtually free labour for the
landlord in return for a plotof land for subsistence farming; the
main characteristic of labour conditions being 'theextra-economic
extraction of the surplus from the producers by the feudal lords'.4
Andindeed, on Mexican peon life, such stories abound. One was told
by the Americanjournalist Harry Carr in the early 1930s. The word
hacienda, he wants us to believe, isa word that with great gusto
has been ushered into the English language.5 Somewherein Western
Mexico he met a certain Nicolas and asked him about the history of
this oldinstitution. Nicolas just snickered. Real estate agents
announced haciendas with tiledbathrooms and breakfast nooks and
Nicolas thought this was very funny. Then the humbleMexican
explained that an hacienda was not a house. It was an estate, more
especiallya great farm in active operation. It must be working to
be an hacienda. In the 1930s aMexican like Nicolas would even have
protested when one called cattle-ranches haciendas.The meaning of
the word implied activity, doing, working. An hacienda was an
enterprise.
But entering hacienda country Carr felt like slipping back into
the Middle Ages. Heobserved that the hacendados - as the owners of
haciendas were called - ruled like ancientbarons in their castles.
Carr asked one of them how many acres were on his estate.
Thecharming and courteous old gentleman seemed embarrassed: he
really did not know.He had a lot of workers, the peones, but did
not know how many. They had been longon the estate. It was not
uncommon, he affirmed, to find a cowboy spurring his broncowith
rowels of embossed silver which his father and his grandfather and
his grandfather'sfather wore as vaqueros before him. All the peons
lived with their families together ina little village on the
estate. It must have been this little farm town, Carr supposed,
withits sleepy streets and adobe houses, that made Nicolas a little
homesick, for he had livedin just such a place in the mountains.
But he told his American friend also of an haciendawhich employed
more than five thousand peons. So those villages were not always
little,Carr concluded.
The hacienda was not a paradise. Mexico was to Carr a land of
tragedy and tears aswell as gaiety and song. Around every peon hut
hung the suggestion of dark memories,of battle against the
harassments of rural life and of death. Infant mortality among
thepeons was dreadful. The children of the poor faded away like
little flowers. They werecalled angels. Carr knew why. It was a
reflection upon the sorrow and hardship of thecruel life of the
peons that the death of a child was always made the occasion of at
leastpretended rejoicing - the little soul was admitted to heaven
without having to endurethe sufferings of life. It was so sombre
that even the oxen suffered the cruelty of life,with the yokes
fixed on a painsome way. Instead of the heavy yoke that should
havegone over the necks of the animals, the Mexicans fastened the
pole of the wagon to astraight wooden pole, to which the horns of
the oxen were tightly lashed with thongsof rawhide: neither ox
could move his head and the whole weight of the load came tothe two
animals' heads. There are other stories in Carr's book. Mexican
mule-driverswere proud to urge their animals by picturesque and
colorful language. They thoughtthat mules were especially sensitive
to the inspiration that came from swear words. Theox-drivers
twisted the tails of their teams. Carr came across one ox-driver
who inducedhis beasts to impossible feats of strength by biting
their tails with his teeth. 'To an oxthere seems to be something
especially inspiring about being bitten on the tail'.
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24 Arij Ouweneel
A British civil and mining engineer, Reginald Enock, had written
about the haciendaand the peon in much the same way. His book on
Mexico was first published in 1909and contains the
pre-revolutionary image.6 The peon was not necessarily a
forcedlabourer, he thought, although the conditions of his life
were such that the peon wasnot a free agent as the working men in
England or the United States were. The peonwas paid in goods which
he was obliged to purchase in the general store of the
hacienda,belonging to the proprietor or by someone licensed by him.
It was a species of 'truck'system. High prices and short weight in
accordance with the business principlesunderlying such systems -
generally accompanied these dealings. Moreover, as the peonwas
often granted supplies in advance, against future wages, he was
generally in debtto the store, a condition which was, stated Enock,
purposely not discouraged. But thepeon was not unhappy, Enock
believed. 'Men who know no other state are contentedwith their lot,
and the poor Mexican creates matters of pastime in his simple
life.' Theengineer referred to bull-fights, horse-racing,
cock-fighting, together with dancing andthe consumption of
impressive amounts of liquor.
The classical picture of the peon's life seems to be clear:
harsh labour conditions,labourers imported to the premises by
force, restriction of the labourers' mobility, anddebts providing a
legal basis for coercion. For almost the entire past century, the
peonswere seen as chattel slaves. It was thought that such slavery
belonged to the colonialheritage of Mexico and could be modelled as
typical for colonialism in general. But inthe 1960s
reinterpretation occurred. Since then, peonage has been seen as an
improvementcompared to earlier colonial forms of labour systems.7
According to one recent observer,Mexican peonage embraced two
forms: one coercive, according to the conventionalleyenda negra,
the other voluntary, in that market pressures rather than
'extra-economiccoercion' underpinned it. The second form appears to
have been the more common incolonial Mexico, hence the designation
of 'traditional' peonage. In fact, the 'colonialheritage' includes
modest levels of debts and this for only about half of the
peonpopulation.8 One North American historian, the late Charles
Gibson, even noted relativefreedom among the workers, whose object
was not to escape but to enlarge indebtednessby soliciting cash
advances when they negotiated with future employers.9 John
Tutinoconvincingly argued that during the 1810 Hidalgo Revolt -
supposedly directed againstSpanish rule in Mexico - peons were
predisposed to back the hacienda against therevolutionaries.10 It
follows as well that this form rested upon non-coercive
foundations.But the background of it remains still relatively
under-researched. It is clear thattraditional peonage rested upon
cash advances that were given to attract labour voluntarilyfrom the
indigenous sector to the Spanish. These workers were not enslaved -
as theBlack Legend authors would like us to believe - but induced.
This suggests thatexploitation was economic, as in industrial
capitalism. However, due to the reliance onhacienda accounts,
investigators have shed more light on hacienda marketing
andprofit-maximizing than on the hacienda's internal workings and
its relations of produc-tion.
It is this lack of insight that leaves room for a microscopic
view of the internal workingsof the hacienda. The lack is
obvious'and understandable: the data are scarce. At first,the
picture seems to have been set some years ago when North American
historian Eric
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 25
Van Young introduced his overview on Mexican rural history with
the remark that itwas no accident that his review dealt so heavily
with studies of the hacienda, for thatwas the subject to which most
researchers in the field seemed to have devoted theirefforts." But
nowadays Mexican rural historiography is in a phase of in-depth
study ofindigenous life and culture in native units called pueblos,
even using native languagesources. It is as if historians, standing
in front of the hacienda gate on the edge ofentering the peons'
huts, turned their backs and went to the nearby Indian
villages.This contribution seeks to reconstruct the participation
of eighteenth-century peones inthe labour cycle of the altiplano of
central Mexico. It does so by reviewing the workdone by one group
of labourers employed by one estate in one single year. This
seemsmicrohistory to the extreme. However, because of the state of
research in Mexican ruralhistory, few alternatives could be found.
I realise how difficult it is to enter the peons'huts, but it
should be done from the same perspective as much recent research,
for aboutfifteen per cent of colonial Mexican Indians lived in peon
communities on haciendaterritory.
The RegionThe region of central Mexico was one of four regional
economies of New Spain. These
Michoacan
Guadalajara
regional economies main cities
"/ road systems
Map 1. Four Regional Economies of Eighteen-Century Mexico
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26 Arij Ouweneel
1. Central-Mexico, the hinterland of the cities of Mexico,
Puebla, Toluca, Cholula,Tepeaca, Cuernavaca, and Tlaxcala on the
central altiplano;
2. Michoacan, the mining region of New Spain including the
cities of Valladolid,Guanajuato, San Miguel el Grande, San Luis
Potos, Acambaro, and Queretaro;
3. Oaxaca, including the Mixteca highlands;4. Guadalajara and
its hinterland, including the northern mining enclaves of
Parral
and Zacatecas.
Every regional economy (or region) was characterised by
concentric circles, in whichthe inner circles were marked by high
levels of population concentration, intensiveagriculture, intensive
religious and architectural activity, and the like. If one moved
outtowards the periphery, population levels and economic activities
declined. These fourregional economic entities thus had variegated
internal economies, and were separatedby a dry and mountainous
landscape that was difficult to traverse. Luxury products
andhigh-valued goods were intensively transported and sold colony
wide, but foodstuffs ingeneral were not because of the high
transport costs involved. A true colony-wide marketfor basic
commodity products would not develop because of this. Any detailed,
in-depthstudy of colonial Mexico must limit itself to one of these
four regions, because thedifferences in time, scope, and character
were too great to permit any meaningful analysisof general
themes.
Central-Mexico - I prefer to call it Anahuac'3 - and Oaxaca were
ancient indigenousregions, with many small villages and intensive
local market systems. These villageswere geographically and
economically complemented by relatively small haciendas
thatproduced - with the use of intensive methods - basic nutriments
and industrial rawmaterials (wood, tallow, fat, wool) for the
cities. Anahuac was the most populated regionand contained a high
number of non-Indians as well. Michoacan and Guadalajara
weregenerally much more Hispanicised and did not truly develop
until the mid eighteenthcentury. In both regions, there were few
pueblos de indios or indigenous municipalities,but many rancheros
or small farmers. The haciendas were generally larger and
producedcattle, food, and industrial raw materials for the cities
as well as for the nearby miningenclaves. The integrating element
of the economy of New Spain, cutting across all fourmajor regions,
was the long-distance trade of silver, sheep, cattle, and
repartimientoproducts (basically textiles like cotton cloth,
cochineal, and cattle and mules for theIndians). This trade system
involved finished manufactured goods rather than luxuryarticles
imported from Europe. In short, food markets were highly localised;
it cost onereal a day for a mule to carry a fanega of maize about
twenty-two kilometers.
For the case-study that follows, I will limit my scope to
Anahuac, a complex of 51provinces, which had the highest population
density, the largest cities, and a livelyinternal basic commodity
trade. The region was formed by the three valleys of the
centralhighlands, 2000-2600 metres above sea level. It extends 180
kilometres in an east-westdirection and 160 kilometres in a
north-south direction on the Central Mexican highlands.The valleys
of Toluca in the West, Mexico in the Center and Puebla in the East
wereenclosed by rugged and impenetrable mountains which created a
degree of isolation withrespect to the other regions in the
viceroyalty of New Spain. The mountain area is
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 27
Valleys:1. Toluca2. Mexico3. Puebla
faldas
highland areasbetween2000-1500 metres
Map 2. The Anahuac region
generally referred to as faldas or sierra and although
considerably fewer people livedthere than in the highlands, this
mountain area was economically and socially integratedin the life
of the highlands. It was a densely populated area accommodating
some sixtyper cent of the population of New Spain.
This introduces the question of how many haciendas there were in
colonial Anahuac.The answer is very difficult to find because of
the lack of research. Nevertheless thestatistics on the diffusion
of the population in the intendencies of New Spain in
1820,published by Fernando Navarro y Noriega, are informative.
These intendencies werethe larger administrative units of the
viceroyalty which combined various provinces (firstknown as
alcaldtas mayores, later as subdelegaciones). These statistics,
taken fromapproximately 1810 to 1815, were the most up-to-date
which Navarro could obtain.14Following Navarro, I include the
haciendas and the ranchos as well as the villas andpueblos among
the settlements (see table I).15 In using Navarro's statistics it
should be
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28 Arij Ouweneel
Table 1Haciendas, ranchos, cities and villages in New Spain,
1815 - estimates made by Fernando Navarro y Noriega.
regionAnahuacMichoacanOaxacaGuadalajaratotals
Cities and Villagesno.2270429933363
3995
%56.810.723.39.2
100
%38.814.272.312.4
Haciendasno.15721042
88612
3314
%47.231.52.6
18.5100
%26.934.46.8
21.0
no.20071555269
19435774
Ranchos%34.926.94.6
33.6100
%34512066
.3
.4
.8
.6
no.5849302612902918
13083
totals%44.723.19.9
22.3100
%100100100100
Source: A. Ouweneel, Onderbroken groei in Anahuac. De
ecologische achtergrond van ontwikkeling en armoedeop het
platteland van Centraal-Mexico (1730-1810) Amsterdam, 1989), p.
25.
number: Chalco, Tepeaca, Tlaxcala, Ixtlahuaca
- 35000
- 33000
provinces
Cyoacan
Mexicalcingo
Otumba
Texcoco
Atlixco
HuejotzingoChalco
Tepeaca
Tlaxcala
Ixtahuaca
1720 1790 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1800
Figure 1. Number of tributarios in ten provinces dominated by
haciendas (Anahuac, 1720-1800)
borne in mind that the characterisations of the 'form of
settlement' were constantlychanging and that the statistics are
therefore not very reliable for other periods. All thesame, Navarro
y Noriega calculated 1572 haciendas in Anahuac and some two
thousandranchos. The haciendas counted for about 27 per cent of
settlements in the region.Michoacan, a much larger region, had
about one thousand haciendas, and the two otherregions had
significantly less. Elsewhere I have argued that a lot of ranchos
in Anahuacwere legalised parts of Indian cacicazgos - demesnes of
indigenous lords - and that thesecompeted with Indian
villages.16
A second focus of interest is the demography of the area under
study. I limit mypicture to ten provinces of Anhuac that were
characterised by haciendas: Atlixco, Chalco,
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 29
Coyoacan, Huejotzingo, Ixtlahuaca-Metepec, Mexicalcingo, Otumba,
Tepeaca, Tlaxcalaand Texcoco (see figure 1). Demographic
development is clear: growth in the earlyeighteenth century, then
stagnation and the return of the increase during the latterdecades
of the century. The stagnation was caused by epidemics in the
mid-1730s.Despite the fact that growth was rather impressive after
the 1780s,17 population densitymust have been rather low. Around
1800, some 91,000 adult indigenous men werecounted in those ten
provinces. I estimate a number of 1300 haciendas in those
provinces.With only an estimate of about fifteen per cent of the
indigenous population living onthe haciendas, this means an average
number of 10.5 men per hacienda in that year.Any hacienda needed at
least twice this figure, as I will try to show below. And this
was1800, after a few decades of population growth.
The Hacienda and its PeonsIt is difficult to determine a norm
for the size of the landholdings of the haciendas.There were very
small haciendas, above all in the densely populated areas, and
therewere very large ones in the sparsely populated areas. There
were wheat and maizehaciendas (often small estates in the densely
populated areas), small livestock haciendas(in the neighbourhood of
the densely populated areas) and large livestock haciendas
(inremote areas of colonial Mexico). But there were also sugar
haciendas and coffeehaciendas; the silver mines were connected with
haciendas de beneficio where the silveramalgamation process took
place. There were haciendas which served as stopping places(ventas)
on the large roads, and there were haciendas which were nothing
more thangrazing lands for the beasts of burden or for sheep and
goats during the great trek. Anagricultural hacienda did not always
own the best farming land, and as a general ruleits land would be
no better than that in the villages in the neighbourhood. All the
same,hacienda land was often worth more than that in the villages
because of the irrigationand drainage systems.
Above all, a hacienda had to be profitable, or, at least, not to
cause heavy losses inthe owners' capital stock. This did not
necessarily depend on the hacienda itself, becausethe functioning
of a hacienda within a broader framework played an important part.
Ahacienda which could not exist by itself was used to service a
larger commercial enterprisein which a number of different branches
of activity were represented. Almost all majorhaciendas belonged to
a larger complex. The best known examples are the complexesof the
Jesuits, such as that of the Colegio San Pedro y San Pablo in
Mexico City, whichwas based on the combination of sheep farming and
sugar production, or the ColegioEspiritu Santo in Puebla, which
specialised in handicrafts depending on small livestockfarming
(wool, talcum, soap) and the running of a venta. Most private
entrepreneurscould not compete with the large scale of Jesuit
financial operations - which gave theiroperations a multinational
character - nor with their tax exemptions, but they organisedtheir
complexes along more or less the same lines. There is a major
difference in thefact that the Jesuits confined themselves to the
production of the complex itself (purelyagricultural production),
while the private entrepreneurs combined their haciendas withthe
broader activities of commerce and industry. This alone explains
why it is necessary
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30 Arij Ouweneel
to study hacienda accounts in connection with the accounts of
the larger commercialcompany of an entrepreneurial family. This has
hardly been done so far, probably becausethe accounts of the
merchants have not been preserved intact. At any rate, the
haciendasserved a commercial interest and their place within a
broader complex provided a betterway of spreading the commercial
risks.
Hacendados were motivated by prestige and tradition as well as
by practical economicconsiderations like avoiding losses. Indeed,
some would strive for profits. As a goodentrepreneur, the hacendado
was aware of the commercial potential of his estate. Hetried to
exploit it as much as possible, even though the prospects of a good
result wereimpeded by the unreliable climate, the high costs of
transport, the shortage of financialresources and the burden of
debt. The last two obstacles brought the hacendado intocontact with
the church. Almost all the money he borrowed was lent to him by a
religiousbody; there were no private banks in Spanish America at
this time. However, recentstudies of the provision of loans in the
western Mexican region of Guadalajara suggestthat the church was
losing financial ground in the last decade of the eighteenth
century.The rich families lent money on an increasing scale, and
they were prepared to concedeattractive repayment terms. This
increased the hold of the merchants on the colonialeconomy.'8 The
hacienda economy seems to have expanded towards the end of
thenineteenth century - an increasing influence of the large-scale
agricultural estate on thenational economy although this expansion
did not assume the same form everywhere.A number of haciendas in
Mexico were bought up by immigrants, colonists who werefamiliar
with the modern capitalist economy of Europe. They were most
interested inobtaining a maximum profit per unit of invested
capital. There was no need to producefor export to achieve this
goal; on the contrary, the largest market for the Mexicanhaciendas
was in the rapidly expanding cities. This was why the hacienda was
of littleor no significance in many regions; most haciendas outside
the urban regions were onlylivestock estates.
And precisely because the hacienda was operated for profit, its
labour force had to beas cheap as possible. This was reached by
contracting formally free but actually tiedlabourers. The peons
were kept on the estate by means of debt. It is interesting to
lookat the origins of the word peon. According to Lockhart and
Schwartz:19 'where[this] term came from is not clear since it was
not used during the colonial period, andpeon by itself means just
the opposite, a temporary worker.' This statement is anexpression
of the confusion which still reigns on the relation between
hacienda andlabourers. For example, in the accounts of the colonial
haciendas that I have consultedall the servants are referred to as
peones. These are without exception farmhands orditch-diggers.
In fact, on the wheat-and-maize haciendas in Anahuac, there were
two kinds of Indianpeones: gaiianes, Indians who paid their tribute
to the hacendado, a kind of residentcottager, and tlaquehuales,
Indians who paid their tribute to native village officials. Asfor
the grazing haciendas, particularly those of the Jesuits, a
minority in the region,these estates employed labourers described
in the sources as sirvientes, who belonged tothe non-Indian order.
Paid monthly, they were rarely deeply in debt and had
littleattachment to the estates on which they worked. There are
excellent accounts of labour
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 31
on sugar haciendas in the valley of Cuernavaca by Barrett, von
Wobeser and Van derMeer.20 Until late in the eighteenth century a
large number of the labourers here wereslaves. Slavery is a
separate problem, which I am justified in leaving aside
here.Incidentally, some sugar haciendas switched to contract peones
gananes and peonestlaquehuales as well later in the century. Riley
claims that there was a third group oflabourers besides the gananes
and tlaquehuales: the indios de cuadrilla, groups of
contractworkers who lived in villages and were hired in teams at
peak periods. However,practically all cuadrillas consisted oi
peones tlaquehuales in the documentation that I haveexamined.21
But antiquarian elements live on for a long time. In 1984, the
well-known Italianhistorian Romano still defended older views. He
neglected much research done duringthe 1970s including the
overviews by Katz or Bauer and had the following to sayon the
peones:
PEONES: these, of course, were nominally free workers paid in
cash. But to stop at the name isthe last thing a historian can or
should do. In fact peones were not free: once having entered
intothe work cycle under a lord, they seldom escaped. The system
that created their dependence wassimple: indebtedness. The lord . .
. paid wages in advance: the peon was obliged to buy (or
moreaccurately, to acquire) cloth, foodstuffs, and alcohol from the
lord. Indebtedness was chronic andwas transferred from father to
son.22
It is known that Spanish officials understood free labour to
mean work withoutcompulsion, so that debt did not make a worker
juridically unfree - only in practiceperhaps because it is said to
impair his mobility, and therefore the economic entrapmentof
indebtedness should be understood as involuntary servitude or
peonage. One can findstatements that the peones were trapped into
indebtedness well into our own times.
Work in the FieldsIn a previous publication I tried to encourage
the reader to consider Mexican haciendalabour within its very
limited scope for variation in the process of production.23 In
thehighlands, the fixed schedules limited all possibilities for
variation and rotation. Iillustrated this with a comparison of the
data from surviving records from threeeighteenth-century highland
haciendas; Santa Ana Aragon (near Mexico City, 1767 and1768); San
Antonio Palula (Tlaxcala, 1765-6); and San Nicolas de los Pilares
(Texcoco,17914). Figure 2 is reconstructed with these data and
represents the labour requirementsof a wheat and maize hacienda in
a good year on a four-weekly basis.24 The conclusionwas clear: all
the good years on the three haciendas followed the same
agriculturalcalendar and had the same labour requirements, despite
the differences in period andarea which might be supposed to have
affected the figures. It was difficult to find preciselythe same
data for other haciendas in order to work out a correlation
involving morehaciendas (the data had to be grouped in monthly
periods and spread out over almostthe whole year). Nonetheless, the
accounts of other haciendas, such as those of San JuanXaltipan
(Tlaxcala, 17347) and San Nicolas Buenavista(Mexicalcingo, 1811-12)
suggestthe presence of the same cycle and the same pattern. I think
that the schedules ceteris
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32 Arij Ouweneelnumber of labourers
550
500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
resident labourers
day-labourers
M1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
periods of four weeksJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
Dec
Figure 2. Tentative picture of the average number of labourers
on a Central Mexican wheat-maizehacienda - per period of four
weeks, 18th century.
paribus predict the number of labourers, the number of mandays
and the amount oflabour costs these haciendas would have used. The
limited possibilities meant that therewas no room for extra
employment because of the limits of the agricultural
cycle.Obviously, the beat of the peons' life on the hacienda was
fixed with its labour scheme.I will use some space to describe this
relationship.
The main crops were wheat (for commercial reasons: it was sold
in the urban markets,like Mexico City, Puebla, Pachuca, Veracruz,
and for some time even Havana) and maize(for social reasons: it was
given to the workers as extra wages in the form of rations).The
agricultural year of wheat culture usually began with the
preliminary ploughing ofthe fields where the new wheat crop was to
be sown. The ploughing of adjoining fieldsmust have been an
impressive spectacle, as numbers of ox teams ploughed the
fields,each with a ploughman and a boy who followed to remove
stones. The haciendas hadvarious fields which were each prepared in
a deliberate order according to a fixed pattern.Tilling was done by
oxen. There are reports of hacienda managers and even peasantsfrom
the pueblos who used mules for ploughing, but these must have been
exceptions.The use of oxen has an important economic advantage: it
does not cost much to feedthem. The production of large quantities
of fodder for mules or horses was an expensivebusiness in New
Spain. The tempo of the oxen helped to determine the number
oflabourers required. A carga de sembradura (a good 3j has.), the
usual sowing unit for awheat field, usually meant one day's work
for 15 to 20 yokes of oxen, i.e. an average of0.2 has. per yoke per
day. The energy of the animals declined in the course of
theploughing period. At the start of the period, when the oxen had
been given fodder
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 33
intensively, they could work 0.4 has. per day with ease, but
after two or three weekstheir performance dropped to less than
half. It was sometimes necessary to compensatefor this by putting
more ox teams to work.25
Almost without exception the wheat was sown in the winter. This
meant thatpreparations for irrigation had to be made during
ploughing. The fields were irrigatedwhen necessary: when there was
a risk of night frost, drought, and during the periodof budding and
maturation of the ears. The number of servants who could be set
towork on the land depended on the type of soil. Heavy soils were
ploughed more thanonce, while once was enough for light soils.
Since the haciendas usually had damp soilsand were situated near
the banks of lakes and rivers, this was an extra disadvantage
inaddition to the work of having to make drainage channels. The
fields on these haciendashad to be ploughed more than once, both
lengthwise and crosswise (called fierros in theaccounts). This took
up more man-days than on the few haciendas which were not soclose
to the river banks. Ploughing on the various plots of land could go
on untilDecember, but by then the time had come for sowing.
Sometimes sowing started in onecorner of the fields while another
corner was still being ploughed. The wheat wasploughed in with a
harrow soon after sowing. Once this process had been finished,
thewheat fields were left alone for months. Sometimes a manager
would order a few servantsto weed the plots, but this was not
common.26
Soon after the rainy season was over in October or November,
preparative works forirrigation began. Two to three peons performed
this task until the rainy season returnedin the first days of May.
Irrigation was stopped barely two weeks before reaping wasdue to
begin so that the crop could dry. (May is the hottest month of the
year.) Thiswas a critical period for the hacienda management, which
determined whether the earsof wheat would be properly dry or of
inferior quality because of a premature onset ofthe rainy season.
Once the sign for harvesting had been given, available
day-labourerswere rapidly contracted in the surrounding Indian
townships to carry out the harvestas quickly as possible. The
migrant labourers and a foreman jointly decided on howmuch each
labourer would reap. The work was agreed upon for a specific sum,
and thecontractor - a cacique from a pueblo (a cacique was an
indigenous chief, recognized bythe Spanish Crown as a noble) -
often decided how many days the job would take. Therewere 88
reapers at work on the Hacienda San Antonio Palula on 4 June 1766,
allday-labourers or so-called tlaquehuales.27 Threshing was not
done until the ensuingwinter, when the rainy season was over and
the north winds caused a brief disruptionto the calm weather in
February and March. The time of the wheat harvest was the onlytime
when day-labourers were used. The servants who lived on the
hacienda were usedat all other times. My investigations lead to the
conclusion that each hacienda had anaverage of 15 to 20 permanent
servants, plus their wives and children, who providedadditional
labour. In fact, the number of permanent servants remained constant
on eachhacienda throughout the year. In this respect, the only
exception was the wheat harvest.
The method used in the ploughing of the maize-field, called
milpas, was similar tothat of wheat. However, the milpas required
more labour power than the wheat fieldsdid. The servants worked on
the various milpas of the hacienda in accordance with afixed
schedule. Maize production was an expensive business for the
hacendado: the
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34 Arij Ouweneel
profit was less than that from wheat, while the costs were
higher. For example, therevenue from maize in cash terms was 31 per
cent of the total income of the HaciendaSan Antonio Palula in the
year 1765-6, while the income from wheat was 59^ per centof the
total. Maize accounted for 29 per cent of the costs of production,
as against 25per cent for wheat.28 Rural sociologist Simon Miller
has demonstrated that it was preferredpractice to leave maize
cultivation up to sharecroppers in the nineteenth century,29
butthis practice had not set in yet in the eighteenth century. In
general the haciendasproduced their own maize, although there are
examples of production by sharecroppers.30
The first ploughing or barbecho of the milpas was carried out in
December and January,sometimes after a single preliminary ploughing
in September. The fields were irrigatedduring the barbecho. The
sowing must not have been carried out too soon. Prematuresowing
entailed the risk that weeds, which immediately started growing
after lightshowers, would spread to such an extent that the land
would have to be weeded duringsowing. Besides, it might be too cold
in February or March. Maize needs 'the warm,moist conditions of
summer', as Wilken puts it.31 The sowers were servants who
madeholes in the furrows at regular intervals with the digging
sticks (coas). Four or five seedswere put in each hole. Most
haciendas had selected the seed, and they sold some of itto other
hacendados at a price approximately fifty per cent above the usual
price formaize in the region. The sowers were usually followed by a
yoke of oxen, which madea furrow alongside the seed drills for
drainage purposes. Sowing usually occurred inMarch; with ox-herds,
managed by men and assisted by boys.
Milpa planting was rather intensive, but the really intensive
part began after the sowingwas over. Under favourable weather
conditions the seed started to sprout after three orfour days,
along with the weeds. Ground had to be piled up around the rapidly
growingstalks of the plants to ensure a good harvest, since this
gave them enough stability towithstand strong gusts of wind in the
rainy season. Weeds, particularly grasses, had tobe eradicated.
This was done a few weeks later to avoid damaging the young
maizeplants and because there was some work to be done in sowing
the other plots of land.Yokes of oxen were led past the drills in
the milpas during the works to raise the soilrapidly and
efficiently. By comparison with the milpas of the villagers,32 this
kind ofcultivation in drills, with yokes of oxen walking between
the plants, did not make full useof the area available. Individual
labourers walked behind these yokes of oxen to stampthe ground down
around the stalks and to remove the weeds. The piling up of earth
tookplace in April, May and June, starting with those milpas which
had been sown first.
Once again, all the activities carried out during this busy
period were the exclusivetasks of men and boys who lived on the
hacienda. The situation was different during aspecial task in June
and July, for which hardly any of the resident farmhands were
used.This was a job for some ten to fifteen day-labourers. When the
maize started to flowerjust before the first summer rains, it was
time to pile up the earth firmly round the stalksagain, remove the
weeds, get rid of caterpillars and insects, and to bind the stalks
togetherto prevent them from breaking and to prevent the ears of
corn from falling on the ground.The binding was done by three or
four resident hands on the hacienda. They also keptan eye on the
migrant labourers. By now the maize plants stood in a firm ridge of
earth.There was a deep furrow between the rows of plants to drain
the large quantities of rain
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 35
water which fell on the milpas. As mentioned earlier, this was
the most critical period,because the plants did not reach full
maturity if the rains were slow in coming. TheJune-July tasks were
done by seasonal workers and more or less coincided with thewheat
harvest. Afterwards there was no more work for migrant labourers on
the haciendas.As soon as the last task was done, a few milperos or
milpa-guards were appointed towatch the field against roaming
cattle, passing mule trains and robbers. In fact, themilperos kept
up their watch over the fields until the last corn cobs had been
pluckedin January or February. I have found no migrant labourers
during the maize harvest.Once the maize had dried properly after a
few months in the warm winter sun and themarket price was
favourable, the hacienda servants were given the signal to begin
theharvest. There was no need to do the job as quickly as in the
case of the wheat harvest,for the latter had to be completed just
before the outbreak of the rainy season.
Some AccountsThe shortage of labour was the major problem facing
the hacendados. In the first place,it was the result of the success
of the indigenous economy, which had ensured plentyof work in the
villages for a long time.33 In the second place, and this was above
all trueof the valley of Puebla, the shortage was the result of the
migration of the small farmersfrom the pueblos to the villages and
towns in the western areas of Anahuac and in thefaldas.34 The
hacendados tried above all to hold on to the gafianes on their
haciendas,although Spanish legislation stood in their way. It was
not debt but assets which werethe main instrument at their
disposal: labourers who still had wages due to them wouldnot leave
a hacienda so quickly. So, to answer Romano provisionally, peonage
did notentail economic entrapment by debts, but by assets and then
only if the workers preferredto stay at the estate to await their
payment.
The precision of the business administration of the hacendados
offers insight into thequestions of how much each labourer had
worked, what his wages had been, and howmany items he had asked for
in kind. These details were recorded both in the haciendaaccounts
and in separate labour records (libros de rayas). The latter
operated like a labourcontract. The books were balanced once a
year, at Easter, to arrive at a final credit ordebit figure. If
there was a credit, the peon had the right to back pay of his
wages; ifthere was a debit, it had to be paid off. The peones were
bound to their labour contract,although they could leave before
expiry if they did not have any debts. In the event ofrunaways
search parties were organised. Servants were not sold; the debt
could betransferred to another hacienda, but only at the request of
the peones themselves. Thesepractices resemble the contracts and
transfers of modern European soccer players, whodespite their
wealth are not allowed to leave a club during their contract
period; eventhough they may be involved with major conflicts with
the manager and all the otherplayers in the team. This comparison
between an Indian peon and a European soccerplayer is not as absurd
as it may seem: the peones too had a relatively higher standardof
living than the indios in the pueblos.33
Some examples of the peones accounts have been published. With a
few exceptions,examination of these sources indicates that the
debts of the gananes were not high. Buta closer look at some of the
exceptions provides a good way of understanding the working
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36 Arij Ouweneel
of the system. Examples of peculiar indebedness include:
1. A young ganan who had started a family not long before and
had incurred largeexpenses in setting up his cottage, paying for
the wedding, etc; he had receivedmainly household items on
credit.
2. A ganan with an important position in the social hierarchy of
the community ofpeones (for example, there were members of
sodalities like cofradios and hermandadeson the haciendas), had
received mainly sheep, goats, drink and large quantities ofmaize
for celebrations. In many cases a high debt on the hacienda was a
sign of thehigher social prestige of the peon concerned.
This distinction emerges clearly from the following two
accounts. The first concernsthe ganan Salvador Santiago, and was
published by Gonzalez Sanchez.3(1 The accountconsisted of the
following items (the figures have been rounded off in whole
reales):
Debt from the previous account: 338Credit: -222- loan from the
hacienda 11
to hold a party 131meat 4
- reales for the Festival of the Dead 10- ditto for Easter 5-
ditto for carnival 12- ditto for Christmas 30- ditto for confession
4
church tithe (advance payment) 3- tribute (advance payment)
12Wages: 9 months @ 3p4 per month +252
Debt: -308
This labourer thus had a debt amounting to eleven months' wages.
He asked credits forholding some parties. The account of the ganan
Marcos Antonio, taken from the samesource, was as follows:
Debt from the previous account 57Credit: -176
- reales for the hacienda party 55-
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 37
reales5 5 -5 0 -4 5 -403 5 -
I 30-! 25 -
20 -15-10-5 -
- 0 -
i -10-
s --20 --25
Hacienda Quimichucan
22 gananes
credits: 24p1 average: 4p2debts: 216p2 average: 13p4
r
reales75 "70 -6 5 "6 0 "55 "5 0 "4 5 "
4 0 - 35 - 30"
2 5 -2 0 -15 -10-5 -0 -
x5 ' 1 0 "0) -15 -
-20 --25
o
Hacienda Santiago
31 gananes
credits: 22p5 average: 4p4debts: 485p2 average: 18p4
13 tu
Figure 3. Debt profiles of the labourers of the Haciendas
Quimichucan (1762) and Santiago(1778) in the province of Tlaxcala -
in pesos.
This servant could ask the hacendado for these 19 reales at the
Easter accounting or tobegin the new agricultural year with a
credit. The accounts well illustrate which expensesthe servants
allowed themselves. The family expenses of Marcos Antonio
consistedmainly of the costs of church services, a baptism
celebration and clothing.
Two hacienda debt profiles have been drawn up in figures 3 and 4
in order to set suchindividual cases within a context. Each column
stands for the extent of a credit or debtin pesos per ganan of the
hacienda concerned (1 peso = 8 reales). I agree with Herbert
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38 Arij Ouweneel
Hacienda Temalacayuca
37 gafianes
credits: 2094p7 aver: 4p2debts: 8p1 aver.: 4p
reales3 0 -
2 20-
o --10-
-20 -
-30 -
-40 -
-50 -
-60 -
-70-
-80 -
-90-
-100-
Hacienda Ocotzocuautla
u
18 gafianes
credits: 546p6 average: 16p1debts: 3p
Figure 4. Debtprofilesof the labourers of the Haciendas
Temalacayuca (1770) and Ocotzocuautla(1752) in the province of
Tlaxcala - in pesos.
Nickel's assumption that the debts of the labourers were low on
the whole and that theycould be paid off within a few months. The
examples that I have presented were chosenat random and many more
similar cases could be added. They are taken from fourhaciendas in
the province of Tlaxcala. Two are examples of haciendas where most
ofthe labourers were in debt, while the other two are examples of
haciendas where mostof the labourers had money owing to them.37
More than 75 per cent of the labourers on the Haciendas San
Miguel Quimichucan(1762) and Santiago (1778) were in debt to the
hacienda, but in most cases the debt was
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 39
not high, see figure 3. The average debt was 13p4 on the former
and 18p4 on the latter,the rough equivalent of four months' work.
On Quimichucan there were 16 peones indebt and 6 with back pay due
to them. The highest debt was that of the capitan: 40p7j(327j
reales). His status obliged him to organise various celebrations
for the hermandadof the workers. He was followed by a labourer
called Sebastian, who lived nearby inTopoyanco. He had received
338j reales in wages (225 days' work), but he had borrowed
.to the value of 633 reales. The largest debt owing to a peon
was the 89j reales due toDiego, who had not yet reached the age of
adulthood. Diego had worked for 1 real aday for 186 days, but he
had only received 96\ reales. Out of the total of 21 adults and10
boys on the Hacienda Santiago, there were 26 gananes who were in
debt and 5 whohad money owing to them. The largest debt - 481
reales - had been run up by JuanJose. His monthly wage was 32
reales, and he received 81 reales for 2j months' work.His large
debt was due to a series of loans amounting to 562 reales. I do not
have abreakdown of these loans. The gafian who had the most money
owing to him was Nicolas,who had only received 2185 reales, while
he had the right to 298 reales. It is strikingthat a few dead
gananes also had debts. They are not included in the debt profile
becausethey were written off by the haciendas (deuda perdida).
The situation on the Haciendas San Jose Temalacayuca (1770) and
San PabloOcotzocuautla (1752) was the opposite. In these cases the
amounts owing to the servantswere considerably higher than their
debts, see Figure 4. Bartholo, a gafian onTemalacayuca, was owed a
sum of 1440 reales in wages, the equivalent of a good 4 years'work
! The gafian Juan had 964j reales owing to him, the equivalent of
34 months' work.The average sum owed to a ganan on this hacienda
was 479 reales (the rough equivalentof 17 months' work). There were
only two labourers who were in debt (average debt:32j reales). The
average sum owing to the 17 gananes on Ocotzocuautla was 129
reales,almost 5 months' work. The largest amount was owed to Lucas:
787 reales, or twoyears' work. One gafian, Juan Dionicio, who had
not yet reached the age of adulthood,had a debt of 24i reales.
Explaining the BacklogIt is not difficult to account for the
backlog in the payment of wages. It is known thatall entrepreneurs
at this time, including hacendados, had a serious shortage of
coin.They therefore encouraged the labourers to buy on credit so
that they could settleaccounts with them later on. According to the
information in the documents, this includedshops owned by people
who were not bound by any relationship of intimacy, such asritual
kinship, with the hacendados concerned. It is furthermore striking
that the priceswere simply based on current market prices; it was
only the - few - hacienda shopswhich worked with traditionally
fixed prices on average level. Before going into detail,it is
necessary to get rid of a deeply rooted misunderstanding: the
hacendados did notuse the hacienda shop {tienda de raya) to drive
the workers deeper into debt. I havecome across very few shops in
the accounts, whether owned by the hacienda or rented,which used
methods of this kind. Nor have I come across much compulsory
shoppingelsewhere, a system in which farmhands were obliged to
spend a part of their wages in
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40 Arij Ouweneel,reales
1200-
1000-
500
100
less paidthanagreed
Njwage inI reales
wage not yetpaid in cash
wage paidin cash
A S O N D J F M A M J J A
Number of weeks from August 1811 to August 1812
Figure 5. Wages and credits of the 348 labourers of the Hacienda
Buenavista, province ofMexicalcingo, August 1811 -August 1812
[Wages according to contract (line) and paid (columns)]- in
reales.
shops owned by the hacienda. The situation was that some
hacendados had a shop onthe premises where the labourers were free
to buy as they wanted on credit, while othershad a shop of this
kind in a neighbouring village or town, or had a contract with
ashopkeeper to sell to the peones from their hacienda. The prices
often remained stablein these shops for months at a time so as not
to lose custom. In view of the considerablefluctuations in market
prices, the goods for sale were sometimes more expensive
andsometimes cheaper by comparison with the market prices. Crown
investigationsdiscovered that the hacendados sold their wares in
the shops at cost price. Complaintswere often heard about the shops
if the quality of the goods was not satisfactory.Nonetheless,
hacendados did not have contacts with shopkeepers all over Anhuac;
infact, perhaps the majority did not.38
The high wage backlogs indicate that the gananes did not always
manage to collecttheir wages. Some haciendas owed huge sums to
their labourers; for example, in 1740the Hacienda Ojo de Agua (San
Juan de los Llanos) owed the peones a sum amountingto almost 8,000
pesos (64,000 reales, equivalent to 19 years' work by 10 adult
labourers).The remarkable explanation by historical-geographer
Ursula Ewald is that this shouldbe seen as a form of saving: the
gananes could live off their raciones and the produce oftheir
pegujales, and were prepared to save their wages. However, Herbert
Nickel claimsthat these backlogs had virtually disappeared on the
highland haciendas after 1850. Thismight indicate an improved
liquidity on the haciendas, but the debts of the peones were
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Tabl
e 2
Wag
es, ad
vanc
es an
d cr
edits
of
th
e 34
6 lab
oure
rs of
th
e H
acien
da Bu
enav
ista,
prov
ince
of
M
exica
lcing
o, A
ugus
t 18
11
A
ugus
t18
12
in
re
ales
.
wage
paid
advance
credit
wage
paid
advance
credit
wage
paid
advance
credit
wage
paid
advance
credit
1811
Aug 12 774
598
200 24
Nov 4
903
226
663
-14
Feb 3 854
278
579 3
May 4
739
387
361 9
19 312
187
128 3 11 899
166
733 0 10 606
207
397
-1 11 865
424
442 1
26 796
657
261
122 18 618 92 526 0 17 643
168
475 0 18 728
456
304 32
Sept 2
1185 797
396 8
25 668
208
460 0 24 534
270
313 49 25 904
559
382 37
9826
594
241 9
Dec 1
673
181
498 6
Mar 2
659
325
356 22
Jun1
1087 552
539 4
16 614
442
179 7 8
566
121
445 0 9
783
380
418 15 8 962
535
442 15
23 696
370
247
-79 15
607
120
495 8 16 722
392
338 8 15 535
407
229
101
30 708
436
278 6 23 319
139
181 1 23 775
304
282
189 22 773
492
310 29
Oct 7
748
435
313 0
Jan 31 396
227
572
403
Apr 30 763
368
397 2
Jul 29 896
603
305 12
14 750
388
364 2
1812 7
1096 264
835 3 6
852
381
471 0 6
935
502
445 14
21 734
337
397 0 13
1036 242
794 0 13 872
394
478 0 13 924
542
417 35
28 711
146
333
-23
2 20 972
251
321
-40
0 20 732
306
428 2 20 658
399
271
-15
271156 305
851 0 27 685
335
352 2 27 111
419
364 6
Aug 3
857
496
331
-30
wag
e :
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42 Arij Ouweneel
generally much higher then. It is possible that a transition
took place from the generationof wage backlogs to the creation of
debts, but several historians report that there wasno question of
debt slavery at that time either.39
Ewald's suggestion, which, of course, contradicts the
traditional idea of economicentrapment, seems to be confirmed by
the material from the Hacienda San NicolasBuenavista (Mexicalcingo)
for the agricultural year 1811-12.40 The servants on thishacienda
were paid at regular intervals during the year (see figure 5 and
table 2). A totalof 348 different peones worked on Buenavista
during that year. A small group, comprisingsome 25 individuals,
worked for the largest part of the year. The others were
recruitedtemporarily for periods of no more than one or two weeks.
The accounts record howmuch was paid to each labourer each week,
what he should have received, and what wasput on his 'savings
account'. The continuous line in figure 5 indicates what the
labourersshould have received according to their wage reviews, the
columns indicate what theyactually received (the dotted part of the
columns), and the weekly accumulation of theirwage backlog (the
upper section of the columns).
With the exception of a few periods, the behaviour of the length
of the columnsmatches that of the labour costs in terms of wage
levels. The exceptional periods arethose preceding major events
such as the Festival of the Dead (1 and 2 November),Christmas, New
Year's Eve, Easter (in March) and Corpus Christi (in June).
Thesewere the periods when the peones on Buenavista received a
large part of what was owingto them. I do not know whether these
payments were made in cash or in kind; the lattermight point
towards compulsory shopping, but this is not necessarily the case
and wouldcertainly be strange in regard to other evidence. However,
although it is not very clear,the method of annotation used in the
accounts suggests that only a limited payment wasactually made in
reales. The peones received remarkably little cash in the
periodimmediately after the festivals. It seems that weekly
negotiations took place between thehacendado and his personnel as
to how much of their wages should be noted in the librosde ray as,
for some peones obviously agreed to put a larger proportion of
their wages ontheir 'savings account' than others. This might be
seen as a way of saving for the nextfestival. The most striking
feature is the drop in reales paid to the peones betweenOctober and
the beginning of May. It looks as though the peones had to make do,
orwanted to, with their rations and the produce of their own
pegujales during the drywinter. In the summer, on the other hand,
the liquidity of the hacienda was markedlyimproved after the sale
of the wheat harvest, and the sums owing to them could be paidin
cash. The rise in the wage backlog is due to the lack of coin. No
doubt, an improvementin the liquidity of the hacienda around 1800
may have encouraged the hacendado toreplace the gananes by
tlaquehuales.
The labourers on the Hacienda Buenavista were usually paid in
advance every Saturday,the common practice at this time. Otherwise,
they did not turn up to work on the land.It may not have been
characteristic of the situation on Buenavista alone that wages
didnot have to be paid back if the week's work could not be
completed for some unexpectedreason. For example, no work could be
carried out on Buenavista during the two weeksfrom 15 to 28 June
1812 because of heavy rains. Most of the peones agreed to have
thewages for these weeks put on their 'savings accounts', but a few
of them returned their
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 43
advance wages to the hacienda manager. This caused a lot of
deletions in the accounts.The manager tried to present a clear
picture by noting whether the surplus wage wasput on the 'savings
account' or returned. The same procedure applied when the
peoneswere ill, although in cases of illness they were more
reluctant to return parts of theadvanced wages. Gregorio Francisco,
for example, a labourer from San Lorenzo Tezonco(a village near the
hacienda), was taken ill on 21 January 1812 and was unable to
resumework until 3 February. The wages promised for the three days
on which he had intendedto work were put on his 'savings account'.
The milpero Cirilo Jose went home ill onFriday 26 October 1811
after working on his little tower of three ladders placed in
themilpas. He spent a week at home without wanting to receive any
payment. All the same,he retained his right to the weekly radon of
maize, which was some consolation for asick peon.
The money spent during the festivals on Buenavista was not
consumed on food anddrink. Various church services were held during
each festival: Christmas, Easter andCorpus Christi. These were
attended by the peones, who paid the priest in cash. Nowork was
done on the hacienda during these festivals. No work took place
either duringthe week from 19 to 25 August. Was this a festival
too? Two masses were held on thehacienda, for which the hacendado
himself had bought a bottle of wine for the exorbitantprice of 9
reales. However, the holding of two church services in one week was
the rulerather than an exception on this hacienda, and the same
applied to many other haciendasat this time. Holy Mass was said on
Buenavista on Saturday and on one of the days inthe week (usually
Tuesday or Wednesday). I suspect that the week from 19 to 25
Augustwas made a holiday because heavy rains put a stop to work.
Notes in the hacienda recordsindicate that there were particularly
heavy rains at the time: peones were repeatedly setto work (some 23
a week) to dredge the drainage ditches. The situation recurred in
May1812.
The peones went to church a number of times each week during the
festival weeks;they went five times during Christmas in 1811. The
hacendado bought candles and winefor the services on a regular
basis and the priest received 2 pesos a week for each mass.This sum
was the tax payment which the peones were obliged to pay as
tributarios, andlike the tribute, it was advanced by the hacienda
and deducted from their accounts.Some ninety church services were
held during the 52 weeks of the agricultural year1811-12 on
Buenavista, costing a total of 176 pesos (1408 reales). This amount
wasprobably raised by some thirty families who lived on the
hacienda and in the neighbouringvillages. Each of them paid the
priest approximately one real a week, the equivalent tothe wage for
one morning's or afternoon's work. The only drink which the
hacendadobought for his labourers was the bottle of wine and the
pulque. He bought aguardientea few times a year, but this was used
to cure sick mules.
Payment in kind to the peones was not only a way of paying the
wage backlog. A largenumber of servants requested maize, drink and
poultry for their own celebrations andreligious ceremonies on the
hacienda. These loans occupied a separate part of theadministration
of the wage backlog, if there was one. In this way it was possible
forlabourers to run up a debt to the hacienda while having money
owed to them by thehacienda. The peones repaid these loans in
instalments, which they preferred to have
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44 Arij Ouweneel
spread out over a number of months (by deductions from their
wages), or in cash withina few weeks. I came across a case of
repayment in cash in the accounts of the HaciendaSanta Ana Aragon
(Mexico). The peones Gaspar Antonio and Juan Santiago borrowed20
pesos on 2 August 1766 for 'the expenses of the wedding of their
children to oneanother'. The loan was repaid to the hacienda in
instalments: 5 pesos on 11 October, 5pesos on 18 October, 5 pesos
on 25 October and 5 pesos on 8 November. A few otherpeones followed
this example on 3 January 1768 when they borrowed 16 pesos for
Adventon 6 January 1768, although most of the labourers on the
hacienda 'borrowed on credit'from the hacienda. The sum was paid
back in instalments. It is noteworthy that in thiscase the manager
of the hacienda charged a 6 per cent interest on the loan: 5 pesos
on9 January, 7 pesos on 16 January and 5 pesos on 23 January.
During the same year anumber of peones made cash repayments by
instalments of the tribute advanced by thehacienda. This policy may
be influenced by the fact that the peones as residents of thepueblo
Tlatelolco were also the owners of the hacienda.41
Understanding PeonageAgriculture on the haciendas was carried
out in accordance with an efficient and strictlymaintained
schedule. The labour on the haciendas continued year round and
wasrestricted to a fixed number of mandays. Seen from the point of
the view of the peons,they knew that their employer needed them six
days a week, mainly for the cultivationof wheat and maize. There
was a slight decline in the number of servants on the fieldsin
January and a great increase of employees in the summer. In the
remaining monthsthe labour force moved within certain limits. In
short, the hacendados relied mainly ona relatively small permanent
labour force resident on the hacienda. Day-labourers couldonly find
work on the wheat haciendas in two summer months. If the yield had
beenlarger, it may be surmised, there would have been more scope
for migrant labourers.There was some work for them in the spring
and autumn, and even during the rainyseason, as channel diggers or
dredgers, it is true. The work of the resident hands
wasconcentrated on ploughing, carried out by one peon and his son
or nephew per yoke ofoxen. Harvest failures were very detrimental
to the employment possibilities for migrantlabourers. All the same,
it often happened that hacendados hired yokes of oxen withploughmen
from the neighbouring pueblos during the ploughing period. This was
infact the only employment prospect for the residents of the
pueblos. In short, the residentpeons considered themselves
inhabitants of the hacienda and had for about nine monthsnothing to
do with the Indians of the neighbouring townships. All that time,
the workwas done by them, the hacienda was their habitat. This
explains why several labourersagreed to 'save' their earnings on
their accounts instead of receiving them in hand. Thehacienda was
in constant need of cash and using the accounts this way was an
importantsolution.
The relationship between the hacendado and his peones can be
interpreted by usingthe concept of Herrschaft or 'reciprocal
dominance'. To understand Herrschaft we haveto rehearse the notion
of 'customary economy', discussed in my study Shadows overAn'ahuac.
There I defended the use of the concept of'ecological ethic' as the
fundamental
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 45
underpinning of the 'customary economy'. It at the same time
seeks to relate to E.P.Thompson's ideas as (re)developed in his
recently published collection of essays Customsin Common, in which
Thompson explores the ebullient and contradictory plebeian
culturewhich preceded the formation of working class institutions
and conciousness and itscustoms and practices. In the
pre-industrial world, access to the means of productionwas
potentially a cause of bitter disputes between the elite and the
peasants. After twentyyears, the important concept of 'the moral
economy of provision', also known as 'themoral economy of the
poor', as instigator of peasant revolts ('collective bargaining
byriot') and government policy at the same time, still can come to
assistance. The term'provision' here refers to the character of the
economic transaction, while the term 'poor'refers to the ethic of
the poor. In fact, the two terms can be seen as both sides of
thesame coin. It was developed to make a distinction with the
'political economy' ofcapitalism.42
This is all rather pedestrian nowadays. It is true that the
ecological ethic becomesmanifest to the researcher - and the local
powerholders in the past - in times ofdeprivation, dearth and
changing ecological circumstances centring on the
relationshipbetween population and resources, but it also enticed
people in periods of calm andpeace. The ethic tells people how the
economy ought to function ('normative economies').It was determined
by the religious, biblical ethic, which rested upon powerful
socialassumptions undergirded by God's injunction to Adam to work
by the sweat of his browand not to 'swallow up the needy'.43 In
general, the ecological ethic of the peasants inEurope, their view
of the normative economy and the way in which they had to
maintainthemselves, can be seen as to be sustained by what Rude
calls the 'mother's milkideology', 'based on direct experience,
oral tradition or folk memory, and not learnedby listening to
sermons or speeches or reading books.' Thompson's
well-knowndescription is more precise. He remarks that although
views of this kind emerged duringperiods of unrest and rebellion,
they formed a substantial component of popular ideology,a consensus
as to what were legitimate or illegitimate practices in social and
economicperformances. An outrage to these moral assumptions was the
usual occasion for directaction. This is therefore a socio-cultural
pattern of values which has grown historically,based on the
necessity of survival in ecologically difficult circumstances,
which directlyaffects the operation of the economy. It is a pattern
of values which adapts to the needsof the times and may be labelled
as characteristic of an agrarian economy which has notyet been
penetrated by industrialisation or some proto-agrobusiness.44
One should never forget that this was a world full of
uncertainties and anxiety. Byanxiety psychologists mean the
unpleasant emotion characterised by terms like
'worry','apprehension', 'dread', and, of course, 'fear' that humans
- and, indeed, animals -experience at times in varying degrees. Any
situation that threatens the well-being ofthe organism is assumed
to produce a state of anxiety and to find its way out into
a'discourse of anxiety'. In my behaviourist or learning approach I
focus not on internalconflicts but on ways in which anxiety became
associated with certain situations vialearning. The stimulus
outlined here is starvation. Recurring bad harvests did not
justmean a shortage of food. In general, once established, a fear
or 'anxiety discourse' isdifficult to eradicate, because it
produces avoidance behavior. Consequently, the person
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46 Arij Ouweneel
hardly has an opportunity to learn that the conditioned stimulus
might really have lostits danger and he tends to make continuous
withdrawal responses to situations that mightnot be harmful any
more. Because starvation is a 'state anxiety', a transitory
responseto a specific situation, people are bound to develop a
collective ideology to canalise oravoid such withdrawal responses.
Of course, being with others who are also fearful abouta
forthcoming danger like starvation helps to alleviate fears.
Therefore, the centralcollective tenet of the ecological ethic is
the 'right to live'. With the trauma of starvationin the
background, the main problem was how to materialise this tenet and
to imposeon society a system of obtaining the basic necessities of
life. The problem tended to besolved rationally, that is, by taking
into account the evidence, the alternatives, and theconsequences of
each of the alternatives. That is why the peasants, for instance,
treatedcollective security discourse as the main 'defense
mechanism' and tried to materialisethis discourse in attempting to
achieve a maximal income from the household to avoidrisking the
food supply. But logical decision-making was hampered by the
person's ownemotions and the uncertainty of the future. There were
always anxiety producingunknowns and risks that had to be
taken.43
The relations of exchange, reciprocal or not, into which
peasants entered on an informal,individual or collective basis,
were fed by the ecological ethic: the society in which onelived was
expected to support the struggle for survival. Direct support was
expectedfrom the more well-to-do villagers, the landlord and the
government representatives intimes of need. The power of the
members of the elite in a specific region was based ontheir control
of important means of production which the residents of the region
needed.According to sociologist Michael Mann, their powers ' derive
from their ability to mobilizethe resources of that
collectivity.'46 The social balance could depend on the extent
towhich this group was prepared to meet the peasants' demands. In
times of shortage, itwas considered the duty of the lord - in our
case: the hacendado - to implement afavourable food policy for the
poor, starting with the control of market prices andculminating in
free handouts of foodstuffs. Transfer of income was a form of
insuranceagainst crises, and the peasants regarded it as an
inevitable necessity. The relation ofexchange legitimated the rule
and social prestige of the elite, but this legitimacyimmediately
collapsed if the guarantee of subsistence was no longer
forthcoming. Therelation of exchange was thus marked by a
reciprocity of obligations.
The ecological ethic determined the attitude of the peasants,
the ' crofting 'mud farmersand the agricultural workers to what was
regarded as exploitation and what was not.The peasants concluded
informal patronage agreements with the local elite in order
toremain within the limits of what they viewed as acceptable. It
could even happen thattheir standard of living dropped while the
exchange relation with the lord improved.This was the case after a
bad harvest, for example, when the lord (or the state) doledout
food to the hungry peasants. In view of the extremely precarious
nature of theagrarian economy, with the enormous fluctuations in
prices due to the unstable qualityand quantity of the harvests, the
legitimacy of the social prestige and rule of the elite,the lord
and the state was permanently open to discussion. It was accepted
at the outsetthat the exercise of power and the accumulation of
wealth were to some extent arbitraryand had only been surrendered
by the peasants under the pressure of necessity. The
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 47
peasants constantly checked the rich and those in power in the
abuse of their position.Precisely because so little was laid down
by l aw- the normative economy was usually
based on informal agreements - there was an incessant conflict
over the nature of thisexchange relation. The government, the elite
and the lords defended the legitimacy ofthe relations of patronage
and their rule at every available opportunity with the assistanceof
patronage activities and the use of religion as an ideological
basis. Changes in theagreements that had been made led to
resistance, but changes were inevitable, since theneeds and desires
of the lords, the elite, the state and the peasants themselves
changedin the course of time. Historian David Sabean concluded: '
In the dialectic betweenarbitrariness and legitimizing lies one of
the central mechanisms for the continual formingof historical
consciousness. (...) Within the lord/subject relationship, new
'needs' arecontinually being generated and old 'needs' denied.'47
Needs as defined by the lordswere uninterruptedly at conflict with
needs felt by subjects, so that most of the costs oflegitimacy were
to be found in the continual round of redefinition of needs or
theirsuppression. Therefore, one should argue that 'lords' and
'subjects' formulateddiscourses about legitimacy, rights and
duties, and power relations.
This brings me to the concept of reciprocal dominance and the
lordship of thehacendado in Mexico. The focus upon a changing
legitimacy in time points to personalisedand concrete relationships
of authority and power. This should not be confused withthe more
abstract and impersonal structures of domination in a modern state.
Sabeanrecalled the German term Herrschaft here, referring to
specific relationships of power,rooted in customary law - or
sometimes written down - and entailing reciprocalobligations. Such
domination was understood concretely, that is, for instance,
Herrschaftover land, over serfs, over manorial economy, or courts.
In short, as Robisheaux affirms,although with each of these
authorities came the right to extract certain surpluses, likerents,
dues, labor services, or the right to command obedience and loyalty
from thoseunder a jurisdiction, 'lords had always to provide
protection {Schutz und Schirm) inexchange for these rights, or
their authority could be called into question.>48 The
legitimacyof Herrschaft is embodied in specific historical symbolic
public forms and discourses; thusin acts as well as speech. Where
legitimacy broke down, the subjects developed a discourseof
resistance based on these same particular historical forms and
discourses, but this timeexpressed in rumours, in unflattering
folktales and stories about the lords, in 'up-side-down'
festivities like carnival, and, eventually, in open, violent
rebellion.
The translation of the German term Herrschaft as reciprocal
dominance and lordshipbrings another, very important and
elementary, feature to the surface. The offering ofprotection in
the form of clientage, justice, general tranquility, order, or
militaryprotection was just as central to the institution. The sum
total of all forms of Herrschaftwas seen together as offering
protection and guaranteeing the reproduction and survivalof the
rural household units, making it unnecessary to question any one
form. But,precisely because of the changing relationships through
time, most forms of Herrschaftappeared very unbalanced. Subjects
sometimes put one or other forms of Herrschaftinto question because
it did not offer any correlative service any longer. The
specificfactor of time resulted in a vision upon Herrschaft as
always in part arbitrary, not alwayscorrectly balanced by an
adequate return, too costly, and sometimes maintained by a
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48 Arij Ouweneel
degree of violence and coercion. This necessitated a continuing
process of legitimisation.Indeed, when one examines the daily
practice of reciprocal dominance in colonial
Mexico, it becomes clear that legitimisation was integral to it.
Villagers and estatelabourers demanded a just treatment from
colonial, religious or local magistrates. It wasaccepted at the
outset that the exercise of power and the accumulation of wealth
bymagistrates and elite members was to some extent arbitrary and
that its arbitrarinesshad either to be justified or masked:
Herrschaft as the evocation of obedience, thesatisfaction of mutual
interests, and the fulfilment of needs. The arbitrariness
andlegitimising of wealth and power should be considered one of the
central mechanismsfor the continual forming and reforming of
historical consciousness. It is good to repeatthat new 'needs' were
continually generated and old 'needs' denied. Needs as definedby
the officials and lords were uninterruptedly at conflict with needs
felt and defined bysubjects, so that the costs of Herrschaft were
not just to be found in the payment scheduleof, for example,
tributes and rents, but also in the continual round of redefinition
ofneeds or their suppression.49
Where the maintenance of subsistence activities prevailed, the
bargaining position onthe part of peons must still have been
strong, especially when these peons lived in anagrarian society
which was relatively sparsely populated.30 In a situation of
populationgrowth or high population density, the bargaining
position of the lords, elite and statewith respect to the peons is
better than that of the peons with respect to the lords, etc.The
peons will have to modify their demands. In a situation of low
population densityor a decrease in population, in which alternative
sources of income are available to thepeons, the situation is the
reverse. This is an important point for the interpretation oflabour
conditions in the countryside and for dealing with the question of
peonage. Therelations of exchange within the normative economy
changed considerably when therewere changes in the variable
'population'. The situation changed in modern times, aftera large
period of population growth had altered the relationship between
landlord andpeons. The modern period saw not just the ideological
triumph of political economy.According to historian Alan
Macfarlane, we deal with the triumph of a new culture: theethic of
endless accumulation as an end, not as a means. This was gaining
momentumover the subsistence ethic. In Mexico, this change was
introduced in the late eighteenthcentury and the nineteenth
century. It forced the peons to describe the features of
theirecological ethic more precisely. Their horizontal links with
each other had to be reinforcedin order to resist the increasing
pressure of the elite and the state. The vertical linkswere
strengthened too, for it could sometimes happen that both the
landlord and thepeons saw their wishes satisfied within a system of
patronage. The precise way in whichthis was regulated varied from
state to state, from region to region.3'
It means that in Anahuac during most of the eighteenth century
population densitywas not pressing upon the traditional system. The
hacendado depended upon his peonsand their bargaining position was
still very strong. This explains the mechanisms ofpeonage described
in this article. It was not 'oppression' as defined by journalists,
socialscientists and historians some decades ago. However, the
situation in Anahuac began tochange during the nineteenth century.
Population growth inspired the hacendados toabolish the system of
peonage and replace it by plain wage labour. According to
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Eighteenth-century Mexican Peonage 49
researchers like Ricardo Rendon Garcini, the hacendados did not
even succeed then,obviously because the 'ecological ethic1 of their
peons was not altered yet and no sufficientalternative labour was
at hand.32 To sum, Mexico needed a political revolution (1910)and
the subsequent abolition of the hacienda-system to replace
traditional forms of farmservice by a free labour market based on
short-term contracts and cash payments.
NotesAGI Archivo General de Indias, Seville, SpainAGNM Archivo
General de la Nacion, Mexico CityAGET Archive General del Estado de
Tlaxcala, MexicoBNMa Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, SpainFMMN
Microfilm archive, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia,
Mexico City
1. A. Gibson, 'Proletarianization? The transition to full-time
labour on a Scottish Estate,1723-1787", Continuity and Change 5 : 3
(1990), 357-389; referring to A. Orr, ' Farm servantsand farm
labour in the Forth Valley and the South-east Lowlands', T.IVI.
Devine (ed.), FarmServants and Labour in Lowland Scotland,
1770-1914 (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 29-54.
2. Gibson, 'Proletarianization?' pp. 374-5, quote from p. 387,
and passim.3. M. Bloch, Feudal Society: Volume One: the Growth of
the Ties of Dependence (2 Vols.;
London, 1961; transl. from the French), I, 279, also 241-54.4.
See the discussion in C.E. Searle, 'Custom, class conflict and
agrarian capitalism: the
Cumbrian customary economy in the eighteenth century', Past and
Present 110 (1986),106-33, esp. 108-9.
5. 11. Carr, Old Mother Mexico (Boston and New York, 1931), pp.
63-71.6. R. Enock, Mexico. Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation,
History and Political Conditions,
Topography and Natural Resources, Industries and General
Development (London, 1909), seefor example pp. 213-14.
7. See, for example, the essays in S. Miller, Landlords and
Haciendas in Modernising Mexico:Essays in Radical Reappraisal
(Amsterdam, 1995). Any study of Mexican colonial haciendasshould
include: I. Altman and J. Lockhart (eds.), Provinces of Early
Mexico: Variants ofSpanish American Regional Evolution (Los
Angeles, 1976); M.J. Amerlinck de Bontempo,'From Hacienda to Ejido:
The San Diego de Rioverde Case' (Ph.D. diss., State Universityof
New York, Stony Brook, 1980); B. Badura, 'Biografia de la
hacienda