Winnipeg couple among those in lockdown as violence erupts in Mexico

Winnipeg residents Tracey Seida and Jerry Buckland are in lockdown in their vacation rental in Puerto Vallarta amid the Mexican military’s action against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

“We’ve been watching the fires from our balcony,” Seida in a phone interview on Sunday from the popular vacation destination. “We’ve been listening to explosions all morning.”

Cartels commonly use roadblocks of burning vehicles to block military operations, the Associated Press reported on Sunday.

Seida and Buckland, a married couple, awoke Sunday with plans for a run on a path along the waterfront, near the downtown Puerto Vallarta neighbourhood where they’re staying. As they walked to the path, said Seida, they noticed the smoke from a large fire to their south.

“We thought, ‘This doesn’t look very good for running,’ because the smoke was quite intense, so we thought, ‘Maybe we’ll just go get a coffee,’ and then we noticed another fire and another fire,” said Seida. “We thought, ‘Oh my gosh, something’s happening.’”

She said they spoke with a local resident on the street and learned of a vehicle fire believed to have been lit by the cartel on a nearby highway, before texting the owner of their vacation rental, who advised them to return home out of safety concerns.

“We left the coffee place and we saw that businesses were closing, people were briskly walking or running and just as we stepped out of the coffee shop, military vehicles were coming down the road, making announcements,” said Seida, who added she and Buckland aren’t concerned for their personal safety.

“We started hustling back to our Airbnb and as we turned up our street, there was a car upside down and on fire, just half a block from where we’re staying.”

She said within 20 minutes of arriving back to their rental, there were no vehicles travelling on the streets, apart from the occasional motorcycle, as they saw more fires start and explosions ring out.

The couple have been charging up their devices, as they’ve been told to expect the city’s power to go out overnight.

“I feel perfectly safe where I am,” said Seida. “We’re fine, we feel safe where we are — it doesn’t seem the cartel is targeting people.”

But, said Seida, the city is “eerily quiet.”

“There’s smoke all across the city… there’s nobody anywhere,” said Seida.

Seida, who is retired, has been in the Mexican city for just over three weeks, but her husband, a Canadian Mennonite University professor, arrived more recently.

He was slated to return to Winnipeg on Monday, with courses to teach on Tuesday, but it’s at this point unclear when flights will resume landing or taking off from Puerto Vallarta’s airport.

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Air Canada, Porter and WestJet have cancelled flights into the Puerto Vallarta airport.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen there,” said Seida.

An official with the Canadian consulate department confirms the government is aware of and monitoring the developing situation.

-With files from The Canadian Press

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.