The Malecón at night
El Malecón por la noche

An early procession in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe
Procesión en honor a la Virgen de Guadalupe.

1914 - 1935
The discovery of a lesser kind of silver in the United States brought down the price of the metal and old prosperity became affliction. The miners from the mountain townships left their recently acquired trade to go back to agriculture. But now they chose the fertile valley of the Ameca River, so rich it produced three corn harvests per year. The area was not only self-sufficient, it yielded enough surpluses to be sold in other markets of the country. As there were no roads out of Las Peñas, the produce was sent out on boats by way of Manzanillo and Mazatlán. In 1918, through the efforts of its population, Las Peñas was granted the title of municipality as well as a new name: Puerto Vallarta.

It was in these days that the rush for the “green gold” (the unripe bananas grown and exported to the US by the Montgomery Fruit Company) brought economic well-being to the neighboring community of Ixtapa until 1935. By then the enforcement of land ownership laws promoted through the Revolution entailed the repossessing of 26,000 hectares of American citizen Joseph Montgomery’s . This would end the intensive agricultural phase of old Puerto Vallarta.

1914 - 1935
El descubrimiento de vetas de plata no muy fina en Estados Unidos hace caer el precio del metal y la antigua bonanza se convierte en penuria. De los pueblos serranos bajan los mineros para retomar el oficio de agricultores, pero ahora en el fértil valle del Ameca. No sólo se trataba de una zona autosuficiente —producía hasta tres cosechas de maíz al año— sino que se daba el lujo de enviar los excedentes a otras partes del país en embarcaciones provenientes de Mazatlán o Manzanillo. Muy pronto, en 1918, de caserío, Las Peñas se eleva a municipio con un nuevo nombre: Puerto Vallarta.

Por aquellas fechas se inicia la fiebre del “oro verde” —como se les llamó a los plátanos cosechados y exportados a Estados Unidos antes de madurar por la Montgomery Fruit Company. Establecida en Ixtapa, esta empresa trajo bienestar a Puerto Vallarta hasta 1935, cuando mediante la aplicación de la ley agraria se expropian las 26,000 hectáreas del norteamericano Joseph Montgomery, terminando así la etapa de Vallarta como productor agrícola.

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