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Henequen.
« Green gold of the Yucatan Peninsula«
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| Notre histoire avec l’Hacienda de Chunkanan est assez ancienne.
J’ai retrouvé cette note de voyage qui date d’avant l’invention des blogs, écrite par Anny pour ses amis américains sur Multimania – racheté depuis par Lycos – qui hébergeait nos premiers sites à l’époque.
(21 mars 2001)
Depuis nous y passons régulièrement à chacun de nos voyages dans le Yucatan et avons pu ainsi établir une relation avec les ouvriers qui entretiennent les champs, font visiter les trois cenotes qui se trouvent sur la propriété, et travaillent les feuilles de Henequen pour n’en conserver que la fibre, qui servait autrefois à faire entre autre des cordages pour les bateaux.
La fibre est connue sous le nom de Sisal, qui est le port d’où elle partait pour l’Europe.
Notre premier guide, Valerio, nous aura appris tout de cette plante qui exige beaucoup d’efforts des travailleurs pour rapporter que très peu d’argent.
Mais dans ce village maya très pauvre, loin de tout, il n y a pas d’autre choix pour survivre. |
| Dans les notes qui suivront vous verrez l’Hacienda et l’usine (une « defibradora ») quand nous l’avons connue, et jusqu’à sa fin, détruite par un des derniers cyclones à avoir traversé le Yucatan.
Beaucoup de photos et vidéos amassées grâce à la gentillesse des ouvriers, heureux de nous montrer cette exploitation dans le détail, jusqu’à nous faire tresser une corde avec le produit final de leur travail: le sisal.
Je ne traduis pas la note. Celles qui suivront avec vidéos et photos la compléteront. |
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The following information is guaranteed to be either true, not true, or almost true, as the people of Mayan descent, being of a rather friendly and courteous nature, would rather invent details than disappoint their visitors by saying they don’t know.
The following report is based on conversations with local people during several trips to Chunkanan, which is near the town of Cuzama, which is near the city of Acanceh, which is not far from Merida in the great state of Yucatan which is found on the central portion of the peninsula of the same name located in the southeast of the republic of Mexico.
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| We start our adventure from Chunkanan on a small flatbed of wood, formerlly used to bring the henequen in from the sometimes far-off fields. |
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| Across fields of henequen that are still harvested on a regular basis,we ride on the hard wooden platforms, pulled by a skeletal horse on narrow-gage railraid ties. |
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| As the « campesino » struggles to keep the¨ »truck » on the uneven rails, he talks to me about his town of 50 families or so and explains the production at the hacienda. |
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 The harvest takes place three times a year, he explains. At this time, the owners of the land will cut from 3 to 5 leaves off each plant. Some of the greedy ones have cut more, thus killing a plant that has taken 7 years to reach the maturity to be harvested. A properly cared-for plant will produce for 15 to 20 years. |
 The « leaves » are gathered together into bunches of 40. These bunches are then sectioned off into piles of 25, constituting a « millard. » They will be stacked onto a flatbed like the one we are riding, and taken to the local « casa de maquinas, » the machine house, or fiber-processing factory. |
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| The harvester will be paid according to the net weight of his « defibered » leaves. Good quality henequen will produce 25 kilos for each « millard, » lower qualities only 22. At current prices of 4 pesos a kilo, a millard can bring a worker from 88 to 100 pesos. |
| An average worker harvests about 50 millards off his part of the land in one harvest, thus earning between 4400 and 5,000 pesos. There are three harvests in each year, so the average income is around 14,000 for the year– around 1,300 US dollars. |
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| Owned by a land magnate in colonial times, the factory and much of the land has been redistributed to the local people. The manager of the factory is elected to a term of 3 years, the current manager has been in charge for 8 years, because everyone thinks he is « doing a good job. » It is the job of the manager to supervise the plant, hire workers, and find the best buyer for the finished fibers. |
At one time the plants were run by steam, so smokestacks are an easy way to spot haciendas from a distance. Now the machinery is mainly run by gasoline-powered equipment, remniscent of the days before electric lines were brought out to the small towns of Yucatan. |
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| As more leaves are brought in from the fields, the workers struggle to keep up, feeding leaves to the noisy machines and then gathering up the green fibers. |
| The waste, a worm sticky green goo, is drained into pits that run away from the factory, while the odiferous solids are carted off in « vagos. » |
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