These Americans call Mexico home — and still feel safe despite recent cartel violence

For Americans who call Puerto Vallarta home, the weekend’s violence was a stark reminder that they live in a country that is also home to the world’s most powerful drug cartels.

But they are not willing to give up their place in the sun.

Charity Palmatier, who lives year-round just outside the picturesque beach town with others from the United States and Canada, dismissed the burning of buses and cars by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel on Sunday to protest the killing of its leader as a “positive act.”

“Cartels like to make statements,” Palmatier, 57, who has lived in the area for nearly a decade, told NBC News on Tuesday. “They get angry when one of their big boys gets caught or killed.”

The violence erupted after drug kingpin Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” was killed following a shootout with Mexican soldiers 180 kilometers east of Puerto Vallarta.

There was a 15 million dollar reward for the capture of a cartel leader who is one of the largest suppliers of cocaine in the US market and earns billions from the production of fentanyl and methamphetamines.

Palmatier noted that while some cars and businesses were set on fire and masked gunmen raided some residences and threatened people on the street, “no civilians were injured or killed.”

“It’s not the Wild West down here,” he said. “It’s a lot safer than you’d think.”

Karen Davis-Farage, who divides her time between her homes in Vallarta, as the expats call it, and New York City and Los Angeles, admitted that she booked a plane ticket to leave the city after a fire broke out at a restaurant on the first floor of her apartment building.

“The cartel was traveling on motorbikes, they had these bags, and they were telling people to get off the cabs, or get off the car, or get off the bus, and they would throw these bags into the car and it would set itself on fire,” said Davis-Farage, 70, said Davis-Farage, 70.

But after it was over and he was able to get out to see the damage, he canceled his flights back to the U.S. He said the threat appeared to be over.

“Everyone is safe and sound,” he said of his friends in Puerto Vallarta.

The State Department on Tuesday lifted its shelter alert for US citizens in the Mexican state of Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta and another resort town hit by violence, Guadalajara, are located.

About 1.6 million US citizens live in Mexico, according to 2024 government statistics, many of them expats who spend the winter there, although the number of Americans who live there year-round is also growing.

Mexico City is the most popular destination for American expats, according to Mexico News Daily, citing government statistics.

But Jalisco’s coastal towns are increasingly becoming a magnet for Americans looking for sunshine, a low cost of living, and a slower pace of life, according to various websites like Viva Tropical aimed at getting out.

Guest visits – and finally a new home

Both Palmatier and Davis-Farage said they first visited Puerto Vallarta in college, attracted by the city’s beauty, stunning beaches and artsy vibe.

“It’s very mysterious,” Davis-Farage said. “From the mountains to the sea, it’s very beautiful, it’s vibrant. There are many famous people who come here to live here from all over the world.”

Palmatier said he lives in an exit bubble where he doesn’t need to be fluent in Spanish to get by. But, he said, his Mexican friends were warm and welcoming.

Alvaro Orozco, a Houston-based real estate agent who counts Mexican immigrants as a client and who lived in Puerto Vallarta for three years, said none of his clients have tried to interfere since Sunday’s riots.

“There’s no doubt that what happened was scary, but it’s generally very safe out there,” he said. “A lot of the time, what’s happening in Mexico sounds pretty amazing in the United States.”

This was different, he said, because it was unexpected and happened in a community where violent crime is common elsewhere in Mexico.

“What happened on Sunday was not just killing people, it is a crime that really scares people,” he said. “It was a show of strength by the cartel.”

Davis-Farage said that when the gunmen filled the streets and started spreading chaos, he was entertaining a visiting sister. He said he lives in a building near the sea full of foreigners and that it was his friend who first saw “the fog in the water.”

“We don’t have that kind of fog,” he said. “I went out to my balcony and saw black smoke on the horizon; I smelled smoke and realized it was fire.

Davis-Farage said he suddenly woke up and flashed back to September 11, 2001, when he was working in lower Manhattan and Al Qaeda terrorists were piloting the hijacked planes into the World Trade Center twin towers.

“I was on 9/11, I watched the buildings come down,” he said. “It’s all back. The kind of emotion where you’re not in control and you know you can be vulnerable.”

Davis-Farage said he and his friend joined other evacuees who had gathered on the top floor of the building, where they looked on the web for news about what was happening on the streets.

“We felt safer staying on the roof … I felt safer there than in my apartment just because we were among other people,” she said.

Suddenly his phone rang and there was a text from a friend saying that a bus had exploded nearby.

“They had to evacuate his condo,” he said. “That created another level of panic.

The fear grew after a few hours.

“We smelled smoke and saw that our building was on fire,” he said. “That was probably the scariest part.”

It turned out, Davis-Farage said, that a member of the cartel had thrown some sort of devastation into the restaurant downstairs. The only ones injured, he said, were some of the house music instruments that were stored there.

Asked if he ever felt that his life was in danger, David-Farage did not answer directly.

“The strange thing about this incident is that we never heard the sirens,” he said. “We haven’t heard a siren all day. If (firefighters) had gone out to try to put out the fire, they would have been killed by the truck.”

Although there have been several reports of visitors fleeing from masked inmates firing into the air, Palmatier said he never felt in danger while sheltering in his building. Most of the residents are expats like him from the US and Canada.

“I see what happened as something that happens from time to time in Mexico,” he said. “This got a lot of play because it was a big guy they were able to catch.”

Palmatier believes that when violence occurs in Mexico, “it’s definitely not directed at someone like me.”

Davis-Farage said, “I hope people don’t stay away from Vallarta because of this.”