In El Oro one can still see the ruins of a monastery—they call it now, vaguely, the Collegio—the pathetic little arched roofs of a row of monkish cells built of adobe, and now fast crumbling under hot suns and torrential rains. It partly surrounds what was once the patio of the cloister, and a great mesquite tree towers there over the forgotten headstone of an ancient grave, inscribed with the lordly name of Doña Isabella Guzman. Of course, everybody has entirely forgotten who Doña Isabella was, or when she died. There still stands in the public square a fine old Spanish church with a beamed ceiling. And over the door of the tiny Palacio Municipal is the almost erased carving of the arms of some ancient Spanish house. Here is romance for you. But the inhabitants have no respect for tradition, and hardly any memory of the ancients who left these monuments. The exuberant Indian civilization has entirely obliterated all traces of the _conquistadores_. El Oro is noted as the gayest town of all the mountain region. There are _bailes_ almost every night, and far and near it is a matter of common knowledge that El Oro is the home of the prettiest girls in Durango. In El Oro, too, they celebrate feast days with more ebullience than in other localities. All the charcoal-burners and goat-herds and pack-train drivers and ranchers for miles around come there on holidays,—so that one feast-day generally means two or three without work, since there must be one day for celebrating, and at least another for coming and returning home. And what _Pastorellas_ they have in El Oro! Once a year, on the Feast of the Santos Reyes, they perform Los Pastores all over this part of the country. It is an ancient miracle play of the kind that used to take place all over Europe in the Renaissance,—the kind that gave birth to Elizabethan drama, and is now extinct everywhere in the world. It is handed down by word of mouth from mother to daughter, from the remotest antiquity. It is called "Luzbel," the Spanish for _Lucifer_, and depicts Perverse Man in the Midst of His Deadly Sin, _Lucifer_, the Great Antagonist of Souls, and the Everlasting Mercy of God Made Flesh in the Child Jesus. In most places there is only one performance of Los Pastores. But in El Oro there are three or four on the night of the Santos Reyes, and others at different times of the year, as the spirit moves. The _cura_, or village priest, still trains the actors. The play takes place no longer in the church, however. It is added to from generation to generation, sometimes being twisted to satirize persons in the village. It has become too profane, too realistic, for the Church; but still it points the great moral of medieval religion.