A Haunted House, Star-Crossed Lovers, and History: Five Questions for Isabel Cañas, Author of The Hacienda, Our May Discover Pick

By Isabel Cañas / May 3, 2022 at 12:21 am

Hardcover $27.00

The Hacienda

Hardcover $27.00

Taking place after the Mexican War of Independence, Isabel Cañas’ supernatural debut is an atmospheric and spine tingling story of witchcraft and a house with dark powers, that’s perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova. Our recommendation: Keep the lights on. We can’t wait for the next book from Cañas! Below, you’ll hear from Isabel Cañas about haunted houses, star-crossed lovers, and history, and the way those all play into her book!

A haunted house, the aftermath of Mexican War of Independence, star-crossed lovers – where did this story start for you? What type of research did you do into the time period?

I will be defending my PhD dissertation in Ottoman and Turkish Studies the day before The Hacienda’s release. My academic background deeply informed how I researched the crucial, politically complicated period directly following the end of Mexico’s War of Independence (1810-1821). I used my university’s resources for secondary literature and primary sources and read as widely as I could. I learned that in 1823, two years after the end of this economically disastrous eleven-year war, money was scarce. But I also knew that I wanted my novel to be shaped by the classic Gothic trappings of a grand old house and a mysterious new, wealthy husband. So as I sifted through monographs and nineteenth-century documents searching for the right setting, I let my historian’s brain take over: I followed the money.

That money trail led to pulque.

On a trip deep into the stacks of my university’s library, I discovered a slim, half-hidden volume called Descripción geográfica y estadística del distrito de Tulancingo, written by a government bureaucrat named Francisco Ortega in 1825, just two years after the events of my novel. It includes descriptions of the landscape of the district of Tulancingo, which is now the state of Hidalgo, its flora and fauna, population and demographic breakdown, water sources, weather patterns, and more. It was kismet that I stumbled across this dry government text. The Hacienda simply wouldn’t be the same without it.

All this said, The Hacienda is not intended to teach about this period of Mexican history. At its heart, it is a horror novel, a suspenseful yarn about witchcraft, forbidden romance, and things that go bump in the night. I am leaving the academy to devote myself to the life of a novelist, a métier that demands that I close the history books and lie colorfully in the name of plot and character.

Andrés is such a compelling character. Can you tell us more about the mysteries behind the magic he inherited from his Titi, the power of the glyphs in Tia Inés’s pamphlet, and the relative safety of the church during the Inquisition?

When I began this novel, I knew I was writing into a long tradition of Gothic novels. I reached for familiar archetypes: the young wife, the distant husband, the secretive family member, the untrustworthy servants. I also knew I wanted an exorcism, so I threw in a priest for good measure.

But then Padre Andrés stepped onto the page.

I felt as if I was watching a movie in my mind’s eye as the young priest walked into the room, took a piece of charcoal from his pocket, and began to draw glyphs on the ground. A realization about him appeared in my mind as a fully-formed sentence, as crisply as if someone had spoken it aloud:

He is a witch.

I lifted my hands off the keyboard in surprise. I had not planned that. It had not occurred to me to include witches in the book at all.

But the novel was irrevocably changed.

Andrés is one example of where I took folklore and history and added a hearty dash of artistic license. As far as the supernatural is concerned, his belief system is fictional. I wanted to build a worldview for this character that was respectful of and informed by beliefs I learned about from my mother and other family members, but also by the specific colonial context of nineteenth-century Mexico and its religious syncretism.

One of Andrés’s parents was European and the other indigenous. In this time period of Mexico’s history, being mestizo, of mixed indigenous and European descent, and being a priest—if one was allowed to become one at all—instilled tension in one’s personal and professional life. I wanted this tension to be echoed in Andrés’ supernatural life as well. Just as Andrés cannot change his heritage, he cannot change the nature of his witchcraft and the sources it derives from (on the one hand, his grandmother, and on the other, his aunt Inés). Thus, his journey became one of self-acceptance as he reconciles what he inherited from both sides of his family.

As I crafted Andrés’s arc, I was deeply influenced by my own upbringing. I was raised in a deeply Catholic household by parents from different cultural backgrounds; from a young age, I was haunted by questions of faith, identity, and belonging. Beatriz and her battle of wills with Hacienda San Isidro are the heart of this novel, but Andrés is its soul.

“I couldn’t help but smile. The house had more moods than a swallow had feathers. I was fond of its peevish spells; its impatient creaks and groaning inspired an urge in me to pat its side affectionately as I would a stubborn but lovable mule.” At times, the hacienda seems more alive than haunted. Are there any folktales or legends you pulled this idea from? How did you design the house in your mind/as you were writing?

I didn’t pull from folktales or legends as I built Hacienda San Isidro. Rather, my primary inspiration was the many houses I lived in as a child.

Over the course of the first eighteen years of my life, my family lived in eight houses. I learned by the fourth of these that not all houses are the same. Some are still, empty and quiet. Others have long, long memories, hung thick like curtains and so dense you can taste their bitterness the moment you cross the threshold.

“I have a theory about houses,” says Andrés.

So do I. From the age of thirteen, as my family settled into its sixth house, I found the sensation of being watched unbearable. I began to sleep with the lights on. I still fear the intimate horrors houses see and keep, what grudges build over decades and stain their walls like so much water damage.

Houses can also be living, breathing heirlooms of the families they give shelter to. When I think about the Latin American literature that resonated deeply with me as a young adult, such as Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, I think about the spaces the families of those novels inhabit. These houses are anchors. They grow and change as their family does and bear witness to generations of joy and loss. I believe they are characters in and of themselves. As I wrote The Hacienda, I wished to contribute, in my own spooky way, to this tradition.

Beatriz touches on the concept of limpieza de sangre and her struggles with criollo society being mestizo. Time and again remarks are made about her complexion – can you speak to the impossible beauty standards that she tries to live up to and what it means for someone who looks like her to be the heroine of the story?

The concept of limpieza de sangre, or “blood purity,” has its roots in post-Reconquista Spain, where blood purity laws targeted conversos (Catholics of Jewish origin) and moriscos (Catholics of Muslim origin). In the context of Spain’s colonies in the Americas, the term became associated with the degree to which a person was of White European, Indigenous, or Black descent. A famous 1777 Mexican painting depicting the casta (caste) system shows as many as sixteen different racial categories, but this number is not set in stone. What was set in stone was the superiority of two White European categories: the peninsulares, Spaniards born in Spain, and the criollos, people of Spanish descent born in the Americas. In the colonial period, one’s social status and even their legal rights were determined by one’s race. Though independent Mexico abolished the casta system in name in 1821, history shows time and time again that ingrained, racist systems like this do not simply disappear with the flourish of a signature on a government document.

As someone whose parents were criollo and mestizo, Beatriz experiences colorism from the criollo side of her family and is acutely aware of her precarious place in the societal pecking order. The so-called beauty standards that Beatriz faces in this (albeit fictionalized) nineteenth-century Latin American context are in fact an expression of colonial White supremacy that unfortunately has descendants in the forms of colorism and racism in the present day.

We love to ask: what are you reading and recommending right now?

First, I’m currently reading an early copy of Alexis Henderson’s House of Hunger, a dark Gothic fantasy that is utterly dripping in atmosphere and intrigue. It’s not out until September, but if you loved the Gothic atmosphere of The Hacienda or Henderson’s debut The Year of the Witching, you absolutely must put it on your TBR now! Second, I am not normally a fan of historical romance, but as a former horse girl, I simply adored The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews. It was tender, alight with chemistry, and looked at the British Empire with an unflinching gaze that I, as a historian, really appreciated. I cannot recommend it enough.