MOST of the obreros or jornaleros (sugarcane workers) can hardly earn P300 a day from their whole-day work in the hacienda, especially during the off-milling season (April up to August). For them, Christmas is the most-awaited season of the year.
The workers are expecting that the hacenderos will give them their yearend bonus and 13th month pay. Their receivables will be deducted from what they have taken from the cantina usually operated by the encargado (overseer). If they made cash advances from the landowner, another deduction will be made.
Hacienda workers are also expecting that the hacenderos will butcher pigs to be shared by the workers or for the community Christmas party. It is always anticipated that the Inday, wife of the hacendero will give candies, toys, or even just old clothes for the wives of the workers and their children.
It could be tragic also if the family of the hacendero decides to have Christmas vacation in Manila or even abroad. Those receivables could not be expected in December and could be possibly given last week of January 2019. In some haciendas, that semi-feudal attitude is still the habit of some hacenderos.
We can always hope for the least because we very well know that in Negros there are more hacenderos with a golden heart, especially those who are running during the election fiesta in 2019. To some (only) hacendero politicians, Christmas should be made magical and we all know that magic.
In the days of old (1840 and beyond), some members of the buena familias of Iloilo went to Negros, especially Silay, to accept the invitation of Fr. Eusebio Locsin to start the hacienda system because Negros is a land where sugarcane grows so well and that could mean money for the adventurous.
So, virgin lands were cultivated in Negros by the buena familias. It was not hard to acquire the titles because of their connection with the Spaniards. The sugarcane planters became hacenderos (farmers) but time came that some acquired more haciendas by buying from other hacenderos or winning them over the gambling table. Some sugarol hacenderos bet their titles.
The hacenderos and the hacendados started to construct their own sugar mills for the milling of their own sugarcane and that of other planters ... molino de sangre (operated by a carabao), molino de agua (operated by water force); and in 1846, Yves Leopold Germaine Gaston from France brought his Havana and Puerto Rico varieties of sugarcane. He introduced his maquina vapor horno economico (iron mill using a steam engine.*
(To be continued)