Getting Clear on $ Exchange Options - Help!

Greetings - We're heading to Zihua/Barra in a couple of weeks and have been tracking the issues with ATMs, exchanging currency, ATM cards with chips not being accepted in ATM machines, etc....We've always brought a few hundred dollars in US currency and exchanged it when in Zihua and then just used ATM machines at Banomex or ScotiaBank to get pesos. We did this for safety, convenience, and good exchange rates.

Here are our questions:

We now have debit cards with chips embedded in them. Will they even work? If yes, where?

We don't have a bank account/ATM card with a Mexican bank. We're only here for a week's vacation. Can we withdraw money in pesos without a problem?

If we can withdraw money using our chip debit cards, where is the best place to do so in Zihua? Is it possible to withdraw US$250 or so per transaction?

If we can't do the above successfully, should we bring a bunch of US currency and then exchange it? Where can we do this, if we don't have a bank account?

Is it better to just get a ton of pesos here in the US and then bring them along?

Thanks much, just noodling over old posts and threads and trying to figure out what we should do.

Muchas gracias! Jackie M