For three consecutive nights, in March 1848, the workers of the San Agustín hacienda heard screams coming from a small construction in the back of the property. screams that were not of physical pain, but of something much deeper, something that broke the soul before the body. What began as a desperate attempt by an ascended man to save his lineage, ended up destroying one of the most powerful families in Yucatan and leaving behind a wound that never healed. Because Don Esteban de la Cerna y Mendoza

He did something that even in the darkest moments of the caste war did not seem possible. He created an agreement, an agreement that allowed seven Mayan men captured as slaves during the war to maintain intimate relations with his own wife. This is not fiction. This happened and Mexico tried to forget it.

The year was 1848. Yucatan was experiencing the most violent moment of the caste war, a racial conflict that pitted the Mayan population against the asserted criollos who had exploited them for centuries. The haciendas of Enqueneras, those fortresses with thick white walls that produced the green gold, had become battlefields.

The Maya, fed up with decades of brutal servitude, rose up in arms the previous year, in 1847 and by early 1848 they controlled almost three-quarters of the peninsula. Mérida, the capital, was practically under siege. Creole families lived in terror listening to stories about burned haciendas, massacred entire families and revenges that erased in one night what three generations had built.

The smell of smoke from the burnt plantations reached the city with the southeast wind. Church bells rang constantly, warning of new attacks. In this context of terror and extreme violence, the San Agustín hacienda, located 20 km south of Mérida, on the road to Umán, operated. The property extended over more than 2000 hectares of Yucatecan stony land, where the perfect rows that were lost in the horizon grew.

The enekén plant, with its thick and thorny stalks, produced a fiber so resistant that it was exported to Europe and the United States to make ropes and sacks. It was the green gold that sustained the Yucatecan economy and the San Agustín hacienda was one of the most prosperous in the region. The main house, built in the typical style of the haciendas of Enqueneras, was a fortress with white walls more than a meter thick, high ceilings with beams of precious woods brought from the jungle and pasta tiles that

they had arrived from Spain three decades earlier. The Yucatecan heat was suffocating, especially between March and May, when temperatures exceeded 38 grams and the humidity turned the air into a thick mass that was difficult to breathe. The interior courtyards of the mansion were designed to capture any breeze with quarry fountains and gardens of tropical plants, red bougainvilleas that climbed the columns and flambollan trees that provided shade during the cruelest months. The characteristic smell of the hacienda was a mixture of the sweet perfume of the

jasmine flowers. The pungent aroma of freshly cut enquén and the smoke from the wood-burning stoves where food was prepared. Don Esteban de la Cerna y Mendoza was 45 years old in 1848. He descended from a Creole family established in Yucatan since the tenth century with pure Spanish blood, as proudly proclaimed by family documents kept in cedar chests.

tall, with a strong build, although he was beginning to show the effects of years of good nutrition and little physical activity, Don Esteban always dressed in immaculate white, hand-embroidered linen keychains, drill pants and imported leather boots, his face burned by the Yucatecan sun, despite the palm hats, which he wore constantly. he showed the hard features of someone who is used to commanding without being questioned.

He had inherited his father’s hacienda in 1832 and for 16 years had made it one of the most profitable in the region. Their enquen plantations produced more than 500 arrobas of top quality fiber per month. The shredding machine, one of the few that existed in Yucatan at that time, operated day and night during the harvest season, moved by mules that spun in endless circles under the scorching sun.

But Don Esteban had a problem that no amount of eneken could solve. He had no heirs. Doña Mercedes de Uyoa, his wife of 13 years, came from another Yucatecan aristocratic family with roots dating back to the conquistadors. She was 32 years old in 1848 and was still considered one of the most beautiful women in Mérida, with very white skin, obsessively protected from the tropical sun, dark brown hair that she always wore in an elaborate bun, and green eyes that she had inherited from her maternal grandmother of Catalan origin.

Educated in the convent of the Conceptionist nuns of Mérida, she spoke fluent French, played the piano with mastery and embroidered with a skill that was admired throughout Yucatecan society. She always dressed with the modesty required of the ladies of her position. Dressed in light fabrics, but in sober colors, long sleeves, even in the most extreme and most gisterous heat, mantilla to attend mass every Sunday in the private chapel of the hacienda.

The marriage had been arranged in 1835, uniting two fortunes and two surnames that would guarantee the continuity of Creole power in Yucatan. But 13 years later the promise of that union remained unfulfilled. Doña Mercedes had become pregnant five times. The first time, just 6 months after the wedding, she lost the baby at 3 months of gestation.

The second time, two years later, the pregnancy came at 5 months before a sudden hemorrhage ended hopes. The third pregnancy in 1840 lasted only 8 weeks. The fourth in 1843 was the most promising, arriving at 7 months before the child was stillborn with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. The fifth and final attempt.

In 1846 she ended in another miscarriage at 4 months. Dr. Ignacio Rosado, a doctor trained at the University of Mexico and established in the port of Campeche, could not find an explanation for the successive losses. The medicine of the time attributed these failures to the delicate constitution of women, to imbalances of bodily humors or to divine punishments for hidden sins.

She had reset fortifying tonics, periodic bloodletting to balance the moods, absolute rest during the first months of pregnancy and specific prayers to Saint Anne, patron saint of women who wanted to conceive. Nothing had worked. For Don Esteban, the absence of heirs represented much more than a personal tragedy. it meant the end of his lineage.

In the Yucatecan Patriarchal Society of the nineteenth century, a man without descendants was considered incomplete, almost cursed. His three younger brothers had died during a yellow fever epidemic in 1838, taking with them any chance of the Cerna surname continuing down another line.

Without children, his immense fortune would be disputed by distant cousins after his death. The San Agustín hacienda, built with the work of four generations, would pass into the hands of relatives he barely knew and who would probably sell it to the highest bidder.

Everything he had built would vanish like smoke. The social pressure was immense. in the gatherings of Mérida, in the conversations after mass, in the meetings of the municipal council, where Esteban noticed the looks of pity and the whispered comments. Some quietly suggested that he consider taking a concubine to bear children his wife could not conceive.

Others insinuated that perhaps the problem was not hers, but his. Every comment was a wound in his masculine pride. It was in December 1847 when everything began to change. In the midst of the chaos of the caste war, when communications between Yucatán and the rest of Mexico were precarious, Don Esteban received a letter that would arrive at a time he could never forget.

The correspondence was delivered by a messenger who had ridden for six days from a hacienda near Valladolid, in the east of the peninsula, one of the areas most affected by the Mayan rebellion. The messenger, a half-breed named Sylvester Petch, arrived exhausted and covered in dust from the road with his leather knapsack, containing documents and letters for several ascended from the region.

The letter came from Don Rodrigo Maldonado, an acquaintance of Don Esteban who managed properties in eastern Yucatan. The two men had met years earlier during a business visit to Campeche and had occasionally corresponded about Eneken prices and the political situation in the region.

But this letter was different, much more personal, dangerously intimate. Don Esteban opened the envelope in the privacy of his office, a room on the second floor of the house with windows overlooking the fields of Enequén. The paper was of good quality with the wax seal of the Maldonado family. The calligraphy was careful, typical of someone with formal education.

My dear friend Esteban began the letter C of your difficulties in obtaining offspring. News travels slowly in these times of war. But they arrive. Allow me to share with you knowledge that may seem controversial, even scandalous, but that has proven its effectiveness in cases similar to yours.

The letter went on to describe how Don Antonio Cervera, an ascended man from the Peto area, had faced the same problem. His wife, after years of failed pregnancies, had finally managed to give birth to three healthy children through an unorthodox method. Don Rodrigo carefully explained, using euphemisms typical of the time, how some families of the Yucatecan elite had allowed selected Mayan slaves, chosen for their health and physical vigor, to maintain controlled relations with the ladies of the house. Children born of these unions,

The letter continued, they were registered as legitimate, guaranteeing the continuity of the surname and the inheritance. The practice, according to Don Rodrigo, was not as uncommon as one might think. In the most isolated haciendas of Yucatán, far from the surveillance of the ecclesiastical authorities of Mérida, the landowners exercised almost absolute power. They were feudal lords in all but name.

And in times of war, when the normal rules of society fell apart, certain agreements that in times of peace would be unthinkable became possible. The letter ended with a warning and a promise. He warned that the method required absolute discretion and total control over the participants.

Any leak would destroy not only the family reputation, but also the social standing in the entire region. But he promised that if it was executed correctly it could solve the problem of heirs definitively. Don Esteban read the letter five times that night. He did not sleep. He walked through the corridors of the hacienda as the full moon illuminated the fields of Enequén with a silver light that made the plants look like armies of spears pointing to the sky.

The chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs in the nearby cenotes were the only sounds in the Yucatecan night. The proposal disturbed him deeply. His Catholic upbringing, the values of racial purity that had been instilled in him since childhood, all screamed at him that the idea was monstrous.

to allow his wife, a lady of the highest Yucatecan society, to maintain relations with Mayan slaves, with men he considered barely superior to pack animals. It contradicted everything he believed about social order and racial hierarchy, but the alternative was equally unbearable. to die without heirs, to see how his surname was extinguished, to observe how everything he had built was dispersed among distant relatives who had not worked a single day in the fields of Enequén.

The obsession with the continuity of the lineage, with leaving descendants who carried his name and blood, began to weigh more than any moral consideration. During January 1848, Don Esteban observed the workers of his hacienda with different eyes. The caste war had changed the dynamics of work in the Yucatecan haciendas.

Many of the Maya laborers, who traditionally worked on inherited debts, had fled to join the rebellion. But the asendados who maintained good relations with the Yucatecan army received prisoners, Mayans captured during the battles who were distributed as slave labor.

Don Esteban had received 12 Mayan prisoners in November 1847, sent by Captain Bernardo Zaragoza, military commander of the area. They were young men captured during a confrontation near Valladolid, accused of participating in attacks against Haciendas, criollas, under the laws of war in force.

At that point they could be summarily executed or turned into forced laborers. Don Esteban had chosen the second option, not out of compassion, but because he needed arms to work in his fields. Now I looked at those men with a different purpose. He began to notice details that were previously irrelevant to him. Which were the healthiest? Which showed greater intelligence when performing complex tasks, which had physical characteristics that in their twisted mind could improve their offspring.

The slave mentality of the nineteenth century had completely dehumanized the indigenous peoples. For Don Esteban and for most Yucatecan Creoles, the Mayans were not people with rights, feelings or dignity. They were tools, instruments that could be used for any purpose that their owner determined.

This total dehumanization is what made it possible for an educated, Catholic man, considered respectable in his society, to even consider using other human beings as reproductive instruments. By the end of January, Don Esteban had identified seven men among his enslaved workers. The selection was not accidental.

Each had been evaluated according to specific criteria that he considered important for his macabre plan. John whose Mayan name was Abalam, which means Jaguar. He was 28 years old. He had been captured in Valladolid during one of the first engagements of the war. It was high by Mayan standards.

Measuring approximately 1, with 70 cm, with a strong build, developed by years of agricultural work, he knew how to read and write in Spanish, a rare skill among the Mayans of the time. He had learned on a Franciscan mission during his childhood before the situation between Creoles and Mayans became untenable. Miguel Put, a in Mayan, which means deer.

25 years old he came from Tijosuco, one of the towns where the rebellion had begun. He was an expert in the cultivation of corn and knew the ancestral techniques of agriculture. Their skin was lighter than that of the average Maya, the product of some miscegenation in previous generations. This detail did not go unnoticed by Don Esteban. Antonio Cich Apech in Maya, meaning tick, although the ritual meaning was deeper.

30 years old was the oldest of the group and demonstrated natural leadership among the other Mayan workers. He had been captured while leading a group of fighters near Peto. His presence commanded respect even among the Creole foremen of the hacienda. Pedro Cocom to Canul in Maya, 26 years old. He descended from a Mayan family that had collaborated with the Spanish since the conquest.

His surname Cocom was one of the noble lineages of the ancient Mayan kingdom. He spoke fluent Spanish and knew the customs, Creoles better than the others. This familiarity with the world of the whites made it less threatening in the eyes of Don Esteban. Francisco e a saaben maya, which means rattlesnake. 24 years old.

He was a healer in his village before the war. He knew the properties of medicinal plants from the Yucatecan jungle. Ancestral knowledge transmitted from generation to generation. He was slim, with long hands and nimble fingers that worked with precision. José Zul A. Uikab in Maya. 29 years old. He had been a hunter before he was captured. He knew the jungle like the back of his hand.

His eyesight was extraordinarily keen, and his movements silent like those of the Jaguar. He was the quietest of the group. He observed everything, but spoke little. Luisiu, Ainen, Maya, which means priest of the sun. 27 years old. His surname Shu was another of the great lineages of the pre-Hispanic Mayan nobility. He was the youngest in temperament, but also the one who showed the greatest sensitivity and capacity for emotional understanding.

He worked as a carpenter on the hacienda, building and repairing the wooden structures. These seven men torn from their villages, captured as prisoners of war, enslaved on a hacienda in Equenera, were about to become unwitting protagonists of one of the most disturbing episodes in Yucatecan history. None of them knew that Don Esteban was watching them.

None imagined that they were being evaluated as possible biological parents of the heir of the Cerna family, and none could have prepared for what was to come. Now, before we continue with this story, let’s pause. What would you do if you discovered that your existence was the result of such a disturbing arrangement as this? How would you process knowing that you were conceived not out of love, but by a transaction that treated human beings as instruments? This is a story that Mexico tried to

To erase, but which we need to know to understand the depths to which dehumanization can reach. If this story is impacting you, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and activate the notification bell, because what you are about to hear will reveal the extent to which the obsession with lineage and racial purity could destroy entire lives.

In February 1848, Don Esteban made his final decision. It was no longer a disturbing idea contained in a letter. It had become a concrete plan with defined steps and established rules. But first, he needed to convince the most important person, and also the most vulnerable, in this whole arrangement.

Doña Mercedes chose a new moon night when the darkness was total and the silence of the hacienda was broken only by the distant hooting of owls hunting in the fields of Enequen. The conversation took place in the master bedroom, a spacious room on the second floor of the main house with barred windows overlooking the inner courtyard. “Mercedes,” Don Esteban began, his voice more serious than usual.

We need to talk about our situation, about the heirs we haven’t been able to have. Doña Mercedes, who was embroidering an altar cloth for the hacienda’s chapel, looked up. She knew that look in her husband’s eyes. She had seen it many times over the past few years. It was the look of a desperate man searching for solutions where there were none.

“I’ve received information,” Don Esteban continued, “about methods other families have used successfully in situations similar to ours. Unconventional methods, I admit, but they’ve proven effective.” Then he began to explain, at first using euphemisms, then more clearly as the conversation progressed, the proposal that she, the lady of the hacienda, have intimate encounters with selected Mayan slaves under her supervision and heir’s control. Doña Mercedes’s initial reaction was exactly what any woman of her station would have reacted.

The era and position she had experienced. Absolute horror. She dropped the embroidery. Her hands began to tremble. The color drained from her face. “You can’t be serious,” she whispered. “This is an abomination before God. How can you even suggest such a thing?” But Don Esteban had prepared his arguments.

He spoke of the future of the estate, of the de la Cerna name dying out, of their social standing being destroyed if they died without heirs, of the distant cousins ​​who would divide everything four generations had built. He argued that the children born of the agreement would be registered as legitimate.

No one needed to know the truth about their conception. In a society where appearances were everything, keeping the secret would guarantee that the children would inherit without question. Doña Mercedes wept, begged, and pleaded with them to consider other options: perhaps adoption, naming a nephew as heir, or simply accepting that God had not granted them descendants.

But Don Esteban had already made his decision. And in the patriarchal Yucatecan society of 1848, women, even those of the highest social standing, had very little power over their own lives. The husband’s authority was almost absolute. Laws, customs, religion—everything reinforced that male power.

For three weeks, Doña Mercedes tried to resist. She locked herself in her room. She refused food. She prayed for hours in the hacienda’s private chapel, seeking solace in the Virgin of Candelaria, patron saint of the Yucatecans. But Don Esteban was relentless. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, realizing she had no allies in this conflict, Doña Mercedes gave in—not because she agreed, not because she accepted the morality of the plan, but because she had learned, like so many women before her, that resistance was futile when the

The patriarchy exerted its full weight. At the end of February, Don Esteban began the practical preparations. He ordered the construction of a small house on the back grounds of the hacienda, away from the main house, but close enough to maintain control.

The structure was simple, made of masonry with a thatched roof, typical of Mayan construction, but with more refined finishes. It consisted of a single, spacious room with a four-poster wooden bed, cotton sheets, a small table with a ceramic basin for washing, and a single window overlooking the fields. The official purpose of this building, as the hacienda workers were told, was to serve as a tool shed and later as living quarters for a new steward arriving from Campeche. No one questioned the explanation.

On Yucatecan haciendas, the newly promoted leader didn’t have to justify his decisions to anyone. At the beginning of March, Don Esteban summoned the seven selected Maya men to a meeting. He called them at dawn, when the heat was still bearable and the golden light of the rising sun painted the fields of Enequén with an amber hue.

The men appeared barefoot, dressed in their white cotton trousers and shirts of the same material—the standard attire of Mayan laborers. They formed a semicircle in front of the porch of the large house, their eyes lowered as was expected of slaves in the presence of their master. Each of their hearts beat strongly.

Being summoned personally by the boss rarely meant anything good. It could be the prelude to punishment, a particularly dangerous task, or a transfer to another estate. Don Esteban walked slowly in front of them. The sound of his boots on the porch tiles was the only noise in the tense silence of the morning.

He wore his immaculate white guayabera, drill trousers, and his finely woven palm hat. In his right hand, he held a cedarwood cane with a silver handle, more a symbol of authority than a physical necessity. “You have been selected,” he began in Spanish, knowing that everyone understood him, albeit with varying levels of fluency, “for a special task, a task that could benefit you, but which requires absolute discretion and obedience.” The silence grew even heavier.

Juan, no, the most polite of the group, discreetly raised his gaze, trying to read in the boss’s face some clue as to what was to come. “My wife and I,” continued Don Esteban, walking slowly. “We have faced difficulties in having children. You are going to help us resolve this situation.”

The phrase hung in the morning air like something tangible. The seven men remained motionless, but each experienced a jolt of confusion. How could they possibly help with such an intimate matter concerning the boss’s family? Then Don Esteban explained bluntly, without euphemisms, this time with the coldness of someone describing a technical process: each of them would have an assigned day of the week to have intimate relations with Doña Mercedes.

The meetings would take place in the newly built house, always under his indirect supervision. Any attempt at contact outside of the established schedule would be punished by death. Shock was visible on the faces of the seven men. Antonio Kawich unconsciously clenched his fists.

Miguel Put took an involuntary step back. Francisco Ecro’s eyes widened as if he were trying to wake from a nightmare. Don Esteban continued explaining the terms of the agreement. Those who participated would receive tangible benefits: better nutrition, three full meals a day instead of the usual two.

New clothes every three months, exemption from the most exhausting tasks, like working at the Enequen fiber mill under the midday sun, and the most tempting promise. If any of them could get Doña Mercedes to conceive a healthy child, that man would receive his freedom. Freedom. That word echoed in the mind of each of the seven Mayans.

For men who had been captured, enslaved, and torn from their families and communities, the possibility of regaining freedom was like a ray of light in a dark cell. But Don Esteban also made the alternative to cooperation clear. Those who refused would be sold to the haciendas of Campeche, where working conditions were notoriously brutal.

Or worse, they could be handed over to the army to work as porters in the campaigns against the Mayan rebels. A near-certain death sentence. The choice, if it could be called a choice, was clear. Participate in the degrading arrangement or face consequences that would likely mean death. Juan No was assigned to Mondays, Miguel Put to Tuesdays, Antonio Caich to Wednesdays, Pedro Cocom to Thursdays, Francisco EC to Fridays, José de Zul to Saturdays, and Luis Suu to Sundays.

The schedule would follow Doña Mercedes’ menstrual cycle. The encounters would be concentrated on her most fertile days each month. Don Esteban had consulted with Dr. Rosado, obviously without revealing the true nature of his plan, about the best times for conception. The seven men were instructed on how to proceed.

They were required to bathe thoroughly before each meeting, wear clean clothes that would be provided, and go to the fund house at 3 p.m. sharp on their assigned day. They were to remain there for the necessary time, no more than 30 minutes, and never, under any circumstances, speak to other workers about what was happening in that house. When the meeting ended and the seven men were dismissed, none of them spoke.

They returned to their tasks in silence, each processing the information differently. Juan, with his Franciscan upbringing and understanding of Christian values, immediately recognized the moral dimension of what they had been ordered to do. This was sin, it was adultery, it was a violation of everything he had been taught about marriage and holiness, but he also understood that he had no power in this situation.

He was a tool being used by men more powerful than himself. Antonio Kawish felt a deep rage that he had to suppress. As a natural leader among the Maya of the hacienda, the humiliation was twofold. Not only was he being forced to participate in something degrading, but his participation could be seen by other Maya as collaboration with the enemy.

In the midst of a race war, having a relationship with the wife of a Creole nobleman could be interpreted as treason. Francisco Ec, the healer, thought about the jungle plants he knew, herbs that could prevent conception, drinks that Mayan women used to control their fertility. He wondered if he could prepare something like that for Doña Mercedes, discreetly sabotaging the sentinel’s plan, but that thought was quickly dismissed.

If Don Esteban suspected any sabotage, the revenge would be terrible. Luis Siu, the emotionally youngest of the group, was simply overwhelmed. Just two months ago he had been back in his village working as a carpenter, hoping to marry a young woman from his community.

He was now a slave on a plantation in Equenera, ordered to participate in something his mind could barely comprehend. The first meeting was scheduled for Monday, March 9, 1848. Three days for everyone involved to mentally prepare for what was to come. Three days that felt like three eternities.

Doña Mercedes spent those days in a state of almost total dissociation. She moved through the mansion like a ghost. She barely ate, spending hours kneeling in the chapel, praying the rosary over and over, seeking in prayer an escape she could not find. Her hands trembled constantly. The maids of the house noticed her anguish, but did not dare to ask.

On Sunday, March 8, Don Esteban ordered a special mass to be held in the hacienda’s chapel. Father Matías Gorópe, a Spanish priest who served several haciendas in the region, officiated the ceremony. Don Esteban and Doña Mercedes sat in the front row. She was dressed entirely in black, as if attending a funeral.

Perhaps in a sense it was a funeral, the funeral of the woman she had been. Monday, March 9, dawned with stifling heat. The thermometer on the porch of the large house read 36º before noon. The air was still, heavy, as if the very atmosphere were conspiring to make the day even more unbearable. Juan didn’t bathe three times that morning in the cenote near the workers’ quarters.

The cold water of the cenote, fed by underground rivers, did nothing to calm his anxiety. He had been given clean clothes: a new cotton shirt and trousers, finer than what the workers usually wore. At 3:15, one of the foremen escorted him from the fields to the small house at the back of the property. The path seemed endless, even though it was only 500 meters.

Each step felt heavy, as if she were wearing invisible chains. Doña Mercedes was already home. She had arrived 30 minutes earlier, escorted by her husband. She wore a simple white cotton gown, without the embellishments and lace she usually wore. Her hair was loose, something she never did in public. Her eyes were red from crying.

Don Esteban remained outside, seated in a chair under the shade of a ramón tree. From there he could see the house’s only entrance. He smoked a cigar, feigning a calmness he probably didn’t feel. Juan didn’t enter the house. The door closed behind him, and at that moment one of the darkest stories of the San Agustín ranch began.

What happened inside that room in the next 20 minutes will not be described in detail, not out of modesty, but because what matters is not the physical details of the act, but the psychological and moral consequences for all those involved. When Juan didn’t come out, his face was pale despite his dark skin. He didn’t look at Don Esteban, he didn’t look at anyone.

He walked back to the fields, his gaze fixed on the ground, as if each step plunged him deeper into a well of shame from which he could never escape. Doña Mercedes remained in the house for another 15 minutes. When she finally emerged, supported by her husband because she could barely walk, her face showed no emotion whatsoever; she had completely dissociated. Her mind had gone somewhere distant to survive the experience.

Tuesday was Miguel Put’s turn. Wednesday, Antonio Cwich. Thursday, Pedro Cocom. Friday, Francisco Ec, Saturday, José TZul, and Sunday, Luis Shu. Each match was similar in its mechanics, but different in its emotional dynamics. Miguel Put trembled so much that he could barely perform as expected.

Antonio Cich carried out the task with almost military coldness, emotionally detaching himself as a survival strategy. Pedro Cocom, with his knowledge of Creole customs, tried to be as respectful as possible, as if courtesy could somehow lessen the horror of the situation. Francisco EC was the first to try to speak with Doña Mercedes during the encounter.

He asked her in broken Spanish if she was alright, if she needed anything. She didn’t answer, she just wept silently. That soundless weeping was worse for Francisco than any scream. José Zul, the silent hunter, observed every detail of the room as if he were memorizing the place where his own degradation was taking place.

The ceiling beams, the texture of the masonry walls, the small wooden crucifix hanging above the bed. Everything was etched in her mind like a wound that would never heal. Luis Siu was the one who displayed the greatest emotional distress on Sunday. Seeing him, Doña Mercedes experienced a moment of human connection amidst the horror.

Both were victims of the same brutal system. Both were being used as instruments to satisfy the obsession of a powerful man. The first week ended, and with it any illusions any of those involved might have had about maintaining their dignity intact. The seven Mayan men began to experience changes in their behavior.

Juan, who used to pray daily, stopped. How could he speak to God after participating in something his religious upbringing told him was a mortal sin? Antonio Cawish became even more silent. He avoided eye contact with the other Mayan workers.

He felt he carried an invisible mark of shame that everyone could see. Miguel Put developed sleep problems. The nights were worse. In the darkness of the barracks where the workers slept, nightmares tormented him. He dreamed he was back in his village, but all his neighbors and relatives had turned their backs on him, knowing what he had done. The other workers on the estate noticed that something was wrong.

The seven selected men received better food. They no longer performed the hardest tasks, but they had also become distant, as if they shared a dark secret that separated them from the rest. The second week began, the cycle repeated itself. Monday, Juan no. Tuesday, Miguel Put, and so on.

Doña Mercedes had developed her own psychological survival strategies. During their encounters, she would close her eyes and mentally recite passages from the Latin Bible that she had memorized in the convent: Paternoser, Kiesincaelis, Sanctificetur, Nentum. The words transported her back to a time when she was an innocent child in the convent, before marriage and her husband’s obsession had transformed her into this.

Francisco EC, noticing Doña Mercedes’ suffering, began bringing small bunches of aromatic herbs—wild basil, orange blossom, grass—and discreetly placing them on the table in the room. It was the only thing he could offer, a small gesture of humanity amidst the systemic brutality.

Luis Siu, with his carpentry skills, had discreetly repaired small problems in the house: a window that didn’t close properly, a loose floorboard that creaked, a door whose hinges squeaked. Like Francisco, these were attempts to maintain some semblance of humanity in a completely inhuman situation.

Three weeks passed, then four. At the end of March, Doña Mercedes began to experience the first symptoms: morning sickness, breast tenderness, unusual fatigue, and most tellingly, her period didn’t arrive when it was due. Don Esteban immediately called Dr. Rosado.

The doctor traveled from Campeche, a two-day journey on horseback. He performed the examination in the master bedroom of La Casona, with Don Esteban waiting anxiously in the hallway. After an hour, the doctor emerged with a smile. “Congratulations, Don Esteban,” he said, “Doña Mercedes is pregnant based on the symptoms and the initial development.”

I estimate she’s about five weeks pregnant. God willing, and if everything goes well, they’ll have an heir by December.” Don Esteban felt a mixture of triumph and relief. His plan had worked. He would finally have an heir. But he also understood that he now faced a new uncertainty. Which of the seven men was the biological father? It was impossible to know.

The rotating schedule had ensured that any of them could have been responsible for the conception, but that uncertainty was, in a sense, part of the plan. If no one knew for sure who the father was, no one could claim paternity.

The child would be registered as the legitimate son of Don Esteban de la Cerna y Mendoza and Doña Mercedes de Uyoa, and that was all that mattered. However, Don Esteban made a decision that would reveal the growing paranoia in his mind. The encounters would continue throughout the pregnancy. His justification was medical.

She had read in European medical treatises that intimate relations during pregnancy could strengthen the gestation, but the real reason was to maintain control. If the encounters ceased abruptly, the hacienda workers might suspect that something unusual was happening. The seven Mayans received the news of the pregnancy with mixed reactions.

Each of them silently wondered if he was the biological father of the child being carried. Juan, unable to recall the dates of his encounters with Doña Mercedes, did some mental calculations. Conception had likely occurred during the second week of March. He had been with her on the Monday of that week.

Was he the father? The question tormented him, but he also knew he could never know for sure. And even if he did, what difference would it make? The child would never be his. He would be raised as a criollo from Yucatecan high society. He would learn to despise the Maya. He would never know that half his blood was indigenous. Antonio Cichtió felt a deep bitterness.

If he was the father, it meant his offspring would be used to perpetuate the very system that had enslaved him. The heir to the hacienda, San Agustín, potentially his own son, would grow up to become a master over other Maya. The irony was devastating. The following months passed with a superficial normalcy that masked the growing tensions beneath the surface.

Doña Mercedes’ pregnancy was progressing well. At three months, her belly began to show. At four, the baby was moving. At five, Dr. Rosado confirmed that everything was going as expected, but for everyone involved in the secret, each day added another weight to their consciences. Continued, part two. Now, let’s pause for a moment.

Have you ever thought about the consequences of living with a secret that tears you apart inside? What does forced silence do to the human psyche? How far can a person go before the weight of guilt completely breaks them? This story is about to take an even darker turn, because the birth of the baby will not bring the expected relief; on the contrary, it will unleash a series of events that will destroy everything Don Esteban had tried to preserve.

If you want to know how this disturbing story ends, be sure to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications, because what follows will reveal how an obsession with racial purity and family lineage can consume and destroy even the most powerful families. On December 3, 1848, after a nine-month pregnancy, Doña Mercedes went into labor.

The birth took place in the master bedroom of the Casona, assisted by Dr. Rosado and Jacinta, a trusted local midwife who had delivered babies in the region for over 30 years. The labor lasted 14 hours, beginning before dawn and continuing until nightfall.

Don Esteban waited in his office, unable to concentrate on anything, chain-smoking cigar after cigar, listening to his wife’s cries of pain from upstairs. At 8 p.m., the cry of a newborn was finally heard. Don Esteban rushed upstairs. Dr. Rosado emerged from the room with an expression the landowner couldn’t decipher.

It wasn’t exactly joy; it was something more complex. “It’s a girl,” the doctor announced, “healthy and strong.” “But Don Esteban, there’s something you should see.” Don Esteban entered the room. Doña Mercedes lay in bed, exhausted but alive. Jacinta held the newborn, already clean and wrapped in cotton blankets.

When Don Esteban saw his supposed daughter for the first time, his heart stopped. The girl was beautiful, but her physical features immediately revealed her mixed heritage. Her skin was significantly darker than that of her official parents. Her black hair had a different texture than the straight hair of Creole families.

The facial features, though delicate, showed clear Mexica influences. The shape of the eyes, the contour of the face, the bone structure. Dr. Rosado, an educated and observant man, immediately noticed the unusual characteristics, but he was astute enough not to make any direct comments.

At that time, it was common to attribute physical variations in babies to distant ancestral influences or birthmarks that supposedly would disappear over time. “It’s normal,” she said in a carefully neutral voice, “for newborns to have darker skin in their first few days, and their features become more defined over time.” But Don Esteban knew the truth.

The girl was clearly of mixed race. Anyone with eyes could see it. And in a society obsessed with racial purity, this was a disaster. The girl was baptized three days later in the hacienda’s private chapel. María Concepción de La Cerna y Uyoa was her registered name. Father Gorópe officiated the ceremony.

Only family members and a few trusted employees of the hacienda attended. Don Esteban had made a decision. María Concepción’s birth would be kept as discreet as possible. There would be no customary celebration that accompanied the birth of the heir to an important family. No announcements would be sent to other families of the Yucatecan elite.

The girl’s existence would be kept hidden from society as much as possible. But secrets in small communities rarely stay hidden. The seven Mayan men had different reactions upon learning of the birth. Juan caught a brief glimpse of the girl as he passed by the house during his work. His heart skipped a beat.

The baby’s features reminded him of his own mother. The shape of her eyes, the form of her nose. Was she his daughter? The question would haunt him for the rest of his life. Luisu was called in to do minor repairs at the house in the weeks following the birth. He heard the baby crying from upstairs.

That sound, the cry of a baby who potentially carried his blood, but whom he would never meet, remained etched in his memory like a wound that would never heal. The months following María Concepción’s birth marked the beginning of the disintegration of everything Don Esteban had tried to build. In February 1849, during a courtesy visit, the wife of the municipal judge of Mérida, Doña Inés Mendoza, saw the baby girl.

Her reaction was one of poorly concealed surprise. “What distinctive features,” she remarked with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “She must have some interesting ancestors in her family tree.” The seemingly innocuous comment was actually devastating in the context of 19th-century Yucatecan society. It was a polite way of stating the obvious.

The girl was of mixed race, and if the girl was of mixed race, then there was mixed ancestry in the de la Cerna family. Rumors began to circulate discreetly in Mérida’s high society, in gatherings after mass, in town council meetings, in the salons of the grand mansions where the elite met; they were spoken of in whispers.

Have you seen the de la Cerna daughter? They say she has very dark features. Perhaps there was infidelity, or worse, perhaps there’s impure blood in that family that they’ve hidden for generations. For Don Esteban, every rumor was like a stab wound. His reputation, built on generations of supposed racial purity, was crumbling.

The families who had once treated him as an equal now avoided him. Invitations to social events ceased. Business partners began to distance themselves. In April 1849, Father Gorópe requested a private meeting with Don Esteban. The meeting took place in the sacristy of the small church in Umán. “Don Esteban,” the priest began in a grave voice.

There are very disturbing rumors circulating, rumors about the conception of his daughter. As her confessor, I need to know the truth. Cornered, Don Esteban tried to offer explanations. He spoke of distant ancestors, of temporary birthmarks, of natural variations in physical characteristics. But Father Gorópe was no fool.

His eyes, hardened by decades of hearing confessions of the darkest sins, pierced through any lie. “Don’t lie to me,” Don Esteban said firmly, “your immortal soul is at stake. What did you do to get that girl?” In a moment of weakness, possibly brought on by months of accumulated guilt, Don Esteban made a fatal mistake.

He tried to bribe the priest, offering a substantial donation to the church: 1,000 pesos in silver coins, enough to completely repair the church in Umán and build a new chapel. Father Gorópe stood up. His face flushed with indignation. “You’re trying to buy my silence! To buy a servant of God!” The meeting ended abruptly.

The priest refused the donation and left the sacristy without saying goodbye. Two Sundays later, Father Gorópe delivered a sermon on hidden sins and the importance of moral purity in Christian families. Although he didn’t mention any specific names, everyone in the congregation understood who he was referring to.

The situation for the de la Cerna family became untenable. Doña Mercedes, for her part, had developed a complex relationship with her daughter. She loved María Concepción with the intensity of maternal love, but every time she looked at the girl, she remembered the months of humiliation she had suffered.

Every physical feature of the baby was a living reminder of the trauma. She began to shut herself in her room. For days she refused food. She spent hours staring out the window, not really seeing anything. The maids heard her crying at night. Sometimes she uttered disjointed phrases about unforgivable sins and divine punishment.

The signs of a deep depression were evident, but the medicine of the time had no effective tools for treating mental illness. Dr. Rosado prescribed rest, fortifying tonics, and more prayers. In June 1849, Doña Mercedes announced that she was pregnant again. The news was received with horror by everyone involved.

A second pregnancy meant restarting the entire cycle of encounters with the seven Mayan men. And if the second baby was born with even more distinctly mixed-race features, it would be impossible to maintain any pretense of normalcy. Don Esteban faced a terrible dilemma. Continuing with the arrangement would increase his chances of having a male heir, something that patriarchal society considered essential, but it would also exponentially multiply the risks of total exposure.

She decided to continue. The obsession with having a male heir outweighed any rational consideration. The meetings resumed. But this time the dynamic was different, more tense, more desperate. Not Juan. During a whispered conversation with Antonio Kawish, he voiced what they were all thinking. “This has to end,” Enaya said, using her native tongue so that no Creole foreman could understand. “It’s destroying us all.”

But what could they do? They were slaves, property, human tools without rights or a voice. In August, the first serious incident occurred. Joséul, the silent hunter, was found completely drunk near the Enequén fields. He had somehow obtained liquor, probably from another worker.

In his drunken state, he began to mutter incoherently. Children I cannot know, he repeated over and over, sins I cannot confess, blood mingled in the big house. Other workers heard him. They didn’t fully understand what he was saying, but the words were suggestive enough to arouse suspicion.

Don Esteban, upon learning of the incident, made a drastic decision. José Zul was sold to a promoted officer on the coast, far from Mérida, officially for disciplinary reasons, but in reality to silence him before he said anything that would compromise everything. The sale of José Zul sent a clear message to the other six men.

Anyone who posed a threat to the secrecy would be eliminated, no longer with promises of freedom, but with the implicit threat of fates worse than death. Fear replaced every other feeling. Doña Mercedes’s second pregnancy was progressing, but she herself had become a shadow of her former self. She left the hacienda.

She barely spoke, moving through the corridors like a ghost, pale and thin despite her pregnancy, with a vacant stare that frightened the maids. In February 1850, after eight months of gestation, Doña Mercedes gave birth to her second child. This time it was a boy, Joaquín Esteban de la Cerna y Uyoa.

But the boy was even more obviously of mixed race than his older sister. Darker skin, even more pronounced Mayan features, completely black hair with a curly texture. Dr. Rosado, upon examining the newborn, could no longer maintain his professional neutrality.

His expression made it clear that he understood something extraordinarily irregular had occurred. After the delivery, the doctor asked to speak privately with Don Esteban. “I don’t know what you’ve done,” he said in a carefully controlled voice. “But this defies any natural medical explanation.” Two.

Children with such distinctly mestizo features, born to supposedly pure-blooded Creole parents. Dr. Rosado made no direct accusations, but he made it clear that he would not return to the San Agustín hacienda. His professional reputation was at risk simply because of his association with the family. The doctor’s refusal to continue treating the family was the signal the Yucatecan elite needed.

If the doctor distanced himself, it meant he had confirmed the suspicion about something deeply irregular within the de la Cerna family. Social ostracism became total. The doors of Mérida’s prominent families were closed to the de la Cerna family. Business partners canceled contracts. Suppliers demanded immediate payment of outstanding debts.

The hacienda’s production began to decline because Enequen’s buyers preferred to do business with other, more established producers. Facing economic and social ruin, Don Esteban began to drink excessively. His behavior became erratic. He would yell at the workers for no reason. He would spend days locked in his office.

Paranoia gripped him. He began to suspect that the Mayan workers were conspiring against him, that the six remaining men in the agreement were planning to reveal the secret, and that his own wife was looking for ways to betray him. In April 1850, he ordered Antonio Cawish transferred to another hacienda. In May, he sold it to Miguel Put.

In June, Pedro Cocom was sent to work in the coastal salt mines. One by one, the men who had participated in the agreement were dispersed. It was Don Esteban’s way of eliminating any possible witnesses to his moral crime. Only three remained: Juan, Francisco Ec, and Luis Siu.

Seeing the ascendant’s growing paranoia and fearing for their lives, Luis Su and Francisco made a desperate decision. On the night of July 22, 1850, taking advantage of the fact that the hacienda’s guards were focused on preventing attacks by Mayan rebels, they escaped. Francisco took only a satchel with medicinal seeds and some basic tools. Luis took his most prized carpentry tools.

They walked south, into the jungle, where they hoped to find refuge with the Mayan rebels or simply lose themselves in the vast green expanse. The simultaneous escape of two slaves immediately drew the attention of the military authorities in Mérida. Captain Zaragoza, the same man who had provided the Mayan prisoners to Don Esteban, arrived at the hacienda to investigate why two of his best workers would flee. He asked suspiciously.

They were either being mistreated or knew something they shouldn’t have. Don Esteban couldn’t offer convincing explanations. His nervousness was obvious. The captain left without making any arrests, but with suspicions he would share with other officers in Mérida. The financial situation of the San Agustín Hacienda completely collapsed during the following months.

The creditors initiated legal proceedings. Enequen’s production plummeted to less than 30% of what it had been two years prior. Perceiving the instability, the workers began to desert. In September 1850, the Mérida City Council passed a resolution removing Don Esteban from his position on the municipal council, officially for negligence in his administrative duties.

In reality, it was a way of officially expelling him from respectable society. For Doña Mercedes, each day was a psychological torment that exceeded her capacity to endure. She loved her two children. María Concepción, almost two years old, was a beautiful, intelligent little girl with a laugh that could light up any room.

Seven-month-old Joaquín Esteban was a healthy and curious baby, but every time Doña Mercedes looked at him, she saw the faces of seven Mayan men in his face. She saw the months of humiliation, she saw her own complicity in an act that her Catholic conscience screamed was a mortal sin. She began to have recurring nightmares.

She dreamed she was in the small house at the back, but this time she couldn’t get out. The walls closed in on her, and the faces of the seven men watched her from the shadows, not with desire, but with a mixture of pity and accusation. During the day, she suffered episodes of dissociation. She would stare into space for hours. She would stop responding when people spoke to her.

The maids had to dress and feed her as if she were a child. In October 1850, Doña Mercedes made a decision that had been brewing in her mind for months. One morning, when Don Esteban had gone out to inspect the fields of Enequen, Doña Mercedes asked the maids to prepare tea, a special tea, she said, with herbs from the garden.

But the herbs she herself gathered weren’t for flavoring; they were oleander blossoms, an ornamental plant that grew in the gardens of the mansion, beautiful to behold, deadly if ingested. She locked herself in her room and wrote a letter. Her handwriting was shaky, the words stained by tears that fell onto the paper.

“To whom it may concern,” the letter began. “I confess before God and men the terrible sins I have committed, not of my own free will, but forced by my husband. I was compelled to have relations with slaves on this estate in order to conceive heirs. My children, María Concepción and Joaquín Esteban, are the fruit of that diabolical agreement.”

I cannot continue living with this burden. I ask forgiveness of God, my children, and the men who were used as instruments in this crime against nature and against God. May the Lord have mercy on my soul. Simply signed Mercedes de Uyoa de la Cerna. She drank the tea. The poison of the oleander acts slowly.

First it causes nausea, then severe abdominal pain, then heart problems. Death can take several hours. Doña Mercedes was found by a maid three hours later, unconscious on the floor of her room. The letter was on her desk, the teacup overturned beside her. They immediately called Don Esteban.

They tried to make her vomit. They gave her milk, treatments that folk medicine recommended for poisoning, but the poison had already done its work. Doña Mercedes de Uyoa died at dusk on October 14, 1850, at the age of 34. The final part, the conclusion, is where Esteban found the letter, read it, and at that moment understood that all was lost. The letter was a complete confession.

If anyone else read it, his crime would be publicly exposed. He would be prosecuted, probably imprisoned. His children would be declared illegitimate. The estate would be confiscated. He tried to burn the letter, but his hands trembled so much he couldn’t hold the match.

Finally, she managed to set it on fire and watched as the paper was consumed by the flames. The ashes floated in the air like lost souls. But Doña Mercedes’s suicide was the public confirmation that Yucatecan society needed. A woman of high society doesn’t commit suicide without an extraordinary reason. And that reason, everyone knew, was related to the scandal involving her mestizo children.

The funeral was small and somber. Only a few hacienda workers and Father Gorópe attended, the latter refusing to celebrate a funeral mass because suicide was a mortal sin. According to Catholic doctrine, Doña Mercedes was buried in the hacienda cemetery, not in the family mausoleum in Mérida. Even in death, she was excluded.

Don Esteban was found three days later by Juan after the funeral. The landowner wandered barefoot through the fields of Enequén under the scorching midday sun. He talked to himself, muttering incoherent phrases about pacts with cursed children and impure blood that stained generations. His white guayabera was dirty with earth.

His feet bled from the thorns of the enekén. He had lost his hat, and the tropical sun had burned his face until it was as red as raw flesh. He had suffered a complete mental breakdown. Juan No, the last of the seven Mayan men remaining on the hacienda, observed the man who had enslaved him, who had used him as a tool, who had destroyed so many lives in his obsession with having heirs, and felt not hatred, but a profound sadness, because he understood that Don Esteban was also, in a sense, a victim—a victim of a system that valued lineage over humanity.

Racial purity over compassion, family pride over the dignity of people. Don Esteban was committed to an asylum for the mentally ill in Mérida in November 1850. The place was an old colonial mansion converted into a hospice, with barred windows and dark hallways where the screams of the other inmates echoed.

He spent his days sitting in a corner staring at the walls, constantly muttering the same phrases about mixed blood and broken lineages. He died there two years later, in January 1852, never having regained his sanity. He was only 49 years old, but looked like a 70-year-old. He was buried in a common grave in the asylum cemetery.

No member of his family attended the funeral. The San Agustín Hacienda was auctioned off in December 1850 to pay off accumulated debts. It was purchased by a consortium of merchants from Campeche for less than half its actual value. The new owners never learned the full story of what had happened there.

Or perhaps they did know, but preferred not to speak of it. The children, María Concepción, 2 years old, and Joaquín Esteban, 10 months old, were given to distant relatives of the Uyoa family in Valladolid. The family that took them in did so more out of obligation than affection. The children were raised, but always as second-class citizens within their own family.

Her mixed-race physical features were a constant reminder of the scandal that had destroyed the de la Cerna family. They slept in the servants’ quarters, ate after the rest of the family, and wore hand-me-downs and patched-up clothes. When María Concepción turned 16, in 1864, the family that had raised her expelled her. There was no dowry for her. There was no possibility of marriage to respectable families.

Her very existence was a stain the family wanted to erase. María Concepción ended up working as a seamstress in Valladolid. She lived in a rented room in the city’s poor neighborhood. At 20, she married a mestizo artisan named Roberto Canul, who carved wooden figures to sell at the market. She had three children.

She lived a humble but honest life, working from dawn till dusk to feed her family. She never spoke about her past. When her children asked about their parents, she simply said they had died when she was very young. She wasn’t exactly lying. The parents she should have had died.

María Concepción died in 1898 at the age of 50 from pneumonia, a condition she succumbed to after decades of malnutrition and overwork. She was buried in the municipal cemetery of Valladolid. Her tombstone bears no inscription other than her name and the dates. Joaquín Esteban met a similar fate.

At 15, he was sent to work as a carpenter’s apprentice. Ironically, the same trade his possible biological father, Luis Su, had practiced. He worked for years building furniture and repairing houses. His hands developed the same dexterity that Luis had possessed. He married young, to a Mayan woman named Petrona Pech. They had several children.

They lived in a small village near Tisimín. Joaquín was known as a quiet, hardworking man who never spoke of his past. He died in 1905 during a yellow fever epidemic that swept through the region. He was 55 years old. His children never learned the truth about his birth.

Neither brother ever learned the details of the agreement that had resulted in their birth. They only vaguely knew that there had been a scandal in their family, that their mother had committed suicide, and that their father had died insane. But the specific details, the full horror of their conception, remained hidden. Perhaps it was a mercy. The seven Mayan men had fates scattered throughout the peninsula.

Juan, after the hacienda was sold, received his freedom, not as a reward, but because the new owners didn’t want workers who knew the dark secrets of the previous family. He returned to what remained of his hometown near Valladolid and found that the Caste War had destroyed almost everything.

His family had been scattered or killed. The cornfields were abandoned, the houses burned. He settled in a new town that was being rebuilt. He worked as a teacher, teaching Mayan children to read and write. He married a widow with two young children and had three more children of his own. He never spoke about his time at the San Agustín hacienda, not even to his wife.

Sometimes, when he saw girls the age María Concepción would have been, he wondered if any of them were his daughter, if she carried his blood, if he would ever see her again. He died in 1878 at the age of 58, taking his secret to the grave. His children and grandchildren remembered him as a kind, patient man who taught them to value education and dignity.

Antonio Kawich, sold to another hacienda in 1850, eventually escaped during a Maya rebel attack on that property. He joined the Maya fighters and fought for several years in the war. He was a fierce warrior, fueled by years of pent-up rage against the system that had enslaved and degraded him. He survived the conflict and settled in one of the autonomous Maya territories in southern Quintana Roo.

He started a family and became a respected community leader. He taught young people about Mayan resistance and the importance of never forgetting what the Creoles had done to them. He died in 1903, an old man surrounded by his grandchildren. In his final days, he sometimes spoke in his sleep about a small house and a secret that should never have existed, but he would wake up remembering nothing.

Miguel Put disappeared from historical records after being sold in 1850. He may have died working in brutal conditions on some coastal plantation where malaria and backbreaking labor killed workers within years. Or perhaps he managed to escape and vanish into the anonymity of some remote village. His fate remains unknown.

Pedro Cocom, sent to work in the coastal salt flats—a job considered a death sentence due to the extreme conditions—surprisingly survived. The salt flats were forced labor camps where men worked barefoot in the salt water under the scorching sun, with wounds that never healed and diseases that spread unchecked. But Pedro was strong and he was lucky.

He was released after five years when the forced labor system at the salt flats was reformed following international pressure from abolitionist groups. He settled in a fishing village. He married a Mayan woman who sold fish at the market. They had children.

Pedro worked as a fisherman until he was too old to go to sea. His children cared for him in his later years. He lived until 1912. He died in his bed, surrounded by his family, something few slaves of his generation achieved. Francisco E. and Luis Suu, the two who escaped together in 1850, managed to reach rebel Mayan territory after three weeks of walking through the jungle.

They joined a community deep in Quintana Roo. Francisco used his knowledge of medicinal plants to become a respected healer. He treated illnesses, assisted in childbirth, and prepared remedies for the entire community. He married a Mayan woman who was a midwife. Together they saved many lives. Luis worked as a carpenter, building houses and furniture for the community. His hands created beauty where once there had only been jungle.

He married and had a large family. His children learned his trade. Both lived the rest of their lives in relative peace, far from the Creole world that had enslaved them. Francisco died in 1882 and Luis in 1890. They were buried in their community’s cemetery under ceiva trees they had planted themselves.

José Sul, the first to be sold after his drunken episode, died in 1853 at the hacienda where he was transferred. The official record stated fever. But other workers whispered that he had let himself die, that he had simply stopped eating, drinking, and fighting. He was only 32 years old.

He was buried in an unmarked grave in the hacienda cemetery. None of the seven men ever knew for sure whether he was the biological father of María Concepción or Joaquín Esteban. That uncertainty was part of the cruel design of the agreement. They all shared the possibility of paternity, but none could claim it. They all bore the guilt, but none had the right.

Now, before we conclude this story, we need to reflect on what really happened here. How many other similar cases occurred in the history of Mexico and Latin America that were never documented? How many women were forced into similar situations? How many Indigenous, African, and mixed-race men and women were used as reproductive instruments by elites obsessed with maintaining their power?

The caste system in Mexico, although officially abolished after independence in 1821, continued to operate in practice throughout the 19th and part of the 20th centuries. The obsession with racial purity inherited from the Spanish colonial era created situations where human dignity was completely subordinated to considerations of lineage and social standing.

If you want to learn more about how these systems of racial oppression operated in practice and about other similar cases that official history tried to erase, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications, because these stories need to be told, not out of morbid curiosity, but because understanding our past is the only way to build a fairer future.

The case of the San Agustín Hacienda represents one of the darkest chapters of the caste system in 19th-century Mexico. It shows how an obsession with lineage and social status could lead educated men, considered respectable in their society and practicing Catholics, to commit acts that completely dehumanized other human beings.

Don Esteban de la Cerna was not an exceptional monster; he was a product of a system that systematically dehumanized Indigenous peoples. A system that taught that the Maya, Black people, and people of mixed race were inferior, barely human, instruments that could be used for any purpose their masters determined. Doña Mercedes was a victim of two simultaneous systems of oppression.

As a woman in a patriarchal society, she had no control over her own body or her life choices. Her husband’s authority was almost absolute, reinforced by laws, customs, and religion. Her tragedy illustrates the condition of women in Simonónico’s Mexico, where even women of the highest social standing were, in many ways, the property of their husbands, much like slaves were the property of their masters.

The seven Mayan men were treated as reproductive instruments, denied any humanity, dignity, or right to choose. Their names—Juan Miguel Put, Antonio Cich, Pedro Coccom, Francisco Ec, José Zul, and Luis Siu—should be remembered not as willing participants in a scandal, but as victims of a brutal system that robbed them of their freedom, their dignity, and, in some cases, their lives.

The children born from this arrangement—María, Concepción, and Joaquín Esteban—carried the consequences of choices they did not make throughout their lives. They were marked from birth by a system that valued racial purity over humanity. Their lives illustrate how social traumas are perpetuated across generations.

Subsequent historical research has revealed that similar, though not identical, cases occurred in other parts of Mexico and Latin America during the 16th and 19th centuries. On the most isolated haciendas, far from the control of civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the ascendants wielded almost unlimited power.

Indigenous women were routinely raped by their employers. Indigenous men were used for whatever purpose their masters determined. The Caste War in Yucatán, which officially lasted from 1847 to 1901, was a direct response to centuries of brutal exploitation of the Maya population. It was not a rebellion without a cause.

It was the inevitable explosion of a systematic oppression that had lasted 300 years since the Spanish conquest. Today, the descendants of all those involved in this story still live in Yucatán. It is likely that among the region’s mestizo population there are people who are direct descendants of María Concepción or Joaquín Esteban, without ever knowing the disturbing story of their conception.

They live their normal lives, unaware of the dark secret buried in their family tree. The San Agustín plantation was abandoned in the 1930s. Eneken production collapsed when synthetic fibers replaced natural ones on the international market. The green gold lost its value. The large plantations emptied. The workers left to find other ways to make a living.

The hacienda’s structures were looted by scavengers for building materials for decades. The cement tiles were ripped out, the precious wooden beams were cut and sold. The doors and windows disappeared. Today, all that remains are ruins, masonry walls covered by the relentless jungle. Trees growing within what once was.

Vines climb the columns of the old house, which once held elegant ceilings. The main mansion, where Don Esteban and Doña Mercedes lived their tragedy, is a roofless skeleton of walls. The small house where the encounters took place was destroyed decades ago. Not even the foundations remain.

The local farmers avoid the ruins. They say that on moonless nights, the cries of a woman can be heard, that shadows of people appear walking where the corridors once stood, and that sometimes the figure of a man dressed in white wanders through the abandoned fields of Enequen. Perhaps these are just superstitions, stories told to frighten children, or perhaps, on some level we don’t fully understand, places where great tragedies occurred retain a trace of that pain. An echo in time, a etched memory.

in the very stones. In 2012, Dr. Alejandro Canulpes, a historian from the Autonomous University of Yucatán and a descendant of the Maya, conducted an exhaustive investigation into the quenna haciendas of the region. In the archives of the Archdiocese of Yucatán, he found coded references in Father Gorópe’s personal notes about a scandal at the San Agustín hacienda.

The priest had written in Latin about diabolical pacts and forbidden mixtures, but he hadn’t provided specific details, probably due to the seal of confession or fear of social repercussions. In the Mérida court archives, he found documents concerning the sale of the San Agustín estate and Don Esteban’s confinement in the asylum.

But the details about the reasons for the ascended priest’s mental breakdown had been redacted or omitted. Someone had censored the records. In the parish registers, he found the birth certificates of María Concepción and Joaquín Esteban. Marginal notes written years later by another priest indicated doubts about the children’s legitimacy.

There was a note in Latin that read, cuaestio de paternitate. Question about paternity. Dr. Canul Pech published his findings in a specialized academic journal in 2014. The article went relatively unnoticed outside academic circles, but it presented solid circumstantial evidence that something extraordinarily irregular had occurred at the San Agustín Hacienda in the mid-19th century.

During his investigation, the doctor received an anonymous letter. The writer claimed to be a descendant of one of the Mayan workers on the hacienda. The letter included an oral tradition passed down in his family for generations. It told of seven Mayan men who had been forced into an agreement with the ancestor.

Although the details were vague and possibly altered by decades of oral transmission, they essentially matched what the doctor had pieced together from the documents. The sender requested that his identity not be revealed. He said that even after more than 160 years, the shame associated with the story remained real for the descendants.

Some secrets, she wrote, “are so dark they haunt families for generations.” This disturbing story forces us to confront dark aspects of our past that are frequently omitted from official history books. The Mexican national narrative tends to simplify the colonial era and the 19th century, presenting a sanitized version that omits the systematic brutalities of the caste system and slavery.

But knowing these stories, however painful, is essential, not to blame the descendants of the perpetrators, but to understand how we became the society we are today, to recognize that racism and discrimination have deep roots, and to commit ourselves to not repeating the mistakes of the past. Racism toward Indigenous peoples in Mexico did not disappear with independence or the revolution.

It continues to operate in more subtle, but equally damaging ways: workplace discrimination, media stereotypes, the erasure of Indigenous cultures, the ongoing dispossession of lands, and the denial of basic services to Indigenous communities. All these current injustices are rooted in the caste system that allowed cases like that of the San Agustín hacienda to occur.

The story of Don Esteban, Doña Mercedes, and the seven Mayan men is not just a tale from the past; it is a mirror reflecting how the dehumanization of other human beings, when normalized by a social system, can lead even those considered respectable to commit monstrous acts. It reminds us that human dignity is non-negotiable, that no obsession with lineage, social status, or racial purity justifies treating other human beings as mere instruments. Each person, regardless of their origin, skin color, or social position,

She deserves respect, dignity, and freedom. Thank you for joining us on this journey through one of the most disturbing cases in Yucatán’s history. If this story has impacted you, please share it, because remembering is the first step to prevention.