Residents and tourists in Mexico have described the unrest as “heartbreaking” after one of the country’s most powerful and feared cartels unleashed a wave of violence in several states.
This comes after Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”, Mexico’s most wanted man and leader of the Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) drug cartel, was killed on Sunday during a security operation aimed at arresting him.
Images recorded by locals and tourists showed burned vehicles and plumes of smoke rising above several towns, including the resort town of Puerto Vallarta.
Nashville-born Jerry Jones, who has lived in the city for more than four years, told BBC News that he had “never experienced anything like this” and generally felt “safer here than in my hometown.”
Jones, owner of the LGBT+ lifestyle magazine Out and About Puerto Vallarta, moved to Mexico after retiring from her job in the United States.
“I love the people here, I love the walkability of the city, how nice everyone is. It’s a beautiful, fantastic place, and that’s what encouraged me to come here,” he said.
He said residents were “completely caught off guard” on Sunday morning when news of El Mencho’s capture and subsequent unrest broke.
“The first idea we had that something was happening was one of our readers sent us a video of a bus being burned,” he said.
He started seeing smoke “all over the city” a few minutes later.
Jones said vehicles were parked on roads and set on fire, including at a local store in which “over 30 vehicles that were in the parking lot at the time were burned and destroyed.”
Getty Images
Although the situation unfolded quickly Sunday morning, Jones said residents received no information from local authorities and he did not see any military or officers in his neighborhood until the afternoon.
Residents and tourists in several Mexican states were urged to stay indoors, with most businesses, schools and universities closed.
He described some people “stuck” in retail stores after the violence broke out, unable to leave.
“When the city realized what was happening, they issued a stay-at-home order,” he said, adding that the streets suddenly became “eerily quiet.”
As information began to trickle into the local community, people began to come together to help each other, he said.
Community members put out the fires because firefighters were “overwhelmed,” Jones said, while helping tourists who didn’t have access to food.
He said a local grocery store opened Sunday night, but the line to get in was “incredible.”
“I don’t know what today will bring. I hope for peace,” he said.
He said he was concerned about the community and the impact it would have on tourism in the area.
“Puerto Vallarta is strong and we got through the hurricanes together, the pandemic together, and the businesses here are coming together,” he said.
“In times like this, they don’t compete. They come together and help each other. And so, I think this will happen and we will survive and be even stronger.”
PlusLifeDiaries via Reuters
Marc-André, a Canadian content creator who also lives in Puerto Vallarta, said the usually quiet resort town “felt like a real war zone.”
“There were fires everywhere, like hundreds of cars were burning at the same time all over the city,” he said in a video on his YouTube channel, More Life Diaries.
He also described the streets as “very quiet and eerie.”
“This is Mexico after all – usually there was music, people outside, people enjoying life, and there’s a really strange feeling in the air here,” he added.
Marc-André, who lives with his wife and two young children, said his family had never felt unsafe in the city before.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see what’s happening,” he said.
Another YouTube creator, California-born Paul Desmond, shared his experience in a video he said he “never wanted to make.”
Desmond, who has lived for several years in Bucerías, a resort town in Nayarit state, called the scene “very unusual.”
He shared drone footage from Sunday morning, which showed a deserted highway with smoke visible in the distance.
“It’s not something that happens regularly in our daily lives here,” he said. “It’s destabilizing, it’s frustrating, it’s ugly.”
A number of American and Canadian tourists also shared their first-hand accounts of the unrest and how it unfolded with the media.
Adryan Moorefield, a Dallas resident who had been in Puerto Vallarta since last week, told CNN the situation was “a complete shock.”
“It was almost like being in the Twilight Zone,” he added.
Moorefield said he had been to the town before and thought it would be “an obvious place to come for a quick and easy beach vacation,” but is now stuck after his flight home was canceled.
Another tourist in Puerto Vallarta, Tim Spencer of Toronto, told CBC he saw convenience stores and burning cars from the roof of the Villa Divina hotel.
“I’ve never really seen anything like this in my life, so it’s kind of horrible,” he said.
Jim Beck told CNN that he left his hotel Sunday morning to eat breakfast and saw “taxi cabs exploding all over the city, blocking the roads.”
“Then immediately, everyone ran into the street, screaming and yelling, and they told everyone to go back to their hotel,” he said.
Beck said he has been coming to the city for several years, but this is the first time he has felt unsafe there.
Jeff Pass, a Canadian from Peterborough, has been in the Puerto Vallarta area for eight days after attending a destination wedding there with dozens of other Canadians.
He said hotel staff didn’t say much about what was happening in the early hours of Sunday, but could see fires burning across the city from the hotel’s roof in the afternoon.
Pass said the situation around them has been noticeably calmer since Monday afternoon and ground transportation like taxis and Uber appear to have slowly resumed, but he and his partner still don’t know when they will be able to return home.
They tried to register with the Canadian consulate in Mexico, but said officials were “overwhelmed” with requests.
“We haven’t had a response from the Canadian government or anything, but the complex has been very good (for us),” he said.
Canadians should only travel when “it is safe to do so,” Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand advised.
“The situation remains fluid,” she said Monday. “All Canadians living in affected areas should heed the directives of local authorities.”
She said more than 26,000 Canadians abroad have registered with Global Affairs Canada – an increase of almost 8,000 in one day – for security and travel information.
Flight cancellations continued Monday, leaving many people stranded in Puerto Vallarta. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she expected flights to resume later today and on Tuesday.
Air Canada announced it would resume all operations to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on Tuesday. The airline flies from Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver to this city in western Mexico.
On Wednesday, flights from Toronto to Guadalajara would resume, the airline announced.
