Of Infinite Charm

because few canvases have caught the charm, the beauty, the quiet and ancient dignity of the place that make it the tourist's paradise.

To the tourist, and especially to the thousands of Americans who have found their way to this mountainside in Guerrero these past few years, Taxco is a retreat, a refuge, as it were, from a busier and a more active life. The very cobblestones in the streets are an invitation to leisure and rest. Here you find yourself transported three centuries into the easy cadence of the life and times of the 18th Century.

There is an air of mystery and undefined beauty about the town, its houses and its streets. During the day the shops are open, doorways smile on the streets and within one catches glimpses of smiling patios, full of flowers and rich Mexican foliage. The sunlight beats upon white walls and the town is very much alive. At night, as darkness creeps down the mountainside to Taxco, houses and shops are shuttered and the town draws within itself and unto itself, leaving twinkling lights to shatter the obscurity of the darkened streets until the old moon comes up and lends its light to deepen the mystery, the romance, the unfathomable secrets of the pueblo clinging to the mountainside.

Music and lights and laughter break out into the street from a tavern window, but everywhere else there is silence. Perhaps Taxco dreams of other days, or perhaps the town is merely resting for the next teeming day of adventure of surprise, of the expected and the ununexpected-another day in the innumerable days of Taxco's history.

At an altitude of 5,740 feet Taxco knows neither winter nor summer. The rains come in summer washing the dust off the tiled roofs, washing the signs of travel from off the cobblestones in the streets. The sunshine and the blue, cloudless sky of México is Taxco's lot in the wintertime, with just a chill in the evening air to bring a crispness and a brightness to the moonlight that has not been there before.

The National Department of Colonial Monuments has succeeded in saving Taxco from the sometimes devastating tread of modernity. The town has retained its expression and its personality despite the guides and the tourists. The Bohemian set has not been able to mar the sleepy continuity of the town or its people. The narrow streets seem to absorb all extraneous influences.

Taxco has not only written its history, but is living its history as well. The pueblo is deathless and ageless. It is called "quaint." The adjective is insufficient. There are many quaint villages scattered throughout the world, but there is only one Taxco.

The town is unconquerable. Neither movements nor fashions nor style trends can disturb its complacent contemplation of the centuries past or centuries to come. It hangs on the mountainside serene and content with its lot, knowing that eventually all the world will walk its streets, their footsteps echoing between the jammed-up houses.