Hacienda Mercedita

Hacienda Mercedita was a 300-acre (120 ha) sugarcane plantation in Ponce, Puerto Rico, founded in 1861, by Juan Serrallés Colón.

[7] The Serrallés rum distillery, however, is an expanding and successful company still operating from the same original location, in barrio Vayas, southeast of the intersection of routes PR-10 and PR-52.

[8] Central Mercedita, where the local sugar cane was processed, is now owned by Puerto Rico's Autoridad de Tierras (English: Land Authority).

At the beginning of the 19th century, Don Sebastian Serrallés, a Spaniard from Begur, Girona, Catalonia, Spain, settled in Ponce and founded Hacienda Teresa.

Inspired by the success of other rum producers in the island, the family decided to launch a refined brand with the intention of exporting it elsewhere.

[19] In the fall of 1971, these enterprises were doing business as Central Mercedita Co. and as Puerto Rico American Refinery, Inc.[20] In the 1950s, both the sugar cane and rum business stabilized and the Hacienda ran two parallel operations, one producing, packaging, selling, and distributing cane sugar under the Snow White brand and the other producing, packaging, selling, and distributing rum under the Don Q label.

[21] By the late 1870s, shortly after the abolition of slavery, the owners offered free garden plots both within and outside the Hacienda at the plantation in exchange for dependent resident labor force.

"Planters paid wages in tokens that could only be used to buy goods at its grocery and general stores, thus hoping to create a cycle of indebtedness that would bind workers to their estates.

"[25] Ten years later, in 1983, the price of Mercedita's Snow White brand sugar was frozen by law in an attempt "to keep the voters happy.