By Deborah Van Hoewyk
Maybe you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Mexico’s GDP, or even what industries have made it the world’s 15th largest economy (13th largest GDP), and Latin America’s 2nd largest economy (Brazil is the largest). Maybe you do think about the products that visitors appreciate – and buy. When I lived in Huatulco, I bought traditional craft items for me, my family, and my house. And every year, I bought a pair of silver earrings.
Silver has written the economic signature of Mexico since well before the resource-extraction-obsessed conquistadors, priests, and administrators from Spain set foot on dry land; while the Spaniards might have preferred gold, it was silver that supported their colonial ambitions (Mexico is still the world’s largest producer of silver, and the industry employed 350,000 people in 2020). While there are silver mines throughout the northern half of Mexico, the one place most famous for both producing silver and turning it into exquisite jewelry, not to mention plates, cups, figurines, picture frames, etc., is Taxco de Alàrcon.
The Aztecs, the Spanish, and Taxco as a Silver-Mining Town
Located 170 km (106 miles) south of Mexico City in the state of Guerrero, Taxco was most probably named Tlachco in Nahuatl, meaning “place of the ballgame.” The city’s seal shows a ballcourt complete with players, equipment, and skulls (Aztec ballgames were not without consequences). According to legend, hunters pursuing a huge deer chased it up Atachi Hill, also called Huizteco Mountain, located where Taxco now stands. When the hunters killed the deer, they built a fire ring of stones and roasted a haunch. They noticed that the stones of the fire ring sparkled and melted – the next morning, silver had formed a circle where the fire ring had been. After that primitive smelting, they hunted silver in Tlachco.
A more pedestrian account of the start of Taxco’s identity as a silver-mining and -working center comes from the history of the Aztec empire. In general, we refer to all Nahua-speaking indigenous peoples as Aztecs; Tlachco was in territory inhabited by Chontals, Tlapanecos, Mixtecs/Mazatecas, and maybe a couple more; by 1414, the Aztec Mexica from Mexico City had started incorporating this area into their empire. Under Moctezuma I (1440-69), the Aztec Empire expanded significantly; Moctezuma I placed Tlachco under a military governor and demanded tribute in the form of gold and silver, thus giving rise to the pre-Hispanic mining industry.
After Moctezuma II was defeated by the Spanish in 1521, the conquistadors Juan de Cabra and Juan de Salcedo were sent out from the capital in 1524 to find sources of precious and useful minerals (among other things, they were looking for tin for making cannons). They arrived in Tlachco, although at that point, it didn’t look too promising as a source of untold riches. It was already a built-up population center, but the Spanish thought it looked like “the poorest and most despised of places, as were its people, and there was nothing there but some hills and henequen plants of little worth,” as described in a later letter (1552) to Charles V, King of Spain, by an official named Pedro de Meneses. In particular, it lacked a market. (That was actually a plus, as markets, with their indigenously determined values and individual control of sales, annoyed the Spanish, who wanted to control everything of any value.) Meneses continued on to say that “it came about that silver and gold mines were discovered there” (the two Juans apparently continued looking under the henequen plants).
The Spanish started impressing the native populations, already accustomed to working for tribute, to do the mining; this included “renting” workers from friendly encomenderos (Spanish to whom the Crown awarded the right to receive tribute from a geographic area, see Julie Etra’s article in the March 2025 issue of The Eye). By 1539, however, regulations prevented Spanish mine owners from exploiting the indigenous people as mine workers – they would have to be paid for their work.
The mine owners promptly started importing black slaves as the cheapest workers; by 1579, two thirds of the Taxco mine workers were slaves. The black slaves rebelled, and by 1600, they had completely fled the mining region. By that point, however, the Spanish had established large-scale, machine-assisted mining; by 1600, gold and silver bullion comprised 80% of Mexico’s exports.
There has been a lot of historical research on the mine workers in colonial Mexico – suffice it to say it was horrible work, people were gravely injured, died in cave-ins, and were poisoned by minerals from the earth and minerals, mostly mercury, used in refining the precious metals.
The Mines and the City of Taxco
Skipping ahead to the 18th century, a newly-arrived French-Spanish teenager – he was 16 or 17 in 1716 – was going walkabout in the hills of Taxco when he saw a vein of silver running across the surface rocks. José de la Borda, born in France in 1599, would grow rich in Taxco. What he did with his mining income made Taxco what you see today. Committed to the Catholic church and its principles of charity, he built much of what the city needed – roads, schools, houses. Other rich miners followed his example, building the McMansions of the day throughout the small city.
Don Borda’s greatest contribution to Taxco is the Templo de Santa Prisca. When he was nearly 50 years old, with somewhat more than three decades of increasing his fortune derived from mining, he asked the religious establishment of Taxco for permission to build a new church; he specified that he would be in charge of building it, and that no one else could interfere with the design and construction of the church. The authorities gave their permission, and the church was built between 1751 and 1759. (The first priest of the church was Don Borda’s son.)
Saint Prisca, a Roman noblewoman martyred for her support of the early Christian church, is the patron saint of prisoners. The church of Santa Prisca is thought to protect Taxco from lightning and storms common in this mountainous area. The building itself is considered one of the finest examples of the “churrigueresque” style in New Spain (churrigueresque is also called “ultra Baroque” – the style is highly ornamented, with decorative detail working its way up the building starting from the main façade).
José de la Borda also built homes in Mexico City and Cuernavaca; his Cuernavaca home was surrounded by gardens designed and installed by his son – the gardens are now a public park. Don Borda also generously gave to social charities and was lauded by the church for his charity, humility, and liberal views – nonetheless, he is also known for his harsh exploitation of native labor in his silver mines.
The War of Independence – the End of Colonial Silver
José de la Borda died in 1788 in his home in Cuernavaca. In 1810, Mexico declared its independence from Spain; the war would last until 1821. During the war, the Spanish mining barons destroyed their mines to prevent the revolutionaries from taking them. The war, and post-war political complications, left little time and few resources to try to revive the silver industry.
In the latter part of the 19th century, as Mexico stabilized its political and administrative structures and foreign capital freed up after the Civil War in the United States, there was a resurgence in silver production. Military engineer Manuel Robles Pezuela (1817-62), who graduated from the College of Mining in Guanajuato, was instrumental in writing the Mining Ordinance of 1854; the ordinance played a critical part in modernizing Mexican mining by updating mining laws, simplifying regulations, and creating tax incentives for mining development.
Foreign investment brought new technologies – steam-powered pumps and advanced metallurgical methods – to Mexican mining. Not the least of these imported innovations was soccer, brought to Mexico by British miners who accompanied British money and technology.
The Mexican Revolution – A Rerun with Artistry
The 20th century started with another war of similar length. The Mexican Revolution (1910-21) also slowed down mining – along with most other economic activity. Again, mines were destroyed, and foreign investment withdrew from the country.
The new Constitution (1917) nationalized the country’s subsoil resources, which changed the regulatory landscape for mining. The government nationalized mining to bring in more income and to ensure that mining revenues benefited both the people and the economy of Mexico.
In 1942, during the Second World War, Mexico passed a new Mining Law that was designed to promote investment from home and abroad by simplifying the concession process. New post-war transportation infrastructure (roads and railways) linked mining regions more closely with trade routes and thus the national economy. New mining technologies revitalized old mines and opened new ones. The mining industry continued with legal and technological changes that made it a vital part of the Mexican economy; progress has also been made on ameliorating the environmental and social impacts of mining. Under President Claudia Sheinbaum, this attention to the negative impacts of mining is expected to continue.
William Spratling
But the most interesting thing that happened to silver mining in Mexico was an American artist and architect. William Spratling (1900-67) had often visited Mexico, moving there in 1929. He quickly became involved in the artistic circles of Mexico and was influential in getting Diego Rivera’s work into the galleries of New York City. This led to his involvement in the first major exhibition of Mexican art in the U.S., held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When Dwight Morrow (1873-1931), perhaps America’s most successful ambassador to Mexico and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s dad, met Spratling, he suggested that Taxco was a center for silver but had no silver artistry.
Spratling hired a goldsmith from Iguala, a center for goldsmithing not far from Taxco, and decamped to Taxco. He set up his first studio, Taller de las Delicias (Workshop of the Delights) and began creating jewelry with the pre-Hispanic motifs he had studied as part of his architecture program at Tulane University in New Orleans. He also trained local artisans in silversmithing. In less than ten years, he had several hundred silversmiths to carry out his designs. They proved very popular, and were available north of the border at Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and even the Montgomery Ward catalogue.
Spratling also attracted other artisans, who carried out his designs for tin and copper ware, textiles, and furniture. Once trained by Spratling, a good number of the silversmiths and other artisans went on to set up their own shops, encouraged by Spratling. Spratling’s work became so popular he built a ranch and new studio in Iguala, hoping for some privacy to protect his designs from being pirated by visiting artisans.
Taxco became known as a center for fine crafts, attracting other artists – Diego Rivera, Juan O’Gorman, Frida Kahlo, and celebrities – U.S. President John F. Kennedy, novelist Patricia Highsmith, actresses Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe. Indeed, Spratling made some chairs for Marilyn Monroe that were never delivered because of her death – they are still in his ranch house in Iguala.
In the early summer of 1985, there was a show at the Muriel Karasik Gallery in Manhattan that goes a long way to portray what Spratling did for Taxco’s silver industry. “Mexican Silver Jewelry: The American School 1930-1960” included the work of ten jewelry designers. Spratling’s work drew from the designs uncovered at Monte Alban, excavated in 1932. Margo Carr Banburges, a San Francisco painter, married silversmith Antonio Castillo and moved to Mexico. Castillo, who with his four brothers was trained in Spratling’s studio, encouraged Margo’s work in modern Mexican jewelry design. Antonio Pineda and Hector Aquilar were also trained by Spratling; Pineda quickly opened his own studio; when he was included in a major 1944 exhibition in San Francisco, Gump’s department store – noted for its jewelry department – began carrying his work. Hector Aguilar also opened his own workshop, Taller de Borda, after studying with Spratling; like Spratling, Aguilar trained other Taxco silversmiths.
When William Spratling died, an old friend, Alberto Ulrich, bought the ranch and studio with the intent to keep Spratling’s work alive. You can visit that ranch, now run by Ulrich’s daughters, to see where and how he worked, not to mention the chairs he made for Marilyn Monroe, and even take a silversmithing class yourself (https://violanteulrichcom.wordpress.com/rancho-spratling/). There are, of course, many other things to do in Taxco – just Google!
Spratling and Ulrich used to race their cars down the winding local roads between Taxco and Acapulco. Spratling died on August 7, 1967, in a car crash on the road into Taxco. He was 66.