El Colomo

El Colomo is a village of about 1,460 people in the northeastern corner of the Valle de Banderas plain, on the Nayarit bank of the Ameca River, which marks the state line with Jalisco. It lies about 14 kilometers from Valle de Banderas, the municipal seat, and six to eight kilometers from San Juan de Abajo, at around 50 meters above sea level, with the forested hills of the Sierra de Vallejo state biosphere reserve rising behind it.

Its history is bigger than its size. In the early twentieth century El Colomo was the center of the Maisterrena family's hacienda, which stretched from La Peñita de Jaltemba down to San José del Valle; the main house, granaries, company store and workers' quarters stood here. The family had arrived from Spain in 1886, and its patriarch, Fermín Maisterrena, obtained water rights and an irrigation district at El Colomo, giving up his Spanish citizenship in 1917. In the agrarian struggles of the 1930s the peasant leader Fortino Covarrubias led the fight against the landowners and was murdered during the festivities of November 20, 1934. The next year the Cárdenas government ordered the hacienda's land handed out, creating the Ejido El Colomo, the first in the Banderas Bay region.

Today El Colomo is a quiet farming village with a plaza and bandstand framed by palms and mountains, three schools and a health center, and 434 occupied homes at the 2020 census. The climate is tropical, with rain mostly in summer: April is the driest month, September the wettest and July the hottest. There are no hotels; the nearest are some 11 to 12 kilometers away, and the old road toward Puerto Vallarta runs through the village.