The History of the Hacienda

The hotel where Alejandro and I stayed last weekend was built on the site of an hacienda (ranch or plantation).  Although some of the hotel is of modern construction, much of it is reconstructed from the remains of the original hacienda.

In 1532, just eleven years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Dominican friars established a chapel dedicated to St. Anthony along the banks of the Apatlaco River.  The Spanish found that the valley of Cuernavaca, with its subtropical climate and rich volcanic soil, was an ideal area for agriculture.  They introduced the cultivation of sugar cane, and in 1574 a small sugar mill was built at this location.  A bridge, which still stands, was built across the river.

In 1592 a royal land grant established the hacienda which became known at Hacienda San Antonio el Puente (St. Anthony the Bridge).  Through the centuries the plantation continued under various owners.  By the nineteenth century, with more modern technology, it reached its height.

The mill, where the sugar cane was brought to be ground, is today the hotel's restaurant.

The chimney behind the mill marks the location were the ground cane was boiled down into a juice.

The cooked cane was then put in clay jars and placed in this tunnel.  The humidity and temperature of the tunnel encouraged the crystallization of the sugar juice.

The remains of an aqueduct which carried water to the mill

Toward the end of the 1600s, the original chapel was destroyed in a flood.  It was replaced with this church which still stands just outside the confines of the hotel and which serves as the local parish church today.

In the late nineteenth century the hacienda owners built a larger chapel within the hacienda complex. 

 

Looking up into the chapel's dome

The choir loft at the rear of the chapel

The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution marked the beginning of the hacienda's decline.  The state of Morelos, where the hacienda is located, was the home of the revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata who sought to break up the vast landholdings of the wealthy and distribute land to the peasants.  In various agrarian reforms the hacienda lost much of its land and subsequent owners sold off other portions of land until only the "casco", the central complex of hacienda buildings was left.

The hacienda was completely abandoned for ten years.  In 1989 the property was purchased by a group of investors, and work began on the restoration of the hacienda in order to convert it into a hotel.  Today the property is part of the Fiesta American chain of hotels.