• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.291-311
• /
• 2005

The great estate system of the Old World crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the 1500s along with the Spanish Royal Army, mission, merchants, crops and domestic arrivals, landing at the end of the journey in the Middle and South Americas. The latifundio of Spain's Middle Age combined with the environment of the New World to be regenerated in the name of hacienda which bad became tightly roared in the countryside landscape of New Spain by fin-de-colonial period of 1820s. The haciendas were distributed mainly over the central part of the present-dey Mexico, and the presence of water and towns determined the specific location of the large landed estates. Depending on the activities performed, the hacienda can be divided into several types such as grain hacienda, livestock hacienda, mining hacienda, henequen hacienda, and so forth. Consisting of landlords, estate managers and waged labor called peons, the hacienda as a semi-autarkic settlement played various roles as the home of church, the agrarian center and the hearth of cultural diffusion, as well as dwelling. Toward the end of the colonial period the hacienda experienced internal transformations driven by capitalism.