The Lovelorn Pirate or Isla Mujures

There is a ruined hacienda on Isla Mujures with a fascinating past.

Fermín Antonio Mundaca y Marecheaga Fermin was born in  October 1825 in Santa María, Bermeo, Spain, he studied maritime navigation, before setting off to the New World.

 He became fabulously wealthy as a pirate, smuggler and slave trade—capturing and selling both Mayan and African people to Cuban plantations. He was one of the original Pirates of the Caribbean and like many a successful business men of dubious repute, he decided to retire and live off his ill gotten gains, the British were also cracking down on pirates and slave traders!!

 He became fabulously wealthy as a pirate, smuggler and slave trade—capturing and selling both Mayan and African people to Cuban plantations. He was one of the original Pirates of the Caribbean and like many a successful business men of dubious repute, he decided to retire and live off his ill gotten gains, the British were also cracking down on pirates and slave traders!!

 In 858, he retired  to Isla Muljures and bought 40% of the island.  He built  the Hacienda Vista Alegre (Happy view) later known as Hacienda Mundac. He decorated it beautifully with  archways, sundials, lush gardens, orchards, and exotic flora to impress locals and showcase his status. He  also adorned the estate with structures dedicated to “La Trigueña,” a striking local woman, with whom he was madly in love. However proving that money cant actually buy you love,  “La Trigueña”(Martiniana “Prisca” Gómez Pantoja),  loved another younger local suitor and rejected him. 

The story goes that heartbroken, he descending into madness and even carved his own epitaph and skull‑and‑crossbones on a grave marker for himself. 

s“Lo que tú eres, yo fui; lo que yo soy, tú serás.”

“As you are, I once was; as I am, you shall be.”

  🏴‍☠️

However, he was never vuried there—after falling ill, in around 1880, he travelled to Mérida, where he  later died, and his body was never returned to the island  

 Today Hacienda Mundaca stands in semi‑ruin but has become a tourist attraction, preserved for its romantic, tragic history and rumoured secret tunnels storing pirate treasure!!