Isla Mujeres History
Local historians tell several stories about how the island received its name. One version is that when Francisco Hernández de Córdoba landed on the island in 1517, he found several small statues of naked women believed to be representations of different goddesses, the most famous of which is Ixchel, Goddess of the moon, fertility, and all becoming. For island locals, the Goddess Ixchel still protects and blesses her island.
For three centuries after Isla Mujeres was discovered it was uninhabited. Because of it's strategic location it became an ideal hiding place for many famous pirates like Henry Morgan, El Olonés, Diego el Mulato, Lorencillo, Pata de Palo and Jean Lafitte. Stories of hidden treasures and jewels under the white sands are characteristic of Isla where you can still hear tales of ghostly apparitions of pirates and slaves. When the classic piracy declined at the beginning of the 19th century, the island began to be visited by Cuban/Spanish fisherman and people from Campeche and the Yucatán who came during the season to catch marine turtles, Sharks and Jewfish. The abundance of salt used for the preservation of meats promoted the fishing activity. From the Carey Turtle they used the conch and they extracted the vitamin A from the oil shark. This lasted until the 1930s when the production of this product was synthesized. The collection of sea sponges was another lucrative activity for the fisherman.
Fermin Antonio Mundaca y Marecheaga, a slave trader who took African natives to Antillas to be sold, was born in 1825 in the village Bermeo in Vizcaiya, Spain. He arrived at Isla in 1858. It has been said that a shipwreck brought him to Isla's shores. The village in Isla, named Pueblo de Dolores by the Yucatán Governor Don Miguel Barbachano, had been thriving for more then 8 years when Mundaca arrived. The name lasted only twenty years. Between the years 1858 and 1870, Mundaca rented his boats to the Government of the Yucatán to capture and persecute the rebel Mayans along the coast. These Mayans were sold as slaves to the large Cuban plantations. The Yucatán Government considered Mundaca "patriotic" and gave him the post of Spanish Console of Isla Mujeres.
Isla Mujeres was becoming inhabited once more. Refugees from the conflicts between the Mayans and white people flocked to the safety of Isla Mujeres, Cozumel and Holbox forming villages in only three years. The Mayans of the peninsula had stopped navigating the waters of the Caribbean since the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. Fermin Antonio Mundaca y Marecheaga, a slave trader who took African natives to Antillas to be sold, was born in 1825 in the village Bermeo in Vizcaiya, Spain. He arrived at Isla in 1858. It has been said that a shipwreck brought him to Isla's shores. The village in Isla, named Pueblo de Dolores by the Yucatán Governor Don Miguel Barbachano, had been thriving for more then 8 years when Mundaca arrived. The name lasted only twenty years. Between the years 1858 and 1870, Mundaca rented his boats to the Government of the Yucatán to capture and persecute the rebel Mayans along the coast. These Mayans were sold as slaves to the large Cuban plantations. The Yucatán Government considered Mundaca "patriotic" and gave him the post of Spanish Console of Isla Mujeres.
Mundaca used his fortune to build a large hacienda named "Vista Alegre" which covered over 40 percent of the island. He found the locals to be passive fisherman and their families who offered no resistance to his dismantling the ruins and using the worked stones of the Goddess Ixchel's sanctuary to construct his hacienda. The ornamental details of the stones gave a singular value to his construction. The large entrance arch was called "El Paso de la Trigueña", the entrance of the Trigueña, dedicated to a young and beautiful girl from the village named Martiniana Gómez Pantoja, born in 1862 and nicknamed, of course, la Trigueña (the brunette). Mundaca was in love with this local beauty 37 years younger than himself. She preferred to marry a man closer to her own age and had many children while Mundaca slowly became more isolated, lonely, and egotistical and some say, mad. Fermin Mundaca died, still in love with Martiniana, at the age of 55 in Mérida. He was buried there but his empty tomb awaits him in the Cemetery of Isla Mujeres. The symbols of the pirate trade, the skull and cross-bones adorn his gravestone where he carved the words with his own hand, "As you are, I was. As I am, you will be”.
Isla Mujeres is located a short distance off the coast of the northeast of the Yucatan Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea. Isla Mujeres is also one of the eight municipalities of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The island is some 7 km long and 650 meters wide. In the 2005 census the municipality had a population of 13,315, and the town had a population of 11,147.
Isla Mujeres has one of the best beaches in the Caribbean. The famous Playa Norte (North Beach) is a beautiful white beach with shallow clear turquoise water to stroll along, snorkel, swim and sit along the shore to enjoy the tropical sunsets.
Remove your watch and enjoy Isla Time! |