The Haciendas of Mexico

An Artist's Record

by

Paul Alexander Bartlett

 with a Preface

by

James Michener

And an Introduction by Mexico’s leading historian of the haciendas, Gisela von Wobeser, translated by Steven James Bartlett

The hacienda system played a formative role in Mexico's history similar to that of the southern plantation in the United States. Of considerable architectural value, many of these haciendas date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Haciendas of Mexico—An Artist’s Record is the first comprehensive volume to portray the haciendas of Mexico through pen-and-ink illustrations, photographs, and an accompanying text. Many of these haciendas have been rapidly disappearing since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. This distinctive study represents the lifework of recognized author and artist Paul Alexander Bartlett, who over four decades visited more than three hundred and fifty haciendas by car, bus, train, boat, horseback, motorcycle, and some on foot and bicycle. For the majority of estates visited, the book’s record offers the only surviving testimony to their architectural, economic, and general cultural importance.

Accompanying the text is a generous selection of Bartlett’s pen-and-ink illustrations and photographs, which capture the beauty, romance, and mystery that these remote and now often abandoned haciendas convey to us about this critical period in Mexican history.

The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist's Record has now been made available through Project Gutenberg as a free downloadable eBook in a variety of formats. To view the alternative formats and to download a free copy of the novel, click here.