Exhibit curated and designed by Katiana Bagué, under the supervision of Margarita Vargas-Betancourt.

The Luis García Pimentel Collection gathers a multitude of documents from the middle of the sixteenth century to the early 1900s. These documents show transactions of ownership and management of sugar mills in Mexico in the state of Morelos, and in other haciendas in the state of Puebla. Two important haciendas mentioned throughout these documents are the Haciendas of Santa Clara Montefalco and Santa Ana de Tenango. Don Luis García Pimentel was a respected Mexican scholar, bibliographer and historian, with a family history of land ownership of the mentioned haciendas. Several of his ancestors are named throughout the collection’s legal documents, including Nicolás de Icazbalceta and Ramona Antonia de Musitu y Zalvide.

While these documents display land ownership and legal matters with intricate calligraphy and penmanship,

it is important to note the hand drawn depictions of land. Some of the documents have maps that help the reader visualize the land properties mentioned in the document’s text. This exhibit explores these images and how they emphasize land ownership. The maps also reveal how individuals thought of or regarded land properties. Maps moreover are abstractions and representations of space that do not mirror reality. Rather, one should regard them as interpretations of the real world.