Outside the tourist area, in Puerto Vallarta, there are inhabitants living in poverty.
Lack of public transportation, dirt roads, shortage of green areas, and poor lighting, with only partial access to potable water, this is life in the other Puerto Vallarta, which is just a few blocks up from the boardwalk and the hotel zone where most of the remodeling efforts and image improvements are concentrated day by day, an industry that provides employment and without which the community would hardly survive, according to hoteliers.
A clear example is the experience lived every day by Félix Aréchiga, who at over 70 years old must walk with a cane and be careful not to slip when it rains because the streets where he lives are dirt and with water, they become slippery, water accumulates, and mud sticks to his clothes and footwear, but above all, he must walk slowly because the streets are too steep and at his age, the weight can overcome him and cause him to roll.
“Here we need streets, to fix them because we have them, but some are not even paved and the others, not to mention because they are not even flat and have potholes, mounds, and grass, which makes it complicated to carry out our activities, which are no more than 10 minutes from downtown Puerto Vallarta by transport,” commented the elderly man.
In Puerto Vallarta, according to the most recent report from the Mexican government on poverty, there are about 20,038 people who do not have access to basic housing services. Regarding transportation, which was not seen to pass even near his street in more than half an hour, he indicated that “it is very complicated, everything is terrible” and to be able to go down to the boardwalk “we have to wait up to half an hour or much more and especially the worker has the time measured and because of the terrible service arrives late” and sometimes they are not even allowed to enter.
A significant number of people who live in marginalized areas, further away, or with a deficient public transportation system, are those who work in the large hotels and find it difficult to get to their workplaces in the mornings and to their homes in the evenings.
On the Boardwalk, it’s Never Night; but in the Rest of Vallarta…
In the hotel zone, night falls, but it remains fully lit, the nightlife does not stop a single day and there are those who claim that Vallarta never sleeps, because it never rests.
While in the “beautiful part” solid structures are seen, without so many filtration problems, with all services at hand, many of them modern, a few blocks from that area the houses are still without plasters to cover the bricks, unfinished fences, dogs in the streets, and some animals like roosters and cats. The same with the light, you go up the hill and it gets darker, as explained by Don Jorge, a hotel employee.
Lodging by Platform, the Total Revolution
Added to all this is the arrival of property rental platforms for lodging, which begins to affect hoteliers, since although more tourists arrive each year, they no longer do so at hotels. They look for cheaper spaces and where they can stay longer for less expense and this has caused foreign tourists to venture beyond the tourist area.
The community benefits, there are those who have built another room or even another property to their house. In marginalized or low-resource areas, renovated properties are beginning to be seen and from which foreign tourists come out, eat in the local eateries and businesses, and with that, the large restaurants also do not have an extraordinary influx since even the clubs for young people on the boardwalk can look empty.
Health Sector Businesswoman, Teresita Marmolejo, when questioned if Puerto Vallarta aligns with the designation of being the safest municipality said, “the note sounds very nice and we would love it to be that way but the reality we have is very different, in recent months we have detected many robberies that did not exist before and it is due to negligence and disorder of the current government.”
She did not hesitate to point out that in the past they were a fairly safe city, the warmth of its people was remarkable but in recent months the area that most reflects this insecurity is in the hotel strip, the commercial area, but they are robberies and armed assaults.
“In the same stores, we are in a group where day by day the managers and security personnel of the stores monitor what happens and every day there are assaults and that makes the feeling of security no longer as before,” she mentioned.
She recognized that the provision of services in the neighborhoods far from the boardwalk is poor, in some of them you can see the garbage accumulated in some corners and in the neighborhoods that are outside the hotel strip.
Tourism Industry, a Key Part
Álvaro García, president of the Puerto Vallarta Hotel Association, mentioned that the destination has grown like any medium city with all services and that is to attract tourists who are its main source of income, without them they could not survive since they are a destination without large industries around.
“I believe that like any city that has grown over the years, in the hotel and tourist services part, it needs all the infrastructure so that all the collaborators of the hotels or the tourist industry, have their development in strategic places,” he indicated.
From his point of view, public services are complete but not sufficient, especially because Puerto Vallarta receives inhabitants to make use of the infrastructure and services such as health and that causes more people to arrive every day. “Especially for services that at the time are public in nature and I see it very important that as a conurbation area it is covered by both states’ public services” especially in Nayarit to relieve the pressure on Puerto Vallarta. From his point of view, the destination should focus on air tourism as a way to relieve the roads that collapse with the number of people who circulate every day between both entities.
“The transfer of any person, whether a visitor or living in the destination, is important that the roads are fluid, the issue of the Federation bridge has been around for some time and wait to see which Government gets to do it and release a little traffic from Francisco Medina Ascencio Avenue” which is the main and only one that crosses the entire hotel zone.
The idea is to help the tourist who arrives tired of driving more than five hours from Puerto Vallarta or from the internment processes through customs in the case of foreigners who use the airport services. For Álvaro García, as soon as the last stretch of the Guadalajara-Puerto Vallarta highway is completed, it will free up a significant number of vehicles from the Guayabitos (Nayarit) stretch to the entrance of Puerto Vallarta.
In addition, from the field of technology, various changes can be made such as a better traffic light system, at crossings that are a major problem of circulation that the necessary infrastructure is developed such as bridges or underpasses, but also improve lighting, garbage collection, and everything that adds up to being a better destination.
Source: El Occidental
