As rapidly as possible, the landowner, the hacendado, added to his holdings, buying or usurping acreage. An hacienda might consist of several thousand or several million acres. The terrain might be mountainous, semi-desert, coastal strips, forest or jungle, or a combination of topographical zones. There were cattle haciendas, sheep haciendas, mining haciendas, pulque/tequila haciendas; others produced henequén, grew coffee, sugarcane, corn, wheat. A few bred bulls for the bullring.
During the first century of the occupation, Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, friend of the Indians, objected to the atrocities committed by the Spanish. Alfonso de Zorita, writing his "Brevíssima Relación," exposed Indian mistreatment. Burnouf, French agronomist, wrote Emperor Maximilian that the whip of the mayordomo (the hacendado's administrator) was destroying many lives. Regardless of objections through the years, the hacienda system prospered.
Counts, countesses, dukes and duchesses, crude invasionists, wealthy men, and religious orders owned estates. Some of the famous hacendados were Hernán Cortéz, Porfirio Díaz, Martín Ruiz de Zavala, General Santa Anna, and Pancho Villa (who was given his hacienda as a political bribe). Famous families owned estates: Terrazas, Rosa, Amor, Jaral, Ibarra, Echeverría, and Regla.
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, hacienda architecture varied: Where generation after generation owned the hacienda, in families of great wealth, façades were gothic, churrigueresque, plateresque, Islamic, baroque, rococo. The most widespread architectural style derived from the Roman. Most residences had their living quarters around an atrium, or patio. Grilled windows and massive wooden doors and shutters were common. Thousands of work-hours went into the carvings and embellishments—in gray, pink, or yellowish limestone. Hornacinas (niches) peppered a church or chapel façade.