The LGBTQ+ History of Puerto Vallarta

Thanks to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, this Mexican destination became a LGBTQ+ haven.

Sometimes, you sign up for a taco tour and end up learning a little LGBTQ+ history. At least, that’s how my taco tour went in Puerto Vallarta.

Our guide, Miel, trotted us around various taco joints in the Zona Romantica, or Romantic Zone, of this charming city on Mexico’s Pacific Coast around sunset, sharing wisdom about the most important part of a taco (“the sauce—nobody in Mexico would serve their friends and family a taco without plenty of fresh homemade sauce”) and how to dress a taco (“use more than one type of sauce, and it’s best to use enough that it makes it drippy”).

But soon, our conversation turned to the LGBTQ+ nature of the neighborhood we’d been bouncing around for tacos. I’d long known Puerto Vallarta—and the Romantic Zone, in particular—was something of a gay vacation village and had been for decades. I knew of LGBTQ+ circuit parties that took place here annually. I had several friends who spent time visiting Puerto Vallarta several times a year to drink margaritas and post group photos of themselves showing off their new speedos on the beach.

Because of this, I wasn’t surprised to find legions of tank-top-clad gays clustered at sidewalk tables at cantinas throughout the Romantic Zone, eating tacos and swilling margaritas. Or rather, the tops were eating the tacos, but everybody was swilling margaritas. I was surprised, however, when Miel asserted that the neighborhood’s name, Zona Romantica, was a kind of gay erasure.

“The local people are religious,” she said while we bought churros from a vendor stationed outside a church waiting for Wednesday evening services to let out customers for his sugary wares. As we munched on the hot fried pastry, she explained, “They wanted to describe the neighborhood, but not in an explicit way—so they called it the Romantic Zone as a polite euphemism. They call it that because of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, but all that was actually across the river.”

I had long known that Casa Kimberly—indeed across the river, and thus not technically in the Romantic Zone—was a boutique hotel and restaurant that had once been the home of Elizabeth Taylor in the city, but I hadn’t made the gay connection just yet.

In bits and pieces shared by various guides during my trip, I pieced together the full story with a little help from Wikipedia. In 1963, Welsh actor Richard Burton set up shop in the then-mostly unknown outside Mexico town of Puerto Vallarta to film Night of the Iguana alongside Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr under the direction of John Huston. An adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, it was set to film in the city for four months during that autumn.

Elizabeth Taylor, with whom Burton had begun a romance on the set of the film Cleopatra, joined his entourage, ostensibly out of fear that he might fall for Ava Gardner, so she came to Puerto Vallarta to keep an eye on him. Both Taylor and Burton were still married to other people at the time, so this naturally drew the attention of the paparazzi, who also descended on the city.

Burton bought Casa Kimberly, opposite his own house in the city, for Taylor for the sake of propriety. And out of of convenience, he built a bridge between the two properties above street level so they could visit each other without wading through the paparazzi.

After the film wrapped, Taylor was purportedly satisfied that she’d kept Burton occupied enough to prevent him from seducing Ava Gardner, and both of their divorces were finalized while they were in Mexico. She and Burton married for the first time at the Ritz-Carlton Montreal less than two weeks later.

“So, what,” I asked Miel, “does this have to do with Zona Romantica?”

“Gay men love Elizabeth Taylor,” she explained. “She was the first celebrity to demand action early during the AIDS crisis.”

It began to make sense. Taylor had continued to vacation in Puerto Vallarta—a city that she, along with Burton, had helped make world-famous. Gay men, inspired by a gay icon and supporter and seeking escapism from urban American gay centers in the depths of the AIDS crisis, bought condos in what later became the Romantic Zone.

Taylor sold Casa Kimberly in 1990 after years of returning to it with Hollywood friends (she and Burton divorced briefly in the mid-1970s, then remarried before divorcing again), but by the time she departed for the last time, a gay community had already developed—art galleries, bathhouses, bars, and nightclubs sprang up.

Puerto Vallarta’s tourism promoters have long recognized the city as an LGBTQ+-friendly destination, estimating that the LGBTQ+ community provides as many as one in five visitors annually.

To be sure, Casa Kimberly attracts a gay community even today. Visitors pose for selfies on the infamous bridge in front of the sunset, and mariachis serenade diners in the fountained courtyard of Taylor’s former estate as they tuck into Mexican-inspired continental plates. An imposing portrait of Taylor’s piercing gaze seems to invite visitors into her realm of mystique as they climb the stairs to dinner.

While gay life in PV is centered around the Romantic Zone, there are plenty of other places to stay and play. Tourism has boomed in recent years, north along the coastline toward the airport, south toward Mismaloya Beach, where Night of the Iguana was primarily filmed. (Director John Huston’s nearby estate at Las Caletas is now a popular destination for boat-trippers from PV). We’re staying at Hotel Mousai, an adults-only all-inclusive resort with commanding views of the Arcos de Mismaloya—a rock formation jutting out of the Pacific Ocean just offshore—now a reserve for seabirds and marine life.

After sampling some local chocolate, we say goodbye to Miel and head back along the winding coast road toward Mismaloya—just as Burton and Taylor had done numerous times in their jeep all those years ago, with a greater appreciation of the community their scandalous love affair ultimately had a hand in developing.

Perhaps just as important, we now know how to sauce a taco, too.