Being a member of the Sonoma County board of supervisors is sometimes an adventure.
But it’s nothing like what Supervisor Rebecca Hermosillo experienced Monday, when she and her 89-year-old mother made a dicey getaway from their family’s home in Jalostotitlán, a city in the highlands of Jalisco state in Mexico.
Hermosillo is among the many Americans impacted by violent outbursts that swept through a number of cities in Mexico after the government there killed the head of the powerful Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” The wave of unrest included the burning of buses, cars and convenience stores, especially in Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara.
Some North Bay residents found themselves sheltering in place in an unexpected vacation twist, or frantically trying to reschedule flights home. Others had to cancel upcoming visits to Mexico. Many worried from afar as family members and friends recounted taught situations.
Hermosillo, meanwhile, wound up on a harrowing, nearly 3-hour car ride from Jalostotitlán to the Guadalajara airport. On previous trips, she had always taken the toll highway. This time, it was impassable. But her driver had heard the free road — La Libre, usually considered more dangerous — was open.
“We took a chance, mostly because my mom would run out of heart meds (Tuesday),” Hermosillo said from the airport, as she awaited a flight home. “It was a long road. It looked like a war zone. There were at least half a dozen burned cars and buses, so cars would have to go off the road to navigate around them.”
Not everyone’s Sunday/Monday was so fraught. But others described the eerie feeling of watching from a place of refuge as a city burned around them.
Jeffrey Holtzman’s vacation in Puerto Vallarta had unfolded pretty much as he had expected. Warm breezes. Drinks on the beach. Pelicans and frigatebirds sailing past.
Everything changed Sunday morning, when he and his wife noted a smoky haze forming over the Bay of Banderas. They headed to an 8th-floor window in the resort where they were staying, and caught a view out the other side of the building.
“Looking east over the city, it was totally engulfed in smoke,” said Holtzman, a retired Sonoma County deputy district attorney who lives just outside Sebastopol. “We had a stunning, shocking view of the breadth of the fires. There was acrid black smoke and all that. ”
The contrast was not lost on Holtzman.
“Here we are in this lovely situation, and to see what was going on, it was perplexing, mind-boggling,” he said.
Santa Rosa native Pedro Cardona, 30, was buying his plane ticket home when the violence erupted. Cardona has been visiting relatives in Uruapan, a city of about 300,000 in Michoacán.
“(Sunday), there were multiple car-burnings throughout the city, blocking major arteries and entrances and exits to and from the city,” he said. “A major road probably 200 yards from their house, they blocked that. The neighborhood over from ours, a couple cars burned. It lasted from morning all the way to midnight.”
Like others who spoke to The Press Democrat, Cardona and his family decided there was little to do but wait out the chaos until normalcy returned to the streets.
Hermosillo described dramatic incidents in Jalostotitlán. The cartels burned a car on a roadway leading into and out of town, and a bank that catered to people with disabilities. She called it “unnerving.”
“The best correlation would be, imagine this kind of attack on a town like Sonoma,” Hermosillo said.
By Monday, the local sources said, the situation had calmed considerably in most places. But many shops remained closed, and bus and taxi service was coming back to life slowly.
If the tension hadn’t eased Tuesday, Hermosillo said, her family would have had to start rationing water.
“The big issue for a lot of tourists here is they don’t have food,” said Jana Cosgrove, a Petaluma resident who talked to The Press Democrat while sheltering with a friend in an Airbnb some 5-10 minutes south of Puerto Vallarta’s famed Zona Romántica.
“We were fortunate, by chance we went shopping Saturday,” Cosgrove said. “We were told lines are an hour, two hours to get into grocery stores. Uber just opened up.”
Cosgrove has been coming to Puerto Vallarta for 30 years. It’s a city with deep meaning for her. She called what she has seen “heartbreaking,” noting how kind the people there are, and how safe she has always felt there.
Cosgrove has a flight booked for home Saturday. Fingers are crossed.
“At least it’s an adventure and a story to tell,” she said. “And a reminder that when you venture out of the country, be aware of what’s around you. And if you’re staying in an Airbnb, put in basic supplies.
“And tequila.”
George Manes isn’t a tourist in Mexico, or a native son. He sees Puerto Vallarta in a different light. Manes has lived there for 12 years, after retiring from a 35-year career as a Press Democrat editor. The home is on the south side of town, along the Rio Cuale, in a neighborhood that he described as “a mix of Mexicans and gringos.”
Manes was having coffee on his terrace at about 8:30 Sunday morning when he noticed the skies growing dark. Over the next hours, he saw at least a half-dozen major plumes of smoke rise in Puerto Vallarta. The nearest was three blocks away.
“It was a little spooky,” Manes said. “The sky was black. An armed Black Hawk helicopter swooped over my house at about 150 feet.”
Manes, and others, stressed that he had it easier than working Mexican families, many of whom can’t afford to shop at Walmarts or supermarkets. For these families, the uncertainty over a return to normal life was palpable.
“No one knows what’s really happening,” Cardona said. “Obviously, there’s a power vacuum. It’s a wait-and-see process.”
Manes, while acknowledging the drama of the past 48 hours, has no second thoughts about retiring to Puerto Vallarta.
“I don’t want to sound like a bonehead, but I won’t change anything,” he said. “I love it here. It’s a country with many problems. This is one of them. But it will go back to the way it was. I don’t think it will change my behavior in the least.”
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.
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