The Hacienda

by Isabel Cañas

Of his enemies in the Church, the insurgent priest said they were Catholic “only to benefit themselves: their God is money. Under the veil of religion and of friendship they want to make you the victims of their insatiable greed.”

I am deeply indebted to the primary texts and secondary analysis included in Local Religion in Colonial Mexico by Martin Austin Nesvig, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan by Mark Christensen, and The Witches of Abiquiu: The Governor, the Priest, the Genízaro Indians, and the Devil by Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks. I encourage readers who are interested in the facts of this period to look up overview texts like Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War by Mark Wasserman and The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 by Silvia Marina Arrom.