The main fight of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 was against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and against the hacienda system, huge agrarian states managed in an almost feudal system which perpetuated social inequality. 'Land for the one that works it' was one of the slogans of the Revolution in it's attempt to redistribute wealth to the peasants who worked the land. Diaz had been in power since 1876, his government being in charge of the modernization of the country, including foreign concessions in mining and railroads, and of creating a sense of 'prosperity' among the Mexican elite. While the revolution succeeded in ending with the hacienda system and in handing land to the 'people', it destroyed the agriculture system, and was not successful in supporting the new peasant landowners in producing from their land...
Most of the Yucatan haciendas in the 19th and early 20th century produced rope and sacks from henequen, a variety of the agave maguey, which was exported for the shipping and the commerce industry. The haciendas maintained huge fields of henequen, tended by hundreds of men. After the Revolution, and the invention of nylon, most haciendas were abandoned to decay...
Roberto Hernandez, retired director and previous co-owner of bank Banamex (National Bank of Mexico, Mexico's biggest bank, established in 1884, nationalized in 1982, bought by Hernandez and Harp Helu in 1991, sold to US Citibank in 2001) has bought more than 30 haciendas in Yucatan, bringing them back to life and transforming some of them into luxury hotels. Together with his wife, art entrepreneur Claudia Madrazo, they have commissioned artist-sculptor-architect Jorge Pardo, to refurbish for them the Temoch Hacienda...
(with thanks to Cecilia Leon de la Barra for the photographs)
http://www.jorgepardosculpture.com/
http://www.robertohernandez.org/
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LOVE those tiles!
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