HISTORICAL REPORT AND RESTORATION

- Semblance -

The current architectural plan of Ex Hacienda San José Espacio Cultural, reflects the construction styles that go from the 18th to the 21st century, but in reality its walls have seen two thousand years of history pass by, according to the research of the archaeologist José Leonardo López Zárate.

The specialist, consulting ancient documents and examining remains of pre-Hispanic pottery, made a brief reconstruction of the early history of this area, dating back to just over two thousand years ago.

His study allows us to imagine the time when there was a small village of farmers where the Ex Hacienda is now located. Those pre-Hispanic settlers managed, thanks to the abundance of water and good land, to cultivate corn, beans, squash, chili and other vegetables that they consumed themselves, in addition to offering a part to the inhabitants of the sacred city of Monte Albán, whose vestiges still They stand ten kilometers from the Ex Hacienda.

The archaeologist López Zárate calculates that this village was populated by one or two hundred inhabitants who, in addition to cultivating the land, made their own ceramic utensils, since various remains of bowls and a fragment of the head of a figurine made of clay have been found in the town.

The lands where the Ex Hacienda is located reappear in history on a map known as the Yudzacono Map, dated 1698. Due to its characteristics of fertility and geographical location, the archaeologist López Zárate estimates that Yudzacono and the lowlands of the former Hacienda de San José may be the same place.

Later, at the time of independence, the place appears in three historical documents: the second part of the Statistics of the Free State of Oaxaca, the work of José María Murguía y Galardi dated 1827, which indicates that the Hacienda owned by the priest José María Rodríguez, belonged to the municipality of San Andrés Ixtlahuaca. The second document is the 1853 decree that divided the Department of Oaxaca into 18 judicial districts and indicated that the municipality of Atzompa had jurisdiction over the haciendas of Soledad de Crespo, San José, and Santa Catarina Montaño. The third document is the first detailed map of the region, drawn up by order of General Bazaine, commander of the French troops that took the city of Oaxaca. Dated in 1865, the Sketch of the surroundings of Oaxaca shows the hull of the Hacienda de San José as a large rectangle surrounded by half a dozen houses somewhat distant from the main building. 

During the Porfiriato, the Hacienda de San José and Santa Catarina, from 1909, or the Project for the Charter of the surroundings of Oaxaca, from 1910. But the most important information was recorded in the Synoptic Tables of Manuel Martínez Gracida, published in 1883 . 

In that book, a section on the Hacienda de San José indicates that “It borders to the north with the town of San Lorenzo Cacaotepec and the Hacienda de Santa Catarina, to the south with San Pedro Ixtlahuaca, to the west with Atzompa, to the west with San Andrés Ixtlahuaca and San Felipe Tejalapam, the latter from the Etla district.”. 

In 2014 the old Hacienda, facilitated by its owner, began to be intervened to create a Cultural Center devised by a group of cultural managers graduated from the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca.

After several years of intense restoration and adaptation work, Ex Hacienda San José Espacio Cultural opened its doors on October 27, 2018.