Dog Days of Mexico
by Renee Sullivan
Title
Dog Days of Mexico
Artist
Renee Sullivan
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
We got lost on a forgotten road in Mexico on this day - a road filled with countless pot holes that could swallow a small car. Around a corner we came upon a decaying hacienda with remnants of broken and rusty machinery, and the typical red paint used on many of the haciendas in the Yucatan. Next to the main building were secondary buildings like the one pictured here. Perhaps they were used to house the workers. I don't know. But the beautiful pieces of tile barely visible on the steps speak of a more prosperous time. Now the building looks lost, sad and abandoned. And the stray dog also looked lost, sad and abandoned as well. But there was still something haunting and beautiful in spite of, or maybe because of, the colorful decay.
Haciendas in Mexico were the basis of an economic system begun by the Spaniards in the 16th century, similar to the feudal system of Europe. They were farming and manufacturing centers that produced meat, produce, and other products for export. In Yucatan, they used the local Mayans to work the fields and factories at slave-like wages or no wages at all. Like the southern plantations of the United States, haciendas enforced a social system of castes, based on race, with the European hacendados (landowners) as the masters and the indigenios (Mayans) as the slaves.
Uploaded
March 30th, 2015
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