Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca

xiv+287 pages with tables, maps, charts, bibliography and index. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6 1/4") bound in original red cloth with black lettering to spine. First edition.

The hacienda system of northern Mexico generally has been considered an accurate model of Spanish settlement and landholding for all of colonial Mexico. This study demonstrates, however, that conditions in the Valley of Oaxaca were markedly different, and that many previously accepted generalizations about land tenure in the colonial era will have to be modified or discarded. Much of the argument about the basis of support for the Mexican revolution at least as it applies to Oaxaca, will also have to be reconsidered. Separate chapters examine the major land-holders in Oaxaca - the Indian nobility, Indian communal groups and individual peasants, Spaniards, and the Church. The author does not lose sight of the land system as a whole, however, emphasizing changing social arrangements and general trends in land distribution and land use. Such familiar features of colonial land tenure as large haciendas, debt peonage, and landless Indians were to be found in Oaxaca, but these features were not typical. Most striking, perhaps, is the absence of the radical readjustment in Indian land tenure the accompanied the rise of haciendas in other areas. Haciendas in Oaxaca were generally small and vulnerable, and Indians had large holdings which they aggressively, and usually successfully, defended against Spanish encroachment.

Condition: Spine heal bumped. Jacket sunned, closed tear at front head hinge with creases else a near fine copy in a very good jacket.