Locals and tourists in Mexico have described the “heartbreaking” unrest after one of the most powerful and feared cartels in the country unleashed a wave of violence across several states.
It 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 during a security operation to arrest him on Sunday.
Footage recorded by locals and tourists showed burnt vehicles and plumes of smoke rising above several towns and cities, including the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta.
Nashville-born Jerry Jones, who has lived in the town for more than four years, told BBC News he has “never experienced anything like this” and usually felt “safer here than in my hometown.”
Jones, the owner of LGBT+ lifestyle magazine Out and About Puerto Vallarta, moved to Mexico after retiring from his 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 and fantastic place, and that’s what encouraged me to come here,” he said.
He said residents were “completely caught off guard” on Sunday morning as news of El Mencho’s capture, and the following unrest, broke.
“The first inkling that we had that something was going on was one of our readers sent us a video of a bus being set on fire,” he said.
He started seeing smoke “all the way across the city” just minutes later.
Jones said vehicles were being parked across roads and set on fire, including at one local store in which “more than 30 vehicles that were in the parking lot at the time were burned and destroyed.”
Although the situation unfolded quickly on Sunday morning, Jones said residents were left with no information from local authorities and he had not seen military or officers in his neighbourhood until the afternoon.
Residents and tourists across several Mexican states have been asked to stay inside, with most businesses, schools and universities closed.
He described some people being “stuck” in retail stores after the violence broke out, unable to leave.
“When the city realised 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 had been putting out fires due to firefighters being “overwhelmed”, Jones said, as well as helping tourists who did not have access to food.
He said a local grocery store opened on Sunday evening but the queue to get in was “unbelievable”.
“I don’t know what today’s going to bring. I hope, peace,” he said.
He said he worried about the community and the impact this would have on tourism in the region.
“Puerto Vallarta is strong and we have been through hurricanes together, the pandemic together, and businesses here join together,” he said.
“In times like this, they do not compete. They join together and they help each other. And so, I think that’s going to happen and we will survive and be even stronger.”
Marc-André, a Canadian content creator who also lives in Puerto Vallarta, said the usually calm resort town “looked like it was an absolute war zone”.
“There were fires everywhere, like hundreds of cars throughout the city were burning at the same time,” he said in a video on his YouTube channel, More Life Diaries.
He also described the streets afterwards as “very quiet and unsettling”.
“This is Mexico after all – usually there’d be music, people outside, people enjoying life, and there’s a really, kind of eerie, 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 town before this.
“It is quite heartbreaking to see what’s going on,” he said.
Another YouTube creator, California-born Paul Desmond, shared his experience in a video which he said “he never wanted to make”.
Desmond, who has lived in Bucerías, a beach resort town in the state of Nayarit, for several years, described the scene as “very unusual”.
He shared drone footage from Sunday morning, which showed a deserted motorway with smoke visible in the distance.
“This is not something that happens regularly in our daily lives here,” he said. “It’s unsettling, it’s frustrating, it’s ugly.”
A number of American and Canadian tourists have also shared their first-hand accounts of the unrest and how it unfolded with news outlets.
Dallas resident Adryan Moorefield, who had been in Puerto Vallarta since last week, told CNN the situation was a “complete shocker”.
“It almost felt like being in the twilight zone,” he added.
Moorefield said he had been to the town before and thought it would be a “no brainer place to come and do a quick, easy beach vacation” but he is now stuck after his flight home was cancelled.
Another tourist in Puerto Vallarta, Tim Spencer from Toronto, told CBC that he saw corner stores and cars in flames from the rooftop of the Villa Divina hotel.
“I’ve never really seen anything like this before in my life, so it’s a little bit horrific,” he said.
Jim Beck told CNN he left his hotel on Sunday morning to get breakfast and saw “taxi cabs blown up all over town, blocking the roads”.
“Then immediately, everyone was running down the street, screaming and yelling, and they told everyone to get back to their hotels,” he said.
Beck said he has been coming to the town for several years, but this is the first time he has not felt safe there.
Jeff Pass, a Canadian from Peterborough, has been in the Puerto Vallarta area for eight days and counting after attending a destination wedding there with dozens of other Canadians.
He said the hotel staff did not say much about what was unfolding in the early hours of Sunday, but he was able to see fires burning across town from the resort’s rooftop by the afternoon.
Pass said the situation around them is noticeably calmer as of Monday afternoon, and ground transportation like taxis and Uber appear to have resumed slowly, but he and his partner still do not know when they will be able to travel home.
They have been trying to register with the Canadian consulate in Mexico, but said officials have been “overwhelmed” with requests.
“We haven’t heard back from the Canadian government or anything, but the resort has been very good (to us),” he said.
Canadians should travel only when “safe to do so,” Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand advised.
“The situation remains fluid,” she said on Monday. “All Canadians in affected regions should heed the direction of local authorities.”
She said that more than 26,000 Canadians abroad have registered with Global Affairs Canada – an increase of nearly 8,000 in one day – to get information about security and travel.
Flight cancellations continued on Monday, leaving many stranded in Puerto Vallarta. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she expected flights to resume later in the day and on Tuesday.
Air Canada said it would resume full operations to Mexico’s Puerto Vallarta on Tuesday. The airline flies from Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver to the western Mexican city.
On Wednesday, flights from Toronto to Guadalajara would resume, the airline said.
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