page_title: Hacienda
section_title: Origins and growth
hierarchical_section_title: Hacienda / Origins and growth
caption_attribution_description: English: Hacienda of Xcanchakan Français&#160;: La Hacienda de Xcanchakan
context_page_description: A hacienda, in the colonies of the Spanish Empire, is an estate, similar to a Roman latifundium. Some haciendas were plantations, mines or factories. Many haciendas combined these activities. The word is derived from the Spanish word "hacer" or "haciendo", which means: to make or be making, respectively; and were largely business enterprises consisting of various money making ventures including raising farm animals and maintaining orchards.
  The term hacienda is imprecise, but usually refers to landed estates of significant size. Smaller holdings were termed estancias or ranchos that were owned almost exclusively by Spaniards and criollos and in rare cases by mixed-race individuals. In Argentina, the term estancia is used for large estates that in Mexico would be termed haciendas. In recent decades, the term has been used in the United States to refer to an architectural style associated with the earlier estate manor houses.
  The hacienda system of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, New Granada, and Peru was a system of large land holdings. A similar system existed on a smaller scale in the Philippines and Puerto Rico.
context_section_description: Haciendas originated in the Spanish colonization of the Americas as conquests followed a similar pattern in many places. As the Spanish established cities in the middle of conquered territories smaller plots of land were distributed in nearby while far-away areas were granted as large landholdings to conquistadores becoming haciendas and estancias. Distribution of land happened in parallel to the distribution of indigenous people who entered servitude. New haciendas were formed in many places in the 17th and 18th century as most local economies moved away from mining and into agriculture and husbandry.
  Haciendas were developed as profit-making, economic enterprises linked to regional or international markets. Although the hacienda is not directly linked to the early grants of indigenous American labor, the encomienda, many Spanish holders of encomiendas did acquire land or develop enterprises where they had access to that forced labor. Even though the private landed estates that constituted most haciendas did not have a direct tie to the encomienda, they are nonetheless linked. Encomenderos were in a position to retain their prominence economically via the hacienda. Since the encomienda was a grant from the crown, holders were dependent on the crown for its continuation. As the crown moved to eliminate the encomienda with its labor supply, Spaniards consolidated private landholdings and recruited free labor on a permanent or casual basis. The long term trend then was the creation of the hacienda as secure private property, which survived the colonial period and into the 20th century. Estates were integrated into a market-based economy aimed at the Hispanic sector and cultivated crops such as sugar, wheat, fruits and vegetables and produced animal products such as meat, wool, leather, and tallow.
  Haciendas originated in Spanish land grants, made to many conquistadors and crown officials, but many ordinary Spaniards could also petition for land grants from the crown. The system in Mexico is considered to have started when the Spanish Crown granted to Hernán Cortés the title of Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca in 1529. It gave him a tract of land that included all of the present state of Morelos. Cortés was also granted encomiendas that gave him access to a vast pool of indigenous labor.
caption: Hacienda of Xcanchakan
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