José Miguel Sánchez Navarro arrived in Monclova, the capital of Coahuila, in 1755 as the newly appointed parish priest. He was joined by his brother José Gregorio, and together they began buying land around the city in 1765. A third brother, Manuel Francisco, soon expanded the holdings through strategic marriages and inheritances. The family established their headquarters at the Hacienda de San Ignacio del Paso Tapado, 30 kilometers northeast of Monclova, and focused on sheep ranching in the northern reaches of the estate near the Sabinas River. In a desert where the sparse vegetation demanded enormous tracts to sustain even modest herds, the brothers' strategy was straightforward: acquire everything you can. The land was cheap because it was harsh -- prone to years-long drought and under constant threat from the Apache bands, particularly the Lipan to the northeast and the Mescalero to the northwest.

When Manuel Francisco's son José Melchor took over management in 1802, the estate was in poor condition from drought and Apache depredations. He responded by building. His Hacienda de las Tres Hermanas, 50 kilometers north of Monclova, was designed as a fortress: a large compound enclosed by stone walls three meters high. He introduced irrigation on a large scale and enlarged the family's vineyards. When he died in 1836, his wife Apolonia Berain ran the estate with what observers called "unquestionable authority" until their sons Jacobo and Carlos came of age. In 1840, Carlos, an attorney in Mexico City, made the family's most consequential purchase: the bankrupt estate of San Miguel de Aguayo, which had once been nearly as large as the Sánchez Navarro holdings. With that single acquisition, the family's land swelled to 16.5 million acres. By 1847, their sheep herds numbered 250,000, supported by between 1,000 and 1,500 full-time employees across 24 semi-autonomous haciendas.

The Sánchez Navarros lived at the intersection of nearly every conflict that shaped northern Mexico. During the War of Independence, José Melchor sided with royalist Spain and helped set up the ambush at the Wells of Bajan that captured Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende in 1811 -- though two of his own nephews were among the rebels taken prisoner. During the Mexican-American War, Jacobo played both sides, supplying the occupying American army while secretly stockpiling flour for Santa Anna's approaching forces. The Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847 was fought on Sánchez Navarro property. But the most relentless threat came from the Comanche. Beginning in the 1820s, raids of hundreds of warriors swept through the estate nearly every year. The family refused to arm their own employees, fearing revolt more than raiders. Between 1848 and 1853 alone, they reported 141 employees killed, 200,000 sheep lost, 100,000 cattle taken, and 15,000 horses and mules stolen.

After 1855, the family's political fortunes collapsed. The rise of Santiago Vidaurri brought enemies who plundered the estate and Jacobo's mansion in Saltillo. When France invaded Mexico in 1862, the Sánchez Navarros backed the Austrian prince Maximilian -- a catastrophic miscalculation. Carlos became prominent at the imperial court while Jacobo managed the land, but in 1867 Benito Juarez overthrew and executed Maximilian. Carlos was imprisoned, then exiled to Paris. He returned after Juarez granted amnesty in 1870 and died in what was described as "genteel poverty" in Mexico City in 1876. In 1866, Juarez had ordered the expropriation of the Sánchez Navarro latifundio. The family recovered some property through litigation in the 1870s but sold it immediately. A century of empire-building in the desert was finished. The land that three brothers from Saltillo had started accumulating in 1765 returned to the Mexican state, broken into pieces that no single family would ever reassemble.