Manga de Clavo

We were received by an aide-de-camp in uniform, and by several officers, and conducted to a large, cool, agreeable apartment, with little furniture [...] In a little while entered General Santa Anna himself; a gentlemanly, good-looking, quietly-dressed, rather melancholy-looking person, with one leg [...] He has a sallow complexion, fine dark eyes, soft and penetrating, and an interesting expression of face.

Subsequently, some indications prove that the hacienda survived to the last decade of the nineteenth century, before the Mexican Revolution and the execution of its agricultural policies that ceased large estates and extensive lands, divided and reduced in many cases only to its main enclosure or manor house.

In the early twentieth century, the remains of Manga de Clavo gave birth to the town of Vargas which grew irregularly around the hacienda, appropriating stone and obliterating signs of its true trace, thus the mansion and adjacent outbuildings were gradually destroyed to the point that only ruins could be found at ground level, virtually ceasing to exist.

This circumstance has led to the spreading of misleading information about the original and exact location of the property, erroneously expressed by enthusiastic chroniclers of the subject-matter and local townspeople in the region, but also found in history books, archives, web pages, social media sites and even TV shows.

Only a few foundations, scattered stones and a well survive, remains that Roberto Williams Garcia—prominent academic researcher of cultural Veracruz—was able to visit in 1967: I asked for Manga de Clavo and was pointed to a couple of hundred meters from the railway, adjacent to wooden shacks within a low-rise thin brush [...] Nearby is "The Well of Santa Anna" without curbstone and sixty eight feet deep, with some sort of door half way down – which I was informed – lead to a passage, a tunnel ...[4]19°14′00″N 96°21′00″W / 19.2333°N 96.3500°W / 19.2333; -96.3500