History of Paco Paco and How Puerto Vallarta Became a Favorite LGBTQ Getaway Ed Walsh - SETAC
go to original June 11, 2021

Panoramic aerial view of Puerto Vallarta skyline in Mexico (ferrantraite/Getty Images)

Paco Ruiz opened his namesake bar Club Paco Paco in December of 1989, just 20 years after the Stonewall Uprising in New York that was the impetus for the modern LGBTQ rights movement. At the time, Puerto Vallarta had a reputation for being gay-popular but not particularly gay-friendly.

A little more than a 3.5-hour flight from San Francisco, in Mexico’s west coast state of Jalisco, Puerto Vallarta is now a big city with more than 221,000 people. But when director John Huston filmed “The Night of the Iguana” there in 1963, “P.V.” — as it’s widely known by English-speaking expats and frequent visitors — was a sleepy fishing village. The paparazzi who descended on the town to report on the illicit affair between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor helped put it on the map for U.S. tourists.

When Ruiz opened his club, it was one of only three gay bars in the city. At the time, Jalisco didn’t have formal laws against homosexuality. But police and regulators often targeted gay-owned businesses for shakedowns because, without political connections or meaningful support in the broader local community, they were vulnerable.

Ruiz, however, stood up to them. Sometime in 1991 or 1992, when police officers spotted two lesbians kissing at Paco Paco, the club owner refused to pay the bribe they demanded. The police left the club but returned the same night to arrest Ruiz for disorderly conduct. Coincidentally, a national TV personality, Nino Canun, was in Puerto Vallarta at the time, taping his talk show. Canun heard about the incident at Paco Paco and interviewed Ruiz. The television program embarrassed local leaders, who felt like they’d been made to look unsophisticated and bigoted by the media power structure based in Mexico City, the country’s capital. From that point on, the city’s police were less hostile to the gay community.

The arrest, and subsequent release, of Paco Ruiz would become Puerto Vallarta’s Stonewall moment and eventually lead to the city becoming the country’s most popular LGBTQ beach destination. Ruiz eventually moved his bar a couple of blocks away in another part of an area south of downtown known as Zona Romantica, a neighborhood that now has more than two dozen gay bars, a handful of LGBT hotels and three gay-focused cruises departing from the city’s public beach, Playa de los Muertos.

In addition to his nightclub, Ruiz ran a hotel and “Paco’s Paradise” — a private beach and bed-and-breakfast that was open to day visitors — and started the first organization in the city designed to support people with HIV/AIDS.

Paco's Paradise was popular for day trippers who came for its food and drink and private clothing-optional beach. It was an escape from the crowds and vendors along the public waterfront. I met Paco for the first time there around 18 years ago. He caught fresh fish and cooked it for guests in what was hands-down the best meal I had in Puerto Vallarta. An eagle nested nearby and Paco would call the bird, which would swoop down and eat pieces of meat off his hand.

Sadly, Ruiz died in 2016 at 62 years old. He was a longtime HIV/AIDS survivor but had battled cancer in recent years. Ruiz’s HIV/AIDS support work is now being done by SETAC, a nonprofit that also serves as Puerto Vallarta’s LGBTQ community center. SETAC stands for Solidaridad Ed Thomas Asociación Civil and is named for former Bostonian Ed Thomas, who founded the organization after he retired to Puerto Vallarta. The organization runs support groups, offers testing for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and recently launched a PrEP program to prevent HIV with the drug Truvada.

The center, which now has three locations, is working to build a memorial to Ruiz on the city’s pedestrian walkway, directly in front of Francisca Rodriguez Street’s landmark public pier, according to the center’s director, Paco Arjona. Ruiz was laid to rest in San Juanito de Escobedo, a small town in Jalisco about a four-hour drive from Puerto Vallarta.

Read the rest and how Paco Ruiz's legacy lives on at SF Gate.

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