Our journey to Hacienda Sotuta de Peon reminded me of an old Mexican song. El Barz\u00f3n by Amparo Ochoa, is a historical Mexican song about the endless cycle of work that campesina women faced. El barzon is a field working tool that was put on Mules\u2019 necks to help the worker pull the mule. The song goes through the struggles that this campesina woman faces as her barzon breaks making it harder to get her field work done, inevitably leading to making it harder for her to make her earnings. At the time of this song, campesina women and men were stuck in a cycle of trying to pay back \u201cel patron\u201d while still trying to make their own money. El patron was the owner of the field who the campesinas were left in debt to, el patron profited from every aspect of their field work. Similar to post slavery conditions for Black Americans, Campesinas would have to pay el patron for using their fields, they would go to la Hacienda (owned by the same patron) to buy the seeds or materials needed to farm, then when their goods were harvested they would sell those same items back to el patron only for him to re-sell it at a higher price and exploit their work. The main chorus of the song goes through this cycle in a comedic way of la Campesina explaining how her barzon broke and how she needs to continue to work to pay back el patron, just for him to take all the food she harvested leaving her without anything to eat for herself, and to then present her with an itemized check of how much money she owes him. \u201cSe me revent\u00f3 el barz\u00f3n y sigue la yunta andando. Cuando acab\u00e9 de piscar, vino el rico y lo parti\u00f3. Todo mi ma\u00edz se llev\u00f3, ni pa’comer me dej\u00f3. Me present\u00f3 aqu\u00ed la cuenta: Aqu\u00ed debes veinte pesos, de la renta de unos bueyes. Cinco pesos de magueyes, una nega, tres cuartillos. De frijol que te prestamos, una nega tres cuartillos\u2026.. Pero todo est\u00e1 en la cuenta. Adem\u00e1s de los veinte reales, que sacaste de la tienda. Con todo el ma\u00edz que te toca, no le pagas a la hacienda. Pero cuentas con mis tierras, para seguirlas sembrando. Y ahora vete a trabajar, pa’ que sigas abonando.\u201d Owing him money for things such as magueyes and frijoles, el patron knows that la campesina relies on his land to make a profit. He knows that at the end of the day no matter how absurd this cycle is, she will continue to pay him if she wants to survive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our journey to Hacienda Sotuta de Peon reminded me of an old Mexican song. El Barz\u00f3n by Amparo Ochoa, is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-passport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/mxpassport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}