Featured in Vallarta Lifestyles Magazine, Spring/Summer 2010 issue.

In our Spring-Summer 2008 issue, we investigated the number of billboards between Puerto Vallarta’s Maritime Terminal and Punta de Mita Exit 447. In driving those 24.4 km, a tourist or local would be exposed to a billboard approximately every three seconds.

Several months later, in November 2008, the first billboard in Bahía de Banderas was removed, in accord with Mayor Hector Paniagua’s promise to remove all such advertising along Highway 200. Paniagua expected the support of the billboards’ owners; however, they complained to the Secretary of Communication and Transport (SCT) about the removal by municipal employees.

Although the campaign against billboard advertising in Bahía de Banderas has yielded good results, the structures remain to this day, abandoned by their owners. Lawyer Angelica Garcia, director of legal affairs for Bahía de Banderas, affirms the intention to remove the structures, but the cost is high—$25,000  each—and the notification process must be planned carefully.

On the other hand, the situation in Puerto Vallarta is lamentably different. In trying to gather information for this article, we were shuffled from the Tourism Department to the Department of Social Communication to the Licensing Department’s Georgina Navarro, who said the responsible party is Everardo Barron. When we phoned Barron, he said he would prefer to make an appointment with us in his office, since he thought the matter merited it. In the end, we received no further communication, an odyssey that shows an archaic bureaucratic process and public servants unable to provide the best possible service.