Antique Mexican Barter TokensteemCreated with Sketch.

in #steemsilvergold6 years ago

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Background
Greetings, steemians. What you see here is a token that could have been used in a Mexican hacienda( ah-SYEN-dah).
Haciendas were large estates that were composed of plantations, mines, and/or farms and even small villages. What an hacienda essentially is is an enterprise. All the profits from the land-holding went to the hacendado or "master". The hacendados were peninsulars in colonial times, the top rank of New Spain hierarchy, which meant he had pure Spanish blood and was born in Spain. Even after Mexico gained independence however, the hacienda system continued. They did not reside on their estates, preferring instead to live in the capital, Mexico City, or in Spain. In their place, overseers were left in charge; the position of overseer was by term rather than permanent position, which was the case for the workers.
The hacienda system is very similar if not identical to feudalism.

The Artifact
This coin bears an image of a ewe and the year of mint, 1910, on the obverse.
On the reverse is its value and home hacienda.
The word "TRAZKILA" is a misspelling of trasquila which is the noun version of the word meaning "to shear". (Some letters in the Mexican alphabet make the same phonetic sound as others). The other word, "JORNAL" can either mean the wage or one day's work. Together, it is unclear to me what they mean. This token could have either been traded for wool or for one day's wages of shearing wool, I don't know.
"CERRO PELON" (Bald Hill) was the name of this particular hacienda and the mark under that is the master's brand. This brand was on every horse, cow, donkey and possibly other livestock in the entire estate.

I bought this for what I had left in my pocket (close to or exactly 80 pesos) which was around $4USD. I think it is made out of zinc due to its greyish blue color but I'm not sure and it does not stick to a magnet.
I have a growing collection of hacienda tokens and it is interesting to see what they could be turned in for and the different names of the estates.
Thank you for taking a look at this unique token! More to come!

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Wow that's cool. Thanks for sharing !

Thank you very much. I just checked out your David C. Davis 1oz slug story. How awesome! I'm trying to collect the history of the local haciendas, which nobody really remembers anymore except for a few elders. What is a slug anyway?

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