In the nineteenth century, the cultivation of sugar cane and cattle farming grew at an accelerated rate. Ranches were converted into the main machine of change and the government expropriated land. The Mayan campesinos, or indigenous people who farmed the land and lived in the small villages were left without land as the business men benefited, with unlimited military and religious ambitions. To the glory of the ranchers, the War of the Castes started in 1847, during which 50% of the population died. The ranches survived; the industry of sugar cane and ranching slipped from popularity but the growth of henequén, a lucrative crop made into rope, twine and related products, started and became the economic base for the peninsula for more than 100 years.
The set-up of the ranches required that people live permanently in them. There were the gentry and the farm workers, the first lived forever in a privileged existence on their family’s ranch, the second were the neighbors or the villagers who were contracted seasonally. The gentry inside of the ranches had everything, all the conveniences needed by the people who lived at the ranch. Depending on the size of the ranches, they might have had streets, public plazas, chapels, schools, medical dispensers, cemeteries, jail cells, recreational spaces, and shops. The class of people who lived on ranches traveled to Europe, and their sons and daughters studied abroad and adopted many French ideas. The architecture of the ranches maintained colonial features, but it was mixed with classical, neo-Baroque, medieval civil, tropical, and Caribbean architectural elements.
With the age of the agricultural reform, the expropriation of the land of the General Lazaro Cardenas, the battles of Emiliano Zapata and the ongoing revolution finally ended the use and abuse of the ranch class leaving its structures in absolute abandonment for years. Many of the ranch owners of foreign origin were exiled, leaving all in the hands of the working class. The lavishness of the constructions corresponded inversely to the depressed poverty of the field workers. The popularity of the rehabilitation of the structures of ranches for hotels has recently bloomed in our state. The ranch of Uayamón y Blanca Flor is a beautiful display of the architecture of those days.
This ranch is located in the municipal of Hecelchakán, 63 km outside of the city of Campeche down highway 180. Only part of it is conserved and used as a hotel, although you may visit the rest. This place was one of the many scenes of cruel battles of the War of the Castes which only came into the state of Campeche as far as the region of the Chenes.
This ranch is located 107 km from the city of Campeche down highway 261. The same highway goes to Calkiní-- an exit 20 km toward the west will take us to the pueblo of Nunkiní, and the ranch is 10 km past this pueblo. The ranch dates back to the second half of the eighteenth century, when it was registered as a cattle ranch. There are no more facts about this except that at the end of the nineteenth century when Don Sixto Garcia owned it, he made it a grand producer of henequen without abandoning its corn and bean crops.
The revolutionary movement of 1910 caused its collapse, similar to many ranches of the region. By 1930, the ranch was abandoned. It has a central patio next to the chapel, which has an inscription of 1866, which is without a doubt when it was constructed. In the original orchard of the ranch there is today a crop of palm of jipi.
Located in the municipal of Champotón, take the highway that runs from this main municipality toward the pueblo of Moquel. Continue past for 6 km in the direction of the pueblo of San Antonio, a rough dirt road exit 1 km long leads to the ranch. It was founded in 1871 by Don José María Carpizo Sánchez, uniting the lands of three farms converting them in one of the most important ranches in the peninsula. Its activity was a mix of agriculture and cattle ranching, the latter having grown at an impressive scale. The palo de tinte (ink-producing wood for dying cloth) was the principle crop before the growth of henequen changed the extraction of this fiber, its expanse at one time spread across an area of 36,226 hectares.
After the successful growth of the ranch went from having 181 inhabitants in 1895 to 728 in 1913, in 1921 a massive exodus reduced this number to only 40 workers. In 1938 with agricultural reform, Carpizo experienced a reduction in the area of the ranch. In 1941, it was sold and ten years later it changed hands because it was partially abandoned and unproductive. The houses of the gentry and the farm workers had inhabited a community with an electric network, streets, transportation, a store, a carpentry workshop and a chapel, among other basic services, all in good condition.
This ranch is located in the municipality of Champotón only 15 km from the main municipality down highway 286 toward the City of Carmen. Also belonging to Don José María Carpizo, it was an agricultural producer and covered 200 ha. You can find it in a perfect state as it was restored by the Mexican Armada to house the Infantry Marine School starting in 1999. On the façade of the principal house is carved “Labor Omnia Vincit” (Latin for “Everything comes from work”). The state conservation board is excellent; the restoration was almost entirely in the original styles of the ranch including the houses of the gentry and the farm workers. It has a big patio in front of the principal house and the streets are adorned with the farmhouses. All the details have been recovered, and the red color of its walls paired with the antique and capricious designs of its outer aspect give it great originality. It can be visited with a previously granted request, although it is not really functioning as a tourist attraction.
This beautiful hacienda, located 27 km from the city of Campeche, has its origins in the sixteenth century when its main activities were cattle ranching and the cultivation of corn. The disastrous pirate attack of 1685 by Lorencillo reached this ranch when its owner was Don Francisco de Cicero. In 1770, the property owner was Don Rafael Carvajal Iturralde, who cultivated corn, produced sugar, and extracted palo de tinte (dye for cloth from a tree), before the henequen crops converted it into an economic axis. At the end of the nineteenth century it was converted into one of the main ranches of the peninsula and of Mexico. In 1882, the farm was bequeathed to Fernando Carvajal Estrada, son of Don Rafael Cavaja. Its new owner was a great businessman and started the construction of his own railways with the aims of strengthening production. By 1910 it belonged to Don Joaquín Baranda Carvajal, but in the next year began its decline and eventual abandonment.
Today, it serves as the Grand Tourism Hotel; the main buildings and the main parts of the houses have been restored, and on the extensive patio a ceiba tree of enormous proportions divided into the walls that remain trapped between roots of old fig trees, giving them an aesthetically legendary and antique aspect.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Tankuché was a ranch dedicated principally to the exploitation of palo de tinte. At the end of that century and with the boom of the henequen crop, it shifted its focus to the henequen industry, which was quickly becoming the base of the economy for the entire peninsula. The Peon Family, proprietors of this ranch, saw their property area of more than 2,000 hectares dramatically reduced in the final stages of the Mexican Revolution. In 1972, what was left on the ranch was expropriated by the state government, though the agricultural machines continued working until the 80s. It is located 32 km from the main municipal of Calkiní.
