in Spanish America, a large landed estate, one of the traditional institutions of rural life. Originating in the colonial period, the hacienda survived in many places late into the 20th century. Labourers, ordinarily Indians, who worked for hacendados (landowners) were theoretically free wage earners, but in practice their employers were able to bind them to the land, especially by keeping them in an indebted state; by the 19th century probably up to a half of the rural population of Mexico was thus entangled in the peonage system.
The counterparts of the hacienda in the Río de la Plata (Argentina and Uruguay) region and in Brazil are the estancia and the fazenda, respectively. Hacendados constituted a squirarchy, in whose hands were the reins of local government. In Bolivia until 1952, hacendados had retained many of the privileges inherited from colonial times, and the same has been true in 20th-century Ecuador. In Mexico many of the great estates were broken up as a result of the Mexican Revolution of 1911.
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