Pirates! Images of swashbuckers with gold teeth, eye patches, and peg legs come to mind -- or Johnny Depp. But in reality, many of the pirates who navigated the waters just off Mexico’s eastern shores from as early as the 1600s were men with unlikely backgrounds for the sport they took on. A handful were full-fledged gentlemen, most with seafaring backgrounds. Many were sanctioned by queens or governments, and a few ended up with titles. Some were hailed as heroes.
A better description of these romantic buccaneers is privateer. In an era when slave trading, spices, and territorial expansion sparked global economics, European nations—England, France, Holland and Spain—waged their wars on the high seas. With Spain’s recent discovery of the New World and its riches, the only unity on the Atlantic was the common goal of sacking all Spanish galleons.
Adventurers by nature, highwaymen by design, the word pirate conjures familiar names from history such as Jean Laffite, Sir Henry Morgan and Sir Francis Drake. Lesser knowns, however, such as Giovanni de Verrazno and Fermin Mundaca have equally compelling stories.
ISLA MUJERES
While Morgan and Lafitte are said to have walked the shores of Isla Mujeres in Quintana Roo and buried treasure there, Isla’s most notorious resident was Fermin Mundaca, a slave trader who transported African slaves to Antilles, preferring the more ‘respectable’ title of pirate. In 1860 when the British campaigned against slavery, Mundaca took a powder on the white sand beaches of Isla Mujeres. There he rented out his boats to the Yucatán government to capture rebel Maya along the coast who were then sold into slavery to Cuban sugar plantations, an act that hardly endeared him to the locals.
On Isla Mujeres, Mundaca used his wealth to build a large hacienda named Vista Alegre. He filled it with livestock, birds, and exotic gardens, still viewable today. The entrance arch, El Paso de la Triguena (The Brunette), was named for a beautiful girl from the village, Martiniana Gomez Pantoja, with whom the elderly pirate fell in love after seeing her one-time only. He nicknamed her the brunette. But the dark-haired beauty, 37 years his junior, married her childhood sweetheart and Mundaca grew lonely and mad. He died at age 55 in Merida, still in love with the girl. To be near his lost love, he built a tomb that remains empty and can be found in Isla Mujeres’ colorful, crowded cemetery, one street before North Beach. Etched on the headstone are the symbols of the pirate—skull and crossbones—with the words he carved as his epitaph, “As you are, I was. As I am, you will be.”
JEAN LAFITTE
Jean Lafitte, born in either Haiti or St. Malo, France, liberated New Orleans twice: first from high tariffs by supplying stolen goods to customers without a middleman, and then by liberating the city of the British in the U.S. Battle of 1812. Targeted at first by Andrew Jackson as a bandit and rogue, he was later named a gentleman and a patriot, for without him, one of the war’s most decisive battles against Britain would have been lost. Soon after he was named Territorial Governor of Galveston, (still Mexican soil) but with changing times, he was harassed by stricter U.S. policies that restricted his maritime activities.
As a farewell and parting shot, he torched Galveston and according to legend, sailed into the Caribbean. Rumor has it he stopped on Isla Mujeres, then moved on to the Gulf of Mexico. In the Yucatán, in the small pueblo Dzilam de Bravo, not far from Progreso, a CEDAM (Club de Exploraciones y Deportes Acuaticos de Mexico) memorial plaque commemorates him. In the town’s cemetery, CEDAM workers found a weathered tombstone with the epitaph, “Jean Lafitte Re-Exhumed.” Could it really be the grave of Lafitte?
CHINCHORRO REEF
Mexico's Quintana Roo coast is rife with pirate stories. Xcalak (100 miles south of Cancun) was a known haven for pirates. Bacalar narrowly escaped their ruin, and Ascencion Bay was one of the great pirate harbors of the 17th century. Wild and isolated, its treacherous mud flats sent countless vessels to their doom, while pirate ships waited in hiding for the passage of Spanish galleons laden with gold, fighting against trade winds on their way to Santiago de Cuba.
In the Museo de la Cultura Maya in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, one exhibit displays how pirates used Banco Chinchorro to their gain. Chinchorro is a deadly circular string of rocks on a low-lying limestone shelf that extends out from the sea. It’s 30 miles long and 20 miles wide, just off the shores of Majahual.
Pirates placed lanterns along the reef, signaling ships this was clear passage. But actually, the lanterns lured them to their doom onto the treacherous rocks. It’s rumored that thousands of ships had their downfall on Chinchorro Reef. A May 2020 archeological expedition near Mahajual brought up a 200-year old sailing ship believed to have fallen prey to pirates.
For more pirate tales, there’s the CEDAM Museum in Puerto Aventuras, north of Tulum. Check out Museo de la Cultura Maya in Chetumal, and Petit Lafitte, a hotel four kilometers north of Playa del Carmen, to see the white sand beaches that may have attracted one pirate extraordinaire. Find a copy of Pablo Bush Romero’s Under the Waters of Mexico. Venture over to Isla Mujeres, and see the renovated Hacienda Mundaca and stroll through the pirate’s gardens, now made into a small zoo. Walk through the cemetery there or drive to Dzilam de Bravo, Yucatan, to view Lafitte’s commemorative plaque and find the gravestone with his name on it. Ahoy, matie! There’s treasure to be found.
