HACIENDA SAN JOSÉ

Built on the backs of imported African slaves and local Indians, Peru’s vast network of haciendas was systematically dismantled by the agrarian reform of President Juan Velasco from 1968 through 1972. Most of Peru’s haciendas—some more than four centuries old—were abandoned after the owners were forced out and their land sold to newly formed worker cooperatives. Some haciendas were looted and burned, but most were simply neglected. Without upkeep, mud-and-cane roofs deteriorate quickly, allowing humidity to rot wood beams and plaster walls.

A notable exception is Hacienda San José, which looks much as it did when it began as a sugarcane plantation in 1688 with 87 slaves. After the Jesuits were expelled from Latin America in 1767, San Jose’s owners also bought San Regis, one of several Jesuit haciendas in the area. This made Hacienda San José the largest in the Chincha Valley, with more than 1,000 slaves.

But the independence wars of the 1820s, the abolishment of slavery in 1854, and the Pacific War with Chile (1878–82) took its toll on the hacienda. When the liberation troops of Don José de San Martin arrived in Pisco in 1821, the Spanish hacendado, or owner of the hacienda, fled to Spain as most of his slaves defected for San Martin’s army. The hacienda limped along until the chaos caused by the Pacific War, when slaves rebelled and murdered the family’s last heir on the front steps of the hacienda. After a period of turbulence, the Hacienda San José was sold in 1913 to the Cillóniz family, which continues to operate it today.

How Hacienda San José escaped from the agrarian reform is an interesting story. Ángela Benavides de Cillóniz struggled for years—and even met with President Velasco—to prevent the government from taking the hacienda. A deal was eventually struck in which the Cillóniz family gave up the Hacienda San Regis in exchange for keeping San José and 100 surrounding hectares. In the middle of it all, Ángela Cillóniz’s husband died and left her with12 children to support, from the age of 3 on up. She started the restaurant and the hotel soon after and began buying the hacienda back little by little from her brothers and sisters.

Except for one new building, the hacienda looks the same as it did on a certain Sunday in 1839, when a slave painted the hacienda’s main square. In the painting, which now hangs in the hacienda, slaves sing and dance in a circle, a troop of soldiers marches, hacendados barter over supplies, and a crowd bets on a cockfight. The same wide steps lead from the square onto the hacienda’s airy veranda and front room, where portraits hang of the plantation’s founders. Further along is a stone patio, decorated with old plows, brands, mule yokes, and other relics of the past, including an 18th-century billiard table, two huge leather bellows used in the iron foundry, and a three-meter bronze bathtub imported from Spain in the 17th century.

Beneath the hacienda are an intricate maze of catacombs, which connect to the chapel where the owners were buried (their bones are now scattered on the floor). The dark tunnels were probably used to store food and hide gold from the periodic incursions of pirates. Because of tunnels found near the coast, there is evidence that all the area’s haciendas may have been connected via an underground network used to smuggle slaves and avoid the head tax.

Adjacent to the hacienda is the Capilla San José, an exquisite and unrestored chapel built in 1700. It is a whitewashed adobe building, shaped like a shoebox and sparsely decorated, with a carved Baroque altar made of Nicaraguan cedar. All slaves were baptized here, but only those who worked inside the house were allowed to sit on seats against the wall and hear Mass.

A chilling reminder of plantation brutality is a room just paces away from the chapel entrance, where runaway slaves were tortured after being recognized by the brands on their shoulders. There is a device in the room to which slaves were shackled in excruciating positions after receiving 20 lashes in the main square. They remained in the room, in total dark, for up to two weeks.