Acueducto de la Limpia Concepción

Aqueduct of the Clean Conception mill, in El Chico, Veracruz. Touring the landscapes and small towns of Mexico is fascinating, especially when its history is known and how they developed in cities. In this delivery I will comment dear reader, on a part of the "Mayorazgo de la Higuera", a feudal institution with origins in the Iberian Peninsula that became one of the largest estates that existed in the southeast of Mexico. The Mayorazgo linked a certain amount of goods in favor of the firstborn of a family, was another piece of the gear aimed at strengthening the territorial and economic domain of the Spanish caste in the Colony. In New Spain, the foundation of Mayorazgo and the obtaining of titles of nobility that meant honor and prestige; it was achieved by paying the Crown certain taxes; in exchange for which their condition of nobles was recognized. The new aristocrats no longer had to go to conquer honor on the battlefields, but with the most powerful weapon of capitalism, money. In the 16th century, the Jalapa region, Veracruz was interesting for the European, not because of its richness in precious metal deposits, but because it had a temperate and healthy climate, fertile lands, abundant water, a large native workforce and attractiveness of a road that opened from Veracruz to Mexico. In that context, Mr. Francisco Hernández de la Higuera, a natural immigrant from Santibáñez, in Béjar del Castañar, Spain, went to the city of Los Angeles -Puebla-, where he dedicated himself to commercial activities; towards the beginning of the first half of the 16th century, the purchase of land in the Coatepec region began and a few years later, it was building a sugar mill that had as its dedication "The Holy Trinity". Twelve kilometers south of Xalapa, El Grande is located, a congregation of the municipality of Coatepec and its name is due to the ingenuity that Hernández de la Higuera founded, one of the first in New Spain, this sugar factory was already known by the locals such as "El Ingenio Grande" for the comparison established with the "Nuestra Señora de la Concepción" sugar mill, with lower sugar production and which they called "El Chico", now a congregation of the municipality of Emiliano Zapata, also in the state of Veracruz. Source: Gilberto Bermúdez Gorrochotegui "El Mayorazgo de la Higuera", 1987.