Background to PRIDE in Vallarta
By: Ken Morrison AKA Barbie O. - Dec. 1st, 2022
Gay Guide Vallarta's 2022 Winter Print Edition ggv 22.4.
Puerto Vallarta Pride – early 90s
Puerto Vallarta was still a quiet little beach town when I started going there around 1990. Of course, it was already an established beach party town that had long been the preferred beach of Guadalajara and west Mexico. In those days, it had an undercurrent of gay but it was very much undercurrent.
About this time, a few gay personalities and gay businesses decided to have a parade; I forget the significance, but it was full of color and laughter and gaiety. It also signified the emergence of a sense of a local gay community. The parade included giant puppets. Gerald, organizer of the first gay boat cruises in Vallarta, borrowed his friend’s Cadillac convertible to carry Miss Vallarta. Paco Ruiz and David Lansley, the owners of the newly opened PACO PACO, helped to organize and created the principal parade float – a half-ton truck with banners, rainbow flags, pink triangles and naked torsos. Paco liked to push frontiers of social acceptance and, more than occasionally, was accompanying someone with complaints to see the mayor or the chief of police. But this was different. This was the first gay parade in Vallarta (now an annual May event including an online extravaganza). It was not originally called Pride. But it was filled with pride and public proclamation. It was, as I remember it, the first overt social statement of gays in Vallarta outside the bars: “We’re here: We’re queer. Get used to it”. To the generally cheering and celebratory crowds.
No photos are available.