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:

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.