Puerto Vallarta: A Little History

The general sense of Puerto Vallarta’s history communicated to me likely through a kind of osmosis went something like: it was a small fishing village until John Houston brought his cast for the film The Night of the Iguana to the area. Elizabeth Taylor’s relationship with Richard Burton brought members of the American press in their wake. Pictures and stories of the beaches and the surrounding mountains alerted other Americans, especially on the west coast, of its beauties. Previously most of that tourist trade had gone to Acapulco.

In fact, PV (as I will now refer to the city), was a thriving village before Houston’s foray into the area,because of its proximity to the mines of the Sierra above, and of the agricultuaral abundance inthe Banderas valley. As mining operations developed in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, what had been a fishing and pearl diving village, was transformed into a small beach-landing port serving the Sierratowns. With these changes, PV gradually became a vacation destination for the residents of the towns.

By the mid-19th century it was a centre for regular vacationers, as well as a place of settlement for families who had left the Sierras. The current centrality of tourism in PV’s economic activity is a natural outcome because of its climate, tropical beaches, scenery, and rich cultural history, definitelygiven a boost by Houston’s and company.

               

Puerto Vallarta in the 1950s in the area of the current malecon, before it existed.

In PV there is no city museum to elaborate its history, the kind of museums found in other Mexican centres like Puebla and Mexico City. There is archeological evidence that humans lived in the area as early as 600 BCE. Sites nearby have revealed that it belonged to the Aztlan culture which dominated that entire central western coast area from about 900 to 1200 CE. Documents from both Spanish missionaries and conquistadors reveal significant skirmishes between the colonizers and the local people. In 1524 there was a battle between Hernan Cortes and a force of 10 to 20 thousand indigenous warriors in the Banduras valley, which ultimately gave Cortes control of much of the area.

From the beginning of his assault upon Mexico and its inhabitants in 1517, Cortes augmented his relatively small force by enlisting other tribes who had grudges against the group to be attacked, or who perhaps hoped to gain power through the amalgamation. The weaponry availably to Cortes’ army: muskets, canon, steel swords and shields, as well as horses and dogs to threaten and overpower, gave his soldiers vast superioity over the local peoples despite their numbers. At their disposal were wooden clubs and spears into which had been driven shards of materials like obsidian that could cut and wound. They had no comparable body amour, fighting as they lived with little protective clothing.

Of course we know that the Spanish were victorious not just in the PV area but throughout the whole of the country now called Mexico. In PV the consciousness of this history is very weak, certainly among those of us from Canada and the USA but even among the Mexicans that we know and interact with daily. I’m certain that they learn their history in school but there are no, for example, statues of important indigenous leaders or of the gods and godesses of their pre-Christian religions, as can be seen in other places in Mexico. This probably relates to the fairly rapid development of the city as a place for tourists, its quick Americanization.

Puerto Vallarta in the evening

Along the malecon, the cement ‘boardwalk’ that lines the beach of the downtown, there is a sturdy pole, many meters high, with foot holds up to its platformed top. Regularly, day and evening, men dressed in the clothing of their people, white with red embroidery, climb up to that small square space, attach themselves to ropes already in place, and with the accompaniment of a flute-like whistle played by one of their number who remains above, the other four thrown themselves backwards into space. The platform rotates in a circle throwing the men outward from the pole. Their attached ropes unfold until nearly at the ground, each man flips his body from a position of falling/flying upside down, to a standing position and safely comes to earth.

I have read that this practice was carried out by one of the peoples of Mexico as a part of their religious exercises. Whether or not it was passed down by the ancestors of indigenous people of the PV area, I don’t know. It defintely is now performed for the awe and amusement of tourists, who are called upon to donate to the group of men who have thus entertained them. 

Writing about this, I remembered another visible connection with indigenous people in the city. Also along the malecon opposite the water is a string of shops catering to the trade that comes, as do I, to visit in the winter, or to those whose time is limited to the hours arranged by their cruise ship’s itinerary. Most contain souvenir items, some clothing, restaurants, bars, and silver jewetry shops. One is entirely dedicated to the art of the Huichol people. 

I once entered the shop to look more closely at the bead-encrusted animals arrayed upon its counters. The salesperson explained to me their origin. Two men in what I would think of as ‘native’ costume, sat silently at a table working at different examples of the displayed products. The salesman said that they were Huichol people, from an ancient grouping of Mexicans who had maintained their customs and language and their lives in common. The two workers did not acknowledge my presence, nor did they speak with one another. I left feeling that I had strayed into a place secret and hidden, where an incomprehesible culture existed, one distinct in every way from either my own Canadian culture or that of the Mexicans with whom I ordinarily interacted. Of course, that culture in the person of those two men, was also interacting with the daily Mexican life of PV and with the tourists who came to buy their pieces of art. At the time I didn’t think to enquire about the Huichol people. Who were they? Where did they live? How did it happen that they were somewhay visible, but clearly not integrated into the Mexican way of life?

Huichol beaded art: a jaguar

Recently, perhaps with my own growing awareness of the way in which I and the greater population of our country have not known about or been interested in our indigenous people, I see that I have also paid little attention to the threads of connections with those of Mexico. So I have decided to find out more about them and to write about them in my next blog letter. Think peyote and Carlos Castenada.