With a dozen formidable helmets, Zempoala, Hidalgo, could hold with deserved pride the title of "municipality of pulque haciendas." Few places in Mexico can boast of having so many beautiful haciendas in such a small area.
Historical accounts speak of more than 20 haciendas in what is now Zempoala. Today there are a dozen left which, despite everything, is a considerable number for a municipality of just 31 thousand ha. With only two percent of the total area of Hidalgo, Zempoala preserves six percent of the 200 farms that are counted in Hidalgo. Such figures also mean that when we travel those roads we come across an old town every seven or eight kilometers, sometimes less. Zempoala is, in short, the municipality that must be visited if we want to soak up Mexican farms.
The best thing is that numbers are not everything. The splendor of the old Zempoala haciendas, although they can be enjoyed by wholesalers, takes on a peculiar shine in each one of them. Common traits can be found and compared, but there are always big differences.
The estates of a president
If there is a symbolic character of the Zempoala estates, that is Don Manuel González, the famous liberal general and friend of Porfirio Díaz, who was president of Mexico between 1880 and 1884. He acquired two contiguous estates to the east of the municipality. That of Santa Rita, which at the end of the 18th century belonged to the Marchioness of Selva Nevada, which still retains its viceregal air. In one of its corners there is a huge cistern that could well be the largest in the country. Between this hacienda and that of Zontecamate, Singuilucan municipality, stands, hidden, the beautiful Tecajete hacienda that was, with good reason, González's favorite.
According to the accounts, when González became president, he commissioned the young architect Antonio Rivas Mercado to rebuild the hacienda, recently returned from his studies in France (see Unknown Mexico Nos. 196 and 197). Rivas Mercado, remembered above all for the column of Independence in the Paseo de la Reforma, left a kind of castle there, majestic on the outside and provided with peaceful patios inside. In one of them the wide mirror of a jagüey extends and, a little further on, in an orchard, there are 46 arches of the initial section of the famous aqueduct of Padre Tembleque. Going through all this, it is not surprising that the president has taken it as his favorite corner of rest.
Card games
At the other end of the municipality are the haciendas that belonged to the Enciso family. In the middle of the 19th century - his descendants count - Cesario Enciso lost the Hacienda de Venta de Cruz, in the State of Mexico (a few meters from the border with Hidalgo) in a game of cards. Don Cesario rebuilt his fortune and built what is known as the Casa Grande in the town, one of the few estates in the region that did not produce pulque. It was more like a family residence and a commercial estate. The locals still call it the "Big Shop". It preserves stately anthology rooms and on the ground floor, behind a long portal, the original furniture of a huge Porfirian store, as well as a bakery with centuries-old ovens.
At the time of the pulquero boom, at the end of the 19th century, the Encisos concentrated the production of this drink in Los Olivos, near the town. They euphemistically called “ranch” what had the dimensions of a true hacienda; there resided an administrator, whose house was surely the envy of more than one landowner. There are also the original portals that the Casa Grande had until the 1960s, when it was rebuilt.
Not far from this there are two other spectacular haciendas. Tepa El Chico has its largest building on a longitudinal axis in which there are towers, tinacal, large house, chapel and another tower. In front of this line you can still see the old narrow road on which the “platforms” with the pulque barrels ran towards the railway station. The whole is nostalgic.
San José Tetecuinta is smaller, but much more aristocratic. The driveway leads to a track that surrounds a fountain in front of a magnificent tall colonnaded porch. Countryside landscapes - possibly frescoes from the late 19th century - decorate several of the interior and exterior walls of the house.
San Antonio and Montecillos
Towards the southeast of the municipality are two farms that appear to be the oldest. It is estimated that San Antonio Tochatlaco was erected in the first half of the 19th century. Montecillos has a more viceregal aspect. The two offer a great architectural contrast. While the first is built forming a single large rectangle, the other is a disintegrated collection of buildings: the house, the tinacal, the stables, the calpanería, and so on.
There are other haciendas that unfortunately cannot be visited, but that can be enjoyed from the outside. One is Arcos, visible from the highway to Tulancingo. It bears that name probably because it is on the side of another of the arched sections of the Otumba aqueduct, not far from Tecajete. The other is Pueblilla, between Santa Rita and the town of Zempoala. This hacienda, with one of the best facades of haciendas that can be found in Hidalgo, repeats in a singular way the drama - and the wealth - of the municipality: in the midst of oblivion and abandonment the old Porfirian splendor still shines.
How to get to Zempoala
Leaving Mexico City on the Pirámides-Tulancingo highway (federal number 132). At the first deviation to Ciudad Sahagún-Pachuca, turn north towards Pachuca; Zempoala is located five kilometers from there (and 25 km south of Pachuca).
Visitable estates of the municipality (mentioned in the text) are owned by owners grouped in the Association of Landowners of Zempoala. This body authorizes and manages group visits, preferably large ones (of several dozen people).
Journalist and historian. He is a professor of Geography and History and Historical Journalism at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico where he tries to spread his delirium through the rare corners that make up this country.
