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Nearly two years after a gay couple from San Luis Potosí alleged they were arbitrarily detained and abused by police while vacationing in Puerto Vallarta’s Zona Romántica, the Comisión Estatal de Derechos Humanos de Jalisco has concluded that municipal officers violated their human rights and is calling on the city government to provide restitution and complete disciplinary proceedings against those involved.
The decision was announced in a press release from Movimiento por la Igualdad en México (Movii).
The case involving Christopher Duifhuis Rivera and Juan Manuel López drew widespread attention in July 2024 after the couple publicly accused Puerto Vallarta police officers of discrimination, excessive force and unlawful detention during what they described as a routine night out in the city’s LGBTQ+ district. You can read our original story here.
The case remained in the public spotlight largely through the advocacy and support of the Vallarta Gay+ Community Center and the Movimiento por la Igualdad en México, which helped document the allegations, support the victims and push for accountability. Advocates from both organizations argued the incident reflected broader concerns about alleged police harassment and extortion targeting LGBTQ+ residents and tourists in Puerto Vallarta’s nightlife district.
The incident also revived long-standing concerns within Puerto Vallarta’s LGBTQ+ community over allegations of police harassment and extortion in the Zona Romántica. In recent years, Out & About PV has documented multiple complaints from LGBTQ+ tourists and residents who alleged they were stopped late at night by municipal police, threatened with arrest and pressured to pay cash to avoid detention.
Advocates said the 2024 detention of Duifhuis Rivera and López López appeared to fit a troubling pattern that had circulated for years within the LGBTQ+ community, though few cases resulted in formal findings by authorities.
In March, 2025, a community meeting was held to address concerns about safety and police abuse. You can read that story here.
In Conciliation Proposal 67/2026/III, the human rights commission determined that officers with Puerto Vallarta’s Public Security Department violated the couple’s rights to personal liberty, legal certainty, personal integrity and freedom from discrimination.
According to the commission, toxicology tests administered to the couple the same day returned negative results, undermining accusations that they were consuming illegal substances in public. Despite those findings, then-municipal judge Felipe Abarca Hernández ordered each man to either serve 36 hours in jail or pay a fine of 2,071 pesos.
The couple ultimately paid a combined 4,142 pesos to secure their release.
The commission also concluded that police officers used restraining devices that caused injuries to both men’s wrists.
The resolution directs Puerto Vallarta Mayor Luis Ernesto Munguía González to ensure administrative investigations against four police officers are completed and, if misconduct by the former municipal judge is confirmed, that a notation be added to his employment record.
The commission also called for the city government to fully reimburse the couple for the fines they paid, ruling that the penalties lacked sufficient legal basis.
In addition, the resolution orders Puerto Vallarta’s Internal Control Office to conclude Administrative Responsibility Procedure 38/2024 with decisions that are properly founded and respectful of due process guarantees for the public officials involved. The city council’s Justice and Rule of Law Commission was also instructed to formally acknowledge the outcome of the administrative proceedings.
For LGBTQ+ advocates, the commission’s findings represent one of the clearest official acknowledgments to date of concerns that members of Puerto Vallarta’s LGBTQ+ community and visitors have raised for years regarding police conduct in the city’s nightlife district.
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