First impression, November, 1953
Translated from the original Spanish
by Leonard Cooper, November 2000

HIDDEN in the fold of a high mountain range of northern Guerrero, and as if nailed to its rugged landscape ~ in which much more sky than earth appears ~ there is a laughing, shining town whose square white houses are heaped together in the most picturesque and surprising untidiness.

The laughing, shining town of Taxco is the artistic capital of the State of Guerrero and possibly the oldest mining center in Spanish America. Taxco contemplates an indescribable panorama of mountains which look like the green waves of a choppy sea.

The name Taxco is the product of a phonetic accommodation of "Tlachco", a Nahuatl name meaning "a place for playing ball"

Before the Spanish invasion, the name "Tlachco" was given to what is now the village called Taxco El Viejo to the South of present-day Taxco. The art of mining had had its roots there for many, many years and when the conquest took place the mines were being actively worked.

Taxco has nothing to do with Tlachco, the pre-Cortés mining centre, except so far as the altered name is concerned. Taxco is of exclusively Spanish origin.

The vocation and destiny of Taxco were determined soon after the fall of Tenochtitlán.

It was born in the need of Hernán Cortés to find tin for his artillery. thanks to the silver which was found in its immediate vicinity.

Taxco became incorporated in 1532; but the books in the Court of Letters, Tasco's first-known public registry, go back to 1529. And in 1542 the Mayor, Don Luis de Castilla, was the first Spaniard to make his fortune from the mines of Taxco.

Cortés makes the first historic reference to these places in a paragraph of his Fourth Letter of Relation, dated in Mexico 15th October, 1524, addressed to Emperor Charles V, which reads in translation:

"I commenced to inquire everywhere if anywhere there was any (tin), and Our Lord, Who takes care, and has always taken care, wished to provide with the greatest speed, so that I came upon by chance amongst the natives province which is known as Tachco, certain small pieces of it in the manner of a very thin coin, and proceeding on my inquiry, I found that in the said province, even in others, it was used as money; on becoming more familiar with the matter, I learned that it came from the said province of Tachco which is a 26 leagues distances from this city, and then I learned of the mines and sent tools and Spaniards and they brought me a sample of it, and at that I gave the order that they extract all that was necessary, and whatever more may be needed will be extracted, although with great labor; and even when travelling in search of these metals a vein or iron in great quantity was found by chance, according to what I am informed by those who say they know it."

So it was that the lands of were the first that the Spaniards explored in search of minerals, not only in Mexico but in the New World. They also improved ~ and in some cases perfected ~ and continued working the mines which the Indians had already constructed.

"Although with great labor", and using tempered iron and black powder ~ the "tools" to which Cortés refers in his Letter of Relation ~ the conquerors, compelled by circumstances, succeeded in obtaining very good results from the mines of Taxco. As a proof of the skill which went into the work there, it is only necessary to remember that the famous "King Shaft" could be traversed its whole length of 90 meters by a man on horseback.

At the end of the eighteenth century, a very intelligent and active miner, Jose Vicente de Anza, carried the length of the shaft to its present 650 meters.

The Cerro de Bermeja produced great quantities of silver and a certain amount of other metals. For its size it is perhaps one of those that have given Mexico her greatest mining wealth. But now only thin streams of water ~ scarce and dispersed ~ spring from what were once abundant veins.

The Indians who were employed in mining the rich metal veins of the Cerro de Bermeja lived on the lower part of the Cerro del Atachi just about where the Veracruz district is now. That agglomeration, an incipient town, was called Tetelcingo, which was for a very long time the name of the place that became Taxco.

This place undoubtedly seemed to the Spaniards to be the most appropriate for them on account of its climate and its water, and so they ejected the natives and set up their encampment or "Royal" (because in the last instance it was the King's).

A sanctuary was built, and was at first named the Santa Veracruz; and, somewhere around 1529, as the "Royal of Tetelcingo"; another establishment of Spaniards made up of miners, merchants, soldiers, officials and one or two monks from the Franciscan Monastery of Cuernavaca, constituted the stammering colony of New Spain.

According to a record of the Archbishopric of Mexico the Taxco "Royal of Mines" was already in existence in 1570. No fewer than three mining centers or encampments of Spaniards came within this denomination; the Tetelcingo ("Small mountain") "Royal of Mines", the origin and location of which have already been stated.

The Cantarranas "Royal of Mines", a short distance away from the later, to the North and called by the Indians Texaltitlán (meaning "precipice" because there is a precipice close to the high mountain on which this place was built); and the Tenango ("inside the enclosure") "Royal of Mines" which was a good way away from the other two, to the east.

By order of His Majesty, as in other parts of the Viceroyalty, a sort of inventory was taken in 1581 of everything there was in the "Royal"; resources and goods of the inhabitants, natural wealth, population, etc.

This was the "Relation of Mines of Tasco", written by Don Pedro de Ledesma, "Mayor or the said mines and their jurisdiction, and Corregidor of Tasco and Tenango".

This report describes Tetelcingo ~ the residence of the ecclesiastical and secular justice and therefore the most important of the three "Royals" ~ the report says that this was so rough that there was not one "flat thing (on it) except a little square where the church stands" (this was the primitive Vera Cruz Church, several times reconstructed, which stood on the site of the present Parish Church).

Tetelcingo also had the largest and most widespread population of the three "Royals", having two Indian districts: Tlachcotecapan, now San Miguel, next to the Cerro de Bermeja mines, and Acayotla which was on the crags that are now the site of the Chapel and village of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

It may perhaps be appropriate to mention here the historical importance of the "Royal of Cantarranas". The masonry on which the water-wheels of the mills working for Cortés once turned still exists, at what used to be the Hacienda del Chorrillo.

There are some reservoirs, several conduits and great aqueducts and the troughs the conqueror made to crush the metals in his three mills. There are only a few stones left of the houses and church that belonged to the Marqués del Valle as these are mixed up with more recent ruins. Once Taxco had taken root in the mountain called Atachi it extended its urban dominion to the different fells of its southeastern slope, sowing small white, red-tiled houses all over.

The very high, craggy and uneven land has been populated by these very simple little square houses with red-tiled roofs and large gables. Houses of pure Hispano-Arabic flavor whose mad closeness is so pleasing to the eyes; and which ~ as in Toledo ~ seem to turmoil and to pass over the ravines and scale rocks in an eagerness to climb.

At five thousand two hundred feet above sea level and on the slope of a high mountain, ~ the highest, the Huisteco, shields it from the North Wind ~ Taxco's climate is dry, temperate and mild.

The green vegetation of the tropical highlands illume ever-changing tones and dissolve a little the highlights and contrast of the torn terrain of the high rocky contours of the land.

Taxco is completely surrounded by the torn lands. The traveler who approaches from Mexico City follows a highway that incrusts itself for its last few miles in the wrinkles of the mountains that get in its way and cuts a winding path through the abundant rock.

It continues like this until reaching the last of its many bends. Then in front is Taxco, with its myriad white bright houses shining by the thousand.

Situated in the central eminence of the town, is the Parish Church of Santa Prisca, the church is Taxco's outstanding treasure and a glorious monument of humanity.

Since1758, the Santa Prisca has given to Taxco a unique characteristic; it is a masterpiece of Mexican Viceregal architectural art, where natives and strangers alike bathe their souls and their eyes.

In 1716 an Aragonese gentleman by the name of Don José de la Borda came to Taxco.

JOSE DE LA BORDA disembarked at Veracruz at the age of 17 on arriving in the New Spain to join his brother Francisco, a miner established in Taxco since 1708.

He could not have foreseen then what was to be his extraordinary destiny, however much of his adolescent imagination, stimulated by the wonders of America, may have been filled with dreams.

His life was so extraordinary, not only on account of the enormity of his assets; also, and in particular, his intelligence, his capacity for work and his earnest tenacity in the administration of his business. Aided by good luck, he succeeded in fifty years in extracting from the mines of Tlalpujahua, of Tasco and of Zacatecas, riches calculated at no less than forty million pesos.

A good example of the "strikes", of which there are no known precedents, by which Don José profited, is the rich vein "San Ignacio" of the mine "La Lajuela", in Tehuilotepec (Tasco), inherited from Don Francisco.

From 1748 to 1757 this vein produced sufficient profits to pay for the construction and decoration of Santa Prisca Church. It has been calculated that these, together with the holy vessels and ornaments, must have cost two million pesos.

Jose de la Borda's great charities and other gifts made him famous. Both that and the fact he always paid the highest possible wages, to all those who worked for him. He did not in fact consider himself to be the owner of what he possessed but only the administrator of it by Divine Will.

The phrase that is attributed to him is "God has given to Borda and Borda gives to God"

The material labour of Señor de la Borda was done discreetly and without leaving a trace ~ in the form of lapidaries, etc., ~ of his name.

Thus there is no trace of Don Jose's participation neither in the church at Taxco nor on the bridges, water-mains, fountains, etc., that he built.

His constant preoccupation for doing good and for avoiding public recognition of it was the reason for waiting until after his death in Cuernavaca in 1778 before his portrait was hung in the Chapter Hall of Santa Prisca, "because of his great humility" ~ asserts the legend of the portrait ~ "would not allow it to be hung while he was alive".

Don Jose's confessor, Dr. Jiménez y Frías, could justly say in his funeral oration that Don José had been "rare in his virtue, distinguished for his charity, singular in his humility, unique in his incomparable liberality".

Don José had two children by his marriage to Doña Teresa Verdugo (1720), whose father was the Mayor of Taxco. His son, Dr. Manuel, was the parish priest of Santa Prisca and a man of great distinction. His daughter disappeared from the world when she took her vows as Sor Ana María de San José at the Royal Convento of Jesús María in the city of Mexico.

The last resting-place of the creator of the Taxco of today is not known; his grave, in Cuernavaca, has never been found.

The exquisite and perfect exterior proportions of Santa Prisca are a little disconcerting to those who examine them with the severest spirit of criticism. The imagination plays before the lavish doorway that exalts the front of the building, liberating rhythms, lines, forms from material dominion. The troubled spirit seeks its equilibrium in an unknown universe, a universe that Santa Prisca helps it to conjecture.

Perhaps because the poetic exaltation and apostolic eagerness of Don José de la Borda are so very apparent there in the open air, in the columns, friezes, capitals, cornices, pilasters, brackets, volutes, pediments, seraphs' heads, angels, evangelists; and the beautiful oval medallion that represents, with great vividness, the baptism of Christ?

And in the finely carved papal escutcheon; and in the admirable bull's eyes of the very narrow towers; and in the corner pilasters of the belfries?

All that elaborated carved pink sandstone makes the facade of the church of Santa Prisca one of the richest creations of Mexican Baroque art.

Señor de la Borda felt an earnest desire to set up in Taxco a work of religious faith and good taste that would be a model among those of his time. He fully succeeded in the appearance, movement and spiritual value of Santa Prisca.

Borda requested permission from the Archbishop of Mexico to pull down the old Parish Church of Tasco to build a new one in its place "without sparing labour or expense"

Señor de la Borda's only condition was that only he and nobody else should be allowed to intervene "in the beginning, progress and conclusion of the work referred to until it was completely finished and dedicated".

For its peculiar decorative sense, Santa Prisca is a finished example of a sensitiveness that was new, and characterized Spanish-Mexican art in the eighteenth century.

It was two hundred years after the Conquest that Mexican artistic personality reached sufficient maturity to distinguish itself from the peninsular and from the other Spanish-American artistic personalities, by a fashion or interpretation of the Baroque that marked the century as one of maximum importance in universal architecture.

Thus it is that the richness and incomparable exuberance of eighteen century Mexican artistic expression are so evident in the Santa Prisca in its whole exterior ~ including the magnificent cross and pedestal of the forecourt ~ but also of the interior of the church, where the altars in the Churriguera style, with their phantasmagoric and profound profusion of decoration, are dazzling in their beauty.

The most daring, luminous, and poetical of these altars ~ nine in the nave and three in what used to be the Chapel of Indians and is now the Chapel of Jesus the Father ~ is the main altar.

Dominating its splendid altarpiece of rare, intense and rich variety is the image of the Immaculate Conception between those of Santa Prisca ~ Martyr of the time of Claudius and mediatrix against being struck by lightning ~ and of Saint Sebastian, the patrons of the Church, and of Saint Peter in priest's robes.

They are all surrounded by the Evangelists and by numerous Holy Popes, angels and cherubs, the group being completed the figure of the Eternal Father.

The Virgin Mary, with a crescent moon at her feet, is at the center of the array of ecclesiastic personages.

This splendid altarpiece, which has no equal in Mexico, proclaims the deep imagination, the restlessness and the fertility ~ the outpourings of a powerful expression of authentic lyricism ~ of the artisans who made it.

The relative narrow space which the group occupies at the end of the central arch of the church accentuates the mobility of its composition; and helps to blur a little that world of unlimited mystery, peopled by saints and angels so agile that they seem to be suspended in the air, flying towards heaven.

The altarpieces of the other altars are also very lavish, in all cases conceived and executed in the pompous Churrigueresque style; but their richness is less exhaustive than that of the main altar, and their plastic construction simpler and less adorned.

In one of them, that of the Virgin of Dolores, there is a strikingly beautiful sculpture of Christ crucified.

The enchanted grotto that is the interior of the church of Taxco can only be compared, both for the lavishness of its altars and for the admirable work on the arches and pilasters, with another great Mexican cruciform interior: that of Saint Martin of Tepoztlán. The altarpieces of this church, which are a century later than the building itself, have marvelous life and coloring, and even though it may be true that none of them is rich as that of the main altar of Santa Prisca, there is no doubt that both interiors are similar in their Versaillesque and angelical character.

There is not, unfortunately, any indication from which one could trace, without any possibility of error, the names of the architects, wood-carvers, joiners, engravers who collaborated with Señor de la Borda in the construction and decoration of Santa Prisca.

Of the artists who worked on the adornment of the interior of the church only one name is known with any certainty: that of Miguel Cabrera, the author of excellent canvases that are to be found in the sacristy and other places in the church.

It is believed that Diego Durán Berruecos "Master of Architecture" who lived in the city of Mexico around 1753 was in charge of the construction. This belief springs from a verse, now half erased, written above a stone window-case in the north tower of the church, which used to read:

"Durán is thinking of giving you,
When you receive your Doctor's cap,
Cheers with art, with all his good will.
And Belerma's reward to Durandarte
Is what Durán will give to you".

This verse refers to Durandarte ("darte" ~ give you) the hero of Carolingian romances, whose name is turned into a play on words with the surname of the architect. In the stanza Durán says that when Manuel de la Borda, the son of Don José, receives his doctorate, he wishes to celebrate the event "with art".

The distinguished Mexican investigator of colonial art, Don Manuel Toussaint, after analyzing the contents of this stanza and taking into account various other circumstances, accepts the possibility that Durán Berruecos may have been the architect who built Santa Prisca.

It is known that a man by the name of Juan Caballero worked on the church but the nature of his participation has not been yet discovered.

The altarpieces may possibly have been done by some disciple of the famous Sevillan architect and joiner, Jerónimo Baldás.

Baldás was the author of the altarpiece of the King's Altar in the Cathedral of Mexico, finished in 1753, in which he used the pilaster in the form of an inverted pyramid as a decorative motive for the first time in New Spain.

In view of the dearth of information regarding the people who worked on Santa Prisca, it must be admitted that Señor de la Borda's prohibition in this respect certainly produced the desired result. It is therefore surprising to see the stanza of the north tower with its allusion to Durán who appears to have been the architect mentioned.

The only inscription which gives any definitive and clear information but which does not mention persons, is that which is to be found above the washbasin in the sacristy in a carved gilt frame. It gives the exact date the work was completed in these words: "It was finished on the third day of the twelfth month of the fifty-eighth year of the Incarnation of the Divine World".

Since, as far as is known, work was begun on the church in 1751, the construction of Santa Prisca took only seven years. In such a short space of time Don José de la Borda, was able to build decorate and furnish this exceptionally expressive religious structure.

A most rewarding exploration of the topography of Taxco is to be made from the forty meter tall towers of Santa Prisca.

From the church towers, to the north, and with Mount Huisteco as a backdrop, one can see, standing out among covered galleries and tiled roofs going up in steps, the tower of the Chavarrieta Chapel, the facade and dome of the former Monastery of San Bernardino of Siena (today generally called ExConvento) and the high watch-tower of the Town Hall in the Plazoleta de las Carnicerías, (today called La Plazuela Bernál).

The former Monastery was founded by Franciscan friars towards the end of the Sixteenth Century and its construction was not finished until well into the beginning of the following century. It was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1805 but was rebuilt in 1823. The architecture of the church is of a very good Neo-classic style of the kind used by the famous architect Manuel Tolsa.

There is very little left of the Monastery of the last century. The place has a certain historic interest because it is said that an interview was arranged there between Agustín de Iturbide and Vicente Guerrero that was to change the destiny of Mexico.

The Chapel of Señor de Chavarrieta is so named because the crucifix which was venerated there since the Seventeenth Century once belonged to Don Antonio de Chavarrieta.

It should be pointed out that the construction of this chapel has been very modified by frequent repairs. The strange little two-story square that surrounds the chapel adds interest to the place. A fountain and a cypress tree give great character to this little corner of Taxco.

To the east of the town center, there is a general view of the three-quarters of the height and the whole of the width of the Atachi. This view allows one to appreciate the marked unevenness that exists between some parts of the town and others because of the very rolling surface. The difference is more than two hundred meters.

From the towers can be seen a maze of streets and alleys cobbled with small, well placed stones.

These tortuous and steep-sloping streets form a complicated labyrinth, rising steeply until they become lost in luxuriant forest or turn into mule tracks which, since the days of the Viceroys, have been bringing to Taxco laborers, milkmen and Indian charcoal vendors.

These men, their families and their droves of donkeys, fill the mountain roads and paths on Saturdays and Sundays of each week going to and coming from the market.

It is interesting to see the arrival of these agile people, who look like little crystal figures in showy bright clothes, on their way to the center of Taxco with their loads of mountain fruit. From the belfries of Santa Prisca one can see without difficulty the moving lines of muleteers and animals in any of the zig-zag sloping streets.

Guadalupe Street connects the Plaza Borda with the old and thickly-populated district of Acayotla with its chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Chapel was built in 1877 on the site occupied in 1735 by an oratory on one of the most prominent of the hills forming the buttresses of the mountain.

Many visitors go there to look at Taxco from the little square that serves it as a forecourt. From this place, oriented towards the east, one obtains an incomparable panorama of Taxco.

When the sun is going down, it illuminates the rose-colored carved stone of Santa Prisca and makes it stand out beautifully, and seen thus from Guadalupe the baroque mass of the church becomes animated and takes on surprising life and movement.

From the forecourt of Guadalupe it is possible to appreciate the contrast that certain lights at that hour of the evening bring out between Taxco and the lands which surround it on all sides. Almost at the same height but more towards the west there is another house of prayer, the Chapel of Señor de Ojeda (1822), around which are clustered large numbers of houses.

It stands on a hill from which one obtains a different view of the Spanish-style roofs than from the Santa Prisca towers.

A good time of day to enjoy this other, very beautiful, view is in the morning at which time the sunlight coming from behind brings out Santa Prisca in greater relief and gives brilliance and tonality to the reddish tiles of Taxco.

To get there one goes upwards along the winding Street of Ojeda, which begins in the Plazuela de los Gallos a few yards above from the Plaza Borda (also called the Zócalo)

After passing what used to be the public warehouse, one arrives without much effort at the Plazuela del Progreso and its fountain, from then on the street slopes more steeply, turns rapidly in a slippery spiral and then, quite suddenly, without any warning, arrives at the embankment of the Plazuela de Ojeda.

From both the Plazuela de Guadalupe and the Plazuela de Ojeda, picturesque streets lead to the highest part of the Atachi, crossing the place known as "Los Cazahuates" which stands on a ridge of the mountain.

From here, the panorama over Taxco becomes larger until it disappears from view on the far horizon, while in the opposite direction, one can just see the lands that were once the "Royal of Mines" of Tenango (Taxco El Viejo) and, nearer, on the edges of a closed, gay, green valley, arise the church and the houses of Landa.

In a thick forest one hour's journey from "Los Cazahuates", one finds the springs of "El Arenal" which used to feed the "Old Dam". The conduits that Señor de la Borda had built to improve the water service of Taxco ~ "very costly conduits of more than five hundred varas" ~ are still there.

From the Plazuela de Guadalupe, in a northerly direction, there is a wide path leading to the Huisteco across a wild landscape.

Looking towards the South and downwards from the towers of Santa Prisca, one sees within the Tetitlán ravine, the irregularly placed roofs of the market.

The high local color of the Taxco market on market days is typical of Mexico. Sunday is market day but many peasants and their families and animals arrive on Saturday and install themselves as close as possible to the shops and booths, with their merchandise well in view.

Prices are discussed and sales made amid the shouts of children and women's conversation, especially on Sunday mornings.

The variety of the transactions include the sale of herbs to ward off the evil eye and for rheumatism the sale of pairs of "huarache" sandals, seed pod fruit, flowers, cotton-cloth capes, aromatic pine gum incense, and pieces of painted pottery.

In Taxco market there are candies and gaudy-colored shaved ice and other sweetmeats for young and old; and, of course, there is pulque, the fermented essence of the agave cactus.

In front of Santa Prisca, on the other side of the hollow of the Tetitlán market, is the Saint Nicholas district with its ancient chapel.

In Holy Week, when all the religious fervor of Taxco is manifested by touching scenes in imposing processions, this little temple is used as a prison for Jesus of Nazareth after the ceremony of his simulated arrest in the forecourt of Santa Prisca.

The main street of this district finishes in a little square, occupied mainly by the Guerrero Garden which contain a statue of the great Mexican patriot.

Looking towards the North from this little square there is a beautiful view of the Santa Prisca Church and of the whole conglomeration of houses and buildings that surround it profusely clinging to the uneven ground.

By the side of the Guerrero Garden stands the Holy Trinity Chapel (la Santisima) one of the oldest churches of Mexico. It was constructed in the Sixteenth Century and although it was reconstructed in 1713 it is quite possible that the majority of the stones of the chapel date from the time of the Conquest.

The plan and composition of this interesting chapel are very simple but it has that medieval and military flavor of Mexican ecclesiastical buildings of the first days of the Viceroyalty.

Behind the Saint Nicholas district, towards the entrance to the highway going to Iguala, Chilpancingo and Acapulco, there is the Saint Michael district, the primitive Tlachcotecapan of the "Royal of Mines" of Tetelcingo, around the hill on which the chapel dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel stands.

This graceful building has agreeable architectural details: the bull's eyes of the facade and the lateral abutments.

On the outskirts of the town, in the same direction, on a small mountain, is the cemetery which has been there since 1850.

The Veracruz district and church are to the east at the foot of Santa Prisca. The church of Santa Veracruz was built in 1817 as a substitute for a very old, possibly Sixteenth Century, chapel.

It was turned into a sanctuary in 1917. The image of Christ on the Cross, which is venerated there, is very miraculous according to the numerous paintings, the work of an ingenuous popular faith, that give life and interest to the walls of the church.

These votive offerings, with appropriate inscriptions, uncertain drawings and bright colors, are moving both for the way in which they tell the story of the event that produced the opportune celestial intervention and for their eagerness to record and give thanks for the favors received.

This building is solidly constructed and has an arched vault and an elegant facade and whitewashed exterior. sited in a fairly large square of interesting appearance,

On a corner opposite the entrance to the forecourt of the sanctuary, is a house that has been pointed out "by tradition" ~ according to the plaque which has been placed there ~ as that in which the notable playwrite, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, was born.

This has not been proved by the serious investigators who prefer to believe that the City of Mexico was the birthplace of the great dramatist who, according to Lope de Vega, was of "lively talent, fertile fantasy, flowery erudition and pure and pithy tongue".

And, in this connection, it is strange to observe that the official name of Taxco ~ "Taxco de Alarcón" ~ (decree of the Legislative Assembly of Guerrero, 1872) appears to contain no fewer than two errors, one philological and the other historical.

Would not perhaps be convenient to re-name the place some day and call it, in all fitness, "Taxco de la Borda"?

To complete this rapid and superficial visit to Taxco begun from the towers of the Parish Church, it is necessary to finish it in and around the Plaza Borda.

With its garden protected from the sun by the shade given by some beautiful laurels of India, the Plaza Borda is, by its location and because it contains Santa Prisca, the physical and spiritual center of Tasco.

The people of Tasco meet there for manifestations of all kinds: of religious faith, of political sympathies, and of popular rejoicing.

Of all the houses in the Plaza, there is none comparable to the one built by Señor de la Borda in 1759. This mansion, one of the finest in Tasco, may be easily distinguished from all the others in town because, of its "towny" air.

The contrast is extremely marked between this house, for example, and the neighboring one, the very picturesque "Casa del Balcón" (House of the Balcony) with carved wooden balustrades, with it's touch of charming popular ingenuity.

The Casa Borda, a house of two floors and double patio, looks very different from the front in the Plaza, and from the rear, which faces the Plazuela de Bernal.

From here it looks like another building. It seems to be high enough to be of four floors and the openings in the stone wall are whimsically placed in accordance with the practice in the Middle Ages. This antique rear facade is made more important by several buttresses. ]

Pineda Street begins in the Plazuela de Bernal. In this street, a few steps from the Plazuela, there is a beautiful house with a date of the Seventeenth Century on the lintel of the door. The patio of this house, which can be seen from the street, is one of the most attractive imaginable.

In the second block of Pineda there is a house which is justly one of the most famous in Taxco and in Mexico. It is the so called "Casa de Humboldt".

The well deserved renown which the "Casa de Humboldt" enjoys is due not only to the fact that the famous German traveler and scientist stayed there for one night in April 1803 on his short visit to Taxco, but also ~ and principally ~ to the exquisite Baroque decoration of its facade.

Many interesting details, such as a small closed patio, a carved stone door and a large fountain placed on a terrace, are preserved inside this house which was built by Juan de Villanueva.

The most outstanding thing about the house is the facade. The surface of the facade is covered with large raised hexagonal networks made of mortar. This very beautiful ornamentation represents in Taxco a tendency to return to the mudejarism which manifested itself in Mexico towards the middle of the Eighteenth Century; turning the Moorish ornamental knots which had decorated ceilings and arches for one hundred years as interior adornments, into exterior decorations.

Taxco's Casa Humbolt example of this movement towards the revival of the Arab form is one of the most remarkable ones left in Mexico.

The facade of the "Casa de Humboldt" is painted a dull rose color. The composition is perfectly balanced and the well arranged profusion of adornments achieves a happy effect on the doorway and windows.

Returning to the Plaza Borda one should stop at a large public fountain placed against a wall near the ascent to the Plazuela de los Gallos. This fountain was paid for by the Señor de la Borda, has been bringing water to the center of Taxco since the year 1741. This date appears embossed on the adjoining wall together with a verse which gives some names ~ except, of course, that of the generous benefactor ~ and the cost of the work.

The verse, of which for some unknown reason the last word of the last line (possibly "John") has been erased, reads in translation as follows

"The Fountain of Taxco Gives birth to pure Crystalline waters, Velasco being the Mayor, Verdugo and Valino the Curates, A clear eleven thousand doubloons It took to make such work: And all those who saw it will know That its Godparents of water Where all the neighbours, And its Baptismal Godfather was Father (John)".

Several streets run into the Plaza Borda. Their importance as regard traffic along them varies but each one has its own peculiar characteristics.

The Calle de la Muerte ("Street of Death") runs along the whole length of the north facade of Santa Prisca and one is therefore able to see from it magnificent details of the exterior ornamentation of the church.

The Calle del Arco ("Street of the Arch") runs parallel to the Calle de la Muerte, on the south side of the Church.

This street connects the Plaza Borda with the Square of the Santa Veraruz leading to the market by means of a ramp across the strange little square of the Toril.

A very steep street, called Tolsa Street, runs to the nearby Plazuela de Bernal between the Casa de la Borda and the "Casa del Balcón".

Palma Street starts a little further on, to the North-East of the Plaza Borda. This street, after joining the Alley of Agua Escondida, becomes narrower and starts a rapid ascent in the direction of Sierra Alta and Guadalupe.

The ascent to the Plazuela de los Gallos lies to the West of the Plaza. This is very short street from which Guadalupe Street begins.

The Casa Figueroa, containing many Mexican and European antique pieces of furniture and objects of art, stands at the beginning of Guadalupe Street along with a very old image of the celestial patroness of the Mexican people, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Then there is the old San Augustin Street or "Real de Mercaderes": the only public way in Tasco that is horizontal and straight from begining to end,

It is not very long: it runs from the south-western corner of the Plaza Borda to the Plaza de San Juan. At the end of this street stands the so called Great House ("Casa Grande")

The handsome proportions of the structure of the Casa Grande and the air of official Spanish buildings that it displays, give it an undeniable public character.

It has a noble large square patio, a double archway case. The mayor and the Committee of Colonial Mines lodged in this Casa Grande. And in 1821, after Taxco had been taken by the insurgents, it was used by Jose María Morelos as his general headquarters and lodging.

The Casa Grande is bounded on the east by one of the most charming and popular of the many alleyways in Taxco, the winding, sloping Nogal Alleyway that connects Real de Mercaderes Street with Ojeda Street.

Although there are shops all around the center of Taxco, and even some outside the center, it is really in Real de Mercaderes Street that one observes that animation which is peculiar to streets destined to retailing all kinds of articles to the public.

The product that is most exhibited, most solicited and most sold in Taxco ~ in about fifty shops ~ is of local production: it is, of course, silverware.

To cope with the great demand ~ mainly from the foreign tourist ~ for these beautiful pieces of Taxco craftsmanship, there are about hundred workshops employing something like fifteen hundred silversmiths. They use about a ton of metal every month.

After alloying the silver with copper at the proportion usual in Taxco ~ about 950 to 980 grams of silver to each thousand of mixed metal ~ the expert silversmiths transform it into an infinity of those beautiful ornamental pieces, for personal or domestic use, for which Taxco is rightly famous.

The prosperity of the Mexican silver industry is comparatively recent. It is mainly due to the increase in mining production in the last few years, and also to the preference which for some years both Mexican and foreign clients have been showing for genuinely popular artistic forms and expressions. This reappearance of the splendid tradition of pre-Spanish and colonial jewelry and silver industries ~ has served as a stimulus to achieve the excellent quality and the original touch which make the work of the present-day Mexican silversmith unmistakable in all the markets of the world.

The pre-eminence of the contemporary Taxco craftsman may perhaps be explained by the well known antecedents, that record the high rank reached by local craftsmanship towards the middle of the Eighteenth Century.

It was then that the imagination, the good taste and the skill of the Taxco masters, produced one of the finest pieces of work in precious metal in their time.

This was the gold tabernacle of a vara and a half in height, which Señor de la Borda had made for Santa Prisca. This very excellent piece that from Santa Prisca went to the Cathedral of Mexico and afterwards, incomplete, went to form part of the treasure of Our Lady of Paris, was adorned with 5,500 diamonds, 2,800 emeralds, 500 rubies, 100 amethysts, 8 sapphires and 4 topazes.

Isolated from the rest of the country for a large part of the Nineteenth Century and during the first years of the present century. Taxco forgot its past glories almost completely. Therefore the silver trade, both as an industry and as an art, was to all intents and purposes abandoned.

But after the Revolution and with the construction of a highway communicating it with the rest of the world, Taxco's silver arts revived.

It was nevertheless necessary for a foreigner, and American by the name of William Spratling, to go to Taxco in 1926 and live among the people there in order to rekindle the ashes of Taxco craftsmanship.

Spratling, was a finely sensitive university man who was more concerned with aesthetic matters than commercial considerations In 1931 he started a design and production workshop and a silver shop in the heart of Taxco.

Many of the apprentices whom Spratling helped and encouraged are now master silversmiths with their own prosperous business.

And so, thanks to such happy circumstances, the craftsmen of present-day Taxco Have resumed the interrupted tradition; and, very modern in their designs and combinations of metal and precious stones, they are doing an excellent and fruitful reformation of the ideas and technique of the unrivalled art of Mexican silverwork.

And so, we who have come from afar and have stopped awhile to repose our spirits and taste the delicate pleasure that Taxco generously offers, must end this narrative.