Fiesta at Taxco

Taxco clings to the sharp slope of a barranca on the side of a bleached mountain 75 miles southwest of Mexico City. It looks like a miniature of Toledo in Spain; it is erroneously thought of in the U.S. as Mexico's Provincetown; and it has become by its recent development of exquisite silver crafts Mexico's Florence. Taxco is a tired old gambler of a town that has had just three brief runs of luck in 500 years. Last week the 4,500 Taxquenos, the President and Foreign Minister of the Republic and some 5,000 visitors celebrated Taxco's new luck in a brilliant three-day silver fiesta.

There was a carnival parade of silversmiths and in the plaza an allegory in fireworks, for which the town is famed. There was dancing in the plaza and horse racing for the ribbons of pretty girls. There was speechmaking and a competition among the town's silversmiths to place their ornaments on the fiesta's Queen of Silver.

All these activities were supervised by a committee of high local dignitaries--the Governor and Governor-elect of the State of Guerrero, representatives of the committee which preserves Taxco's colonial architecture, and the mayor of the city. But the honorary president of the fiesta was no Mexican. He was Taxco's First Citizen, good-looking William Philip Spratling of New Orleans, the man who brought Taxco its third period of prosperity.

Cortes sent one of his lieutenants to Taxco in 1522 to dig silver out of the Indians who were digging it out of the surrounding mountains. But Taxco's first big silver boom did not occur until 1717, when a very smart young man named Jose de la Borda came out from Spain to show his uncles how to mine silver at a fantastic profit.

Borda built palaces for himself in Taxco, Cuernava.ca, Mexico City; he built a paved road all the way across the mountains to the capital; and for $1,680,000 he built Taxco's lovely pink parroquia, particularly interesting among Mexico's colonial churches because it was completed by the men who began it. Borda, a heavy speculator, went broke several times before he went broke for good. But when he was in his prime Taxco was an important trading town on the transcontinental camino real, along which the trade of Spain and the Orient was transshipped. The gold leaf of the parroquia came from the Philippines.

Taxco's second break had to wait for the 19th Century when, under Porfirio Diaz, Mexico's industrialists reaped another silver harvest from Taxco. The Huerta, Villa and other revolutions put an end to the Porfiristas and Taxco took the count again until Bill Spratling blew in.

Bill Spratling learned architecture at Auburn, taught it at Tulane. He is an artist of considerable merit, once did a book of caricatures and satirical biographies with William Falkner. In 1925 he began vacation wanderings in Mexico, fell in love with Taxco, settled down to write a notable little book on Mexican village and rural life (Little Mexico), which was introduced by his good friend Diego Rivera.

Restless Bill Spratling, looking about for something else to do, became interested in the little silver trinkets and stones that the Indians brought to town on Sunday market days. Following Aztec motifs, he began designing jewelry in silver and tin, went on to blankets and furniture, now even builds canoes in his busy shop whose personnel grew from six Indians to 120, in eight years. Since Bill Spratling set up shop, 108 silversmithies have sprung up in Taxco, many run by his former employes. The silver festival is held on the anniversary of his going into business.

Bill Spratling does some $381,000 worth of business a year, selling to customers all over the Americas, and 60% of Taxco's income now comes from the metal handicrafts he revived, and U.S. tourists (10% from Mexican tourists, 20% from mining). He is also on the committee to keep Taxco unspoiled.

Many an artist has visited Taxco to paint: most of the major contemporary Mexicans like Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, U.S. artists like George Biddle. But Taxco has no permanent artist colony. Sitting on the twin filigreed towers of the parroquia watching the setting sun lighting the tops of the Indian elms in the little plaza, and experimenting with pinks and roses on the twin filigreed towers of the parroquia, Bill Spratling feels pretty good. He is glad to have helped Taxco become prosperous, while remaining as picturesque as he found it.

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