Taxco de Alarcón

Dear Taxco de Alarcón,

        For the first twelve years of my life I lived with you and came to love you. But I was torn from you too abruptly and taken here, to Chicago.

       At a distance, I have seen you change. You went being a peaceful, silver-mining town—the Jewel of Mexico—where people could walk the Zócalo at all hours of the night without the fear, to a town whose streets are overran by death; you have become the battleground of two drug trafficking families; each day a new death; chopped up bodies thrown into the Zócalo, and behind the cathedral.

       The Taxco in my head is the one from my childhood. A town surrounded by beautiful mountains; the impossibly vibrant blue skies; the beautiful cathedral that towers over anything else; the Zócalo where my family and me, every Sunday, walked around eating ice-cream, when the military trucks and soldiers were not the most prominent things on those walks.

        That is still the Taxco de Alarcón for me.