Vallarta Beseiged
In my shower last night, I looked down at pitch-black water sluicing over the white bathtub from my feet. I had, like the rest of the population, not been out of the house. I realized it was oily soot that had settled on my patio from at least three separate fires close to the Church, which is only a couple of blocks away. What kind of massive cleanup will people living close to the torched Farmacia Guadalajara or a burned-out OXXO or Kiosko have to do? Or by Carl Timothy’s Real Estate office?
I am grateful to friends who shot videos and photos and posted them online. And to everyone who reached out to check on the situation and asked after my safety. To those who willingly shared misinformation and fanned online fires, shame on you.
I have an entire weekend full of loveliness to tell you about, like the Peacock Gala at the Botanical Garden and Arte Puro at La Catrina Cantina. But this suspension of daily life, fraught with oozing potholes and black smoke, touched more than the bottoms of my feet.
This well-organized protest could be the poster child for any group in the world. The strategies were brilliantly thought out and masterfully demonstrated, and the backstories we will begin to hear starting today will be amazing. The people who were trapped in cars and buildings or asked, probably politely, to vacate their cars so that they could be splashed with accelerant and set on fire. Those stories will unfold bit by bit.
How do you close an entire city? One that is bursting at the seams with visitors at the height of our tourist season. Where do they go when their hotel stay is over, and they are supposed to get on a plane and return home? When there are no taxis to take them to an airport that isn’t operating.
It was a surreal day, apocalyptic, and man-driven, not Nature. It’s one thing when earthquakes and hurricanes visit us, but when humans whose goal is greed so vast that they won’t hurt potential future drug-buying customers. That is one carefully laid-out business plan; we are grateful for it.
It is nearly 8 am, the morning after. The sky is tinged this morning with fluffy orange-tipped clouds on a pale blue background. We will likely be indoors for at least one more day; not a hardship for me. How are the dogs doing, not getting walked, but also not being barraged by explosions? The birds are flying sporadically, and even they are being unusually quiet, as was all of last night. Eerie, with no traffic on my street and not even one crowd of happily intoxicated revellers stumbling up the hill on their way home in Gringo Gulch.
Puerto Vallarta is fine. We will rebuild our shattered stores and help our neighbors who no longer have a workplace to go to. If you are reconsidering your vacation in this city, in light of yesterday, please come anyway; we need you now more than ever. With love, From Here.
