How Cozumel’s Tourism Industry Began

Copyright 2011, Ric Hajovsky

During his exile in 1869, Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Ana (the Mexican general who defeated the Texians at the Alamo) convinced Thomas Adams of New York to try to develop a product utilizing chicle, the gum of the sapodilla tree (Manilkara zapota), a tree found only in Yucatan, Guatemala, and Belize. After several failed attempts to make toys, masks, and rain-boots out of the material, Adams finally added flavoring to it and came up with chicle-based chewing gum. Chewing gum had been around for a few years already in the US, but up until then it had been based on Spruce gum and had never really caught on. This new concoction did.

In 1880, William White improved the ability of chewing gum to hold a flavor and launched a new line of gum called “Yucatan Chewing Gum.” The same year, Henry and Frank Fleer began manufacturing “Chiclets.”

In 1891, 29-year-old William Wrigley opened a business selling soap wholesale to grocery stores. As an incentive to his clients to buy more of his soap, he began giving them free baking soda with their follow-up orders. When the popularity of this incentive skyrocketed, Wrigley switched his focus from selling soap, to selling baking powder. To help this new product take off, Wrigley began giving free chewing gum to his clients re-orders.

Wrigley soon began to manufacture his own gum and sourced his chicle directly from the Yucatan. In 1893, Wrigley’s introduced Juicy Fruit Gum, and a few months later, Wrigley’s Spearmint. These two gums, as well as others being manufactured in the US, became wildly popular and the chewing-gum craze fueled a race to see who could control the chicle supply. The Mexican government tried, but since the territory with the most sapodilla trees (also called chico-zapote trees, in Yucatecan Spanish) were located in lands held by the Mayan Cruzoob rebels, there was not much they could do about it at first. Later, in the 1910s, after the War of the Castes had wound down, the Mexican Federal government began to enforce concessions, as well as the export of chicle.

By the 1920s, Cozumel had become an important port in the chicle trade and needed a hotel to house visiting American buyers and Mexican government officials. To this end, Refugio Granados constructed the Gran Hotel Louvre in Cozumel in 1924 at the intersection of Juarez and Zaragoza. In 1932, Felipe Rivero Herrera built the Hotel Yuri, located on Calle 1 Sur between Avenidas 5 and 10. In 1938, the Hotel Playa was opened off Avenida Playa Norte (today’s Avenida Melgar) with economic assistance from the government.

When natural chicle was replaced as an ingredient in chewing gum by a synthetic base during World War II, the chicle trade crashed. With no other industry or trade to replace it, the island’s economy was in shambles. Hard times were had by all. The Hotel Playa was closed due to the deteriorating economy on Cozumel. The former hotel is now the Museo de Cozumel.

The war years were hard for Cozumel. The planned American airbase that the US War Department had assumed it could build and man on Cozumel had been rejected by Mexican Secretary of Defense Lazaro Cardenas, the ex-president of Mexico who nationalized the Mexican oilfields and expelled the American oil companies. As a result, little of the money, munitions, and supplies the US gave Mexico in exchange for the right to build airbases actually ended up in Cozumel. Some of the funds were used by Mexicana de Aviación (a subsidiary of Pan American Airways at the time) to improve the island’s old dirt airstrip, but the American troops and their spending money never appeared. The new dirt runways were, however, one of the necessary building blocks for the island’s tourism infrastructure, and that was a consolation.

In 1948 a nautical mishap occurred which would have the odd result of indirectly leading to a huge rush of American tourists racing to visit Cozumel. On February 13 of that year, the freighter “Narwhal” was passing by Cozumel on its way from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala to Mobile, Alabama. The ship was captained by J. Wilson Berringer and carrying 125 tons of bananas when it grounded on the point of the east coast of Cozumel called Ixpalbarco. The 10 member crew managed to get off safely and walked across the island to San Miguel, where they found rooms at the Hotel Playa. When notified of the wreck, the boat’s owner, Charles Fair, flew down to Cozumel from his home in New York to oversee the salvage operation. During his stay, he became impressed with the island and told Carlos Namur Aguilar, the honorary Consul of Honduras in Cozumel, he would recommend it to his friends.

In May, 1951, the Committee for the Betterment of Cozumel met and began to discuss the idea of promoting tourism to the island. A speaker at the meeting, Roberto Sarlat Corrales, urged Cozumel to join forces with the rest of the peninsula in an effort to entice the tourists. Although the suggestion received little attention, tourism was soon to become the island’s salvation.

When Mr. Fair, the owner of the stranded freighter, returned to New York in 1948, he had been true to his word and told his writer friend, John R. Humphreys, about how pleased he was with his stay on Cozumel. Humphreys, in turn, travelled down to Cozumel in 1953 to check it out for himself. While staying at the Hotel Playa for only sixty cents a day, he began taking notes for an article. A few months later, he returned to Cozumel for another month-long stay so he could finish writing it. The completed product was a glowing story about the island, but he didn’t find a publisher for another few years. Holiday Magazine, the in-house magazine of the American Automobile Association at the time, finally decided to print the article in its August 1955 issue. Entitled Cozumel: A new island Paradise, the article described a scene of an idyllic, inexpensive tropical Eden. “Tourists seldom go there,” wrote Humphreys. “Visitors from the United States are rarely seen on its shores. Yet you can live on Cozumel in style and even in relative luxury for less than 100 dollars a month.” The airfare to the island was $51.70 one way from Miami to Merida, then another $10.00 to fly TAMSA’s DC-4 two-hour flight on to Cozumel.

The island population was only around 2,300 at the time. Streets were still unpaved, life was slow, and travelers could get three meals a day at the Fonda Tropical (later renamed Casa Denis) for seventy-two cents. Humphreys wrote that he hired a sailboat for five dollars a day and sailed to the small village of Playa del Carmen, which he described as “a semicircle of thatched native houses on the mainland beach.”

The article struck a chord with the American public. The description of a nearby tropical island where steak was .20 cents a pound, custom-tailored suits made for $3.00, five-bedroom houses rented for $30.00 a month, and cooks could be hired for $5.00 a day, caused a huge influx of vacationers that caught the island by surprise.

In 1957, the American scuba diver Robert F. (Bob) Marx showed up in Cozumel along with Mel Fisher and his wife Deo, where they were to film some underwater promo films for Pan American Airlines. After the filming, Bob stayed on in Cozumel and began using Hotel Playa as a base of operations for a tour-guide/diving business, the first commercial operation of its type on the island. He was charging $8.00 USD per day for his services, boat, and equipment, according to an article about Cozumel in a 1959 Esquire magazine. Initially, Bob gave the diving lessons and acted as a dive guide for tourists who wished to try the sport, but soon took on a couple of Cozumeleños as interns and trained them to take care of the tourists. A year or so later, Tiburcio García opened El Clavado Dive Shop and Ramon Zapata’s opening of Aqua Safari in 1960 with partners Juan Marrufo, Renato Bauche, Antonio Venegas, and Orlando May followed closely thereafter.

In the January, 1958 edition of Travel Magazine and again in the February 1958 edition, Cozumel got some nice write ups. The articles pointed out that TAMSA airline was flying a DC-6 to the island from Merida for $17.50 USD one-way. Also in 1958, an article headlined “Cozumel se Acapulciza” (or, “Cozumel is becoming an Acapulco”) appeared in Volume 15 of Visión magazine. This article states that the North-American tourists have been coming to Cozumel for a few years now, due in part to previous US magazine articles. It also laments the fact that it is easier to get to Cozumel from the States than it is from Mexico City! Some things never change.

During his stay in Cozumel, diver Bob Marx heard about the wreck of the El Matancero (officially named Nuestra Seńora de los Milagros), a Spanish merchant vessel which ran aground on the coral reef near Akumal on February 22, 1741. In 1957, Marx crossed over from Cozumel to check out the wreck. Although a few fishermen had known about it, it had not been excavated. Returning with two friends of his, Clay Blair (the associate editor of Saturday Evening Post) and Walter Bennett, Marx began to salvage the wreck. The first effort yielded little, but when they returned a few months later, they began to find and remove hundreds of objects that had gone down with the ship. Blair returned to the US and wrote a short article about the find in the March 1, 1958 Saturday Evening Post and all hell broke loose. As he and Marx returned to the wreck for a third effort at removing the cargo, the Mexican authorities put a stop to their salvage operation and instead granted a permit to Pablo Bush, who had just formed a brand new organization called Club de Exploraciones y Deportes Acuáticos de Méjico (CEDAM) that same year. After a few false starts, Bush and CEDAM began to excavate in earnest in 1959. Bush offered Marx the opportunity to participate with CEDAM, so the salvage operation eventually consisted of around 25 Americans invited by Marx and another 125 Mexican divers (including Alfonso and Reggie Arnold). Bush later purchased the land near the wreck and made Akumal the club’s headquarters, where he later installed the CEDAM Museum (since moved). In 1960, Clay Blair published his book, Diving for Pleasure and Treasure in the US and then republished it in 1961 in Great Britain. The book detailed his and Marx’s adventures in Cozumel and added fuel to the blossoming dive industry on the island.

In the May 1959 issue of Holiday Magazine there appeared a second article by Humphreys entitled “Cozumel: Bargain Paradise Revisited.” This new article described the huge differences Humphreys noted that had occurred on the island since his first article was published. For starters, the island was on the verge of being over-run by Americans. The island, Humphreys wrote, “had been discovered by thousands of Americans in search of a Caribbean paradise.” Humphrey’s travel agent in Merida told him the islanders had found themselves in the middle of a gold-rush style stampede. “They came and they came, so many people, so suddenly… from New Orleans and Miami, planeload after planeload. They all demanded the way to your island.” The frequency of flights from Merida to Cozumel had risen from four to nine a week, and they were all fully booked.

Other changes in island life were also noted by Humphreys. The streets in the center of town were now paved. The old Hotel Playa that had been built by the government in 1938 and left to run down for lack of visitors had been leased by the Joaquíns in 1956 and renovated. The room rates had risen from the previous sixty-cents to an astronomical $4.00 a day. “Millionaires,” wrote Humphreys, “accompanied by lawyers and construction engineers, arrived and departed, leaving in their wake visions of modern hotels, night-clubs, yacht basins and swarms of cruise-ship visitors.”

Because of Holiday Magazine’s wide circulation, this second article also had a huge impact on Cozumel’s economy; Americans were now ready and able to take Mexican vacations in large numbers, and that they did. After Humphrey’s second article appeared, another author wrote (in an article about Cozumel in Esquire Magazine, 1965, Vol. 64) about Humphries’ trip, saying that no one in Cozumel would let him pay a bill during his stay!

Two of the tourists drawn to Cozumel by Humphrey’s first article was an American born in London to Russian parents, Ilya (sometimes translated as William) Chamberlain and his American wife, Mary Helen Byrnes, who visited the island for a short two-day stay and fell in love it. They would return later with some capital and renovate two neighboring houses on Avenida Melgar (one of which Humphreys had rented during his second visit) and turn them into the Hotel Mayaluum in 1955. Located on the Avenida Melgar at Calle 8 norte, it sported a nightclub and offered a so-called “haute cuisine.” Later, in 1960, Chamberlain would add the Instituto de Arte Cozumel to his enterprise.

Across the street from the Mayaluum, Fernando Barbachano opened the Hotel Caribe Isleño at the corner of Avenida Rafael Melgar and Calle 8 norte, where today Cinco Soles now stands. Soon after that, 12 new cottages forming the beginnings of Cabañas del Caribe were built in what would later become the Northern Hotel Zone, on San Juan beach.

Also in 1956, Mexican movie director René Cardona made the film Un Mundo Nuevo, which was shot under Cozumel’s waters by cinematographer Lamar Boden, who would later be the cameraman for the movie Flipper and the Sea Hunt TV series starring Lloyd Bridges. Many people have confused Jacques Yves Cousteau’s documentary Le Monde du Silence that debuted in Cannes earlier in 1956 and won a Palme d’Or with Cardona’s film. However, Cousteau’s film was made entirely under the water in the eastern hemisphere, not anywhere near Cozumel. It was Cardona’s film that brought Cozumel’s reefs to the attention of the Mexican public. It also began to elicit the interest of American divers, when Un Mundo Nuevo was translated into English and shown on American TV in 1957 as The New World. As a tribute to the movie director, a reef off Cozumel was named in his honor; Cardona Reef.

In 1959, Esquire Magazine writers Louis Renault & Richard Joseph wrote about Cozumel in the travel section of the magazine. Cozumel again made the magazines in 1960 with the article “Centro Turístico Cozumel: de piratas a buzos,” when it appeared in Visión magazine on October 21 of that year. The island also got a good mention in the 1960 book The Treasure Diver’s Guide, written by John Stauffer Potter. The same year, Mayaluum Hotel was advertising in the magazine Saturday Review.

After the fall of Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista’s government to Fidel Castro’s communist rebels in 1959, Castro nationalized the American-owned hotels and casinos on Cuba. Americans then began looking for some other Caribbean destination to visit for vacation. Cozumel was one of the beneficiaries of this turn of events, as was the Bahamas. The flood gates were now open, and Americans were visiting our island in droves. By 1961 Cozumel was appearing in Life magazine as an “unspoiled vacation spot.” Hotel construction in Cozumel took off, with a dozen new lodgings opening prior to 1970 and the new vacation destination of Cozumel took its rightful place in the world.

Cozumel’s Dirty Little Secret: Rancho San Martin

Copyright 2018, Ric Hajovsky

Playa San Martin on Cozumel’s east coast was named after adjacent Rancho San Martin, which was Cozumel’s “internment camp” for non-belligerent Maya who were allowed to move to the island to sit out the last few years of the War of the Castes. It was set up in 1900, when General Ignacio Bravo sent Maya from the mainland who did not want to fight in the war, to go live in relative isolation on the barren east coast of Cozumel. Although a treaty was made between Mexico and some of the rebel Maya in 1901, others continued to fight until a second treaty was made in 1915. Even at that, a few Maya villages continued to fight until the 1930s, some 90 years after the war started in 1847.

The village of Rancho San Martin operated as a detention camp with the full cooperation and participation of local Cozumel authorities, who made sure that the internees did not visit other parts of the island or to travel off of the island. The village was located near today’s landfill, and the wells, foundations and other remnants of the settlement can still be seen there in the underbrush.

W. E. Lloyd, an American visiting Cozumel in 1915 wrote: “During my stay I visited the small colony of Maya refugees at their ranch San Martin. They appeared to be very shy and retiring, and it took me some time to gain their confidence. But by playing with the babies and distributing among the elders some strong, black cigars — of which both men and women are very fond — I succeeded in establishing friendly relations with them, and persuaded a group of them to pose in front of my camera. Before gathering ‘neath the shade of the palm tree, which I had selected as affording a good background, they stipulated that I should first allow them to put on clean clothes. But the operation did not take them more than a few minutes, for all they wear (speaking of the women) is a long loose robe, of unstarched white cotton, embroidered around the edges with colored thread. As a matter of fact, even if the photograph had been capable of revealing the condition of their clothing, they need not have changed; the clothes they took off were but little soiled, for they had put them on clean but a few hours previously. The Maya Indians, individually and as a community, are among the cleanest people in the world. They put on clean clothes every day, and it is one of the recognized duties of the wife to have the bathtub, a sort of canoe, hewn in a single piece out of a tree trunk, filled and ready for use by the time the husband returns from the day’s work at sunset, for all natives — gentle and simple — of the Yucatan Peninsula bathe in the evening, and most of them in the morning as well.”

Above: Rancho San Martin in 1911, photographed by W. E. Lloyd.

Towards the end of 1918, influenza (the “Spanish Flu”) raged through the village, killing many. After that, the rules were relaxed and San Martin’s internees were allowed to join the island community. By the early 1920s, the settlement was abandoned and the former internees had all moved into San Miguel or surrounding ranchos.

Cozumel’s Population, 1549 to 2020

Copyright 2017, Ric Hajovsky

I often hear stories about how small the island’s population was at various times in the past. Many of these anecdotal statements conflict with each other. Being of an inquisitive bent, I decided to look into the matter and the list below is the result of my investigations. I used the Spanish and Mexican governments’ Cozumel census data to put it together.

In 1549, the island had 220 “tribute-paying” Indians.

In 1552, the combined population of adult men and women in San Miguel and Cedral was 361.

In 1570, the total Cozumel population was 446.

1609 there were 1,336 adults living in the “parroquia” of Cozumel (which included the villages on the adjacent coast)

1639 there were 832 adults living in the “parroquia” of Cozumel (which included the villages on the adjacent coast.)

In 1850 Cozumel had 307 adults living on it (145 women and 162 men.)

In 1862 Cozumel had 702 adults living on it. (Isla Mujeres had 539 and Holbox had 34. Of the total population of these three islands, only 88 said they could read and write.)

In 1900, the island of Cozumel had 971 inhabitants.

In 1910, the year the clock tower was built, the town of San Miguel had 822 inhabitants. There were more people living on the island outside of town on ranchos and in Cedral.

In 1921, San Miguel had 1,188 adults (609 men and 579 adult women.) The lighthouse at Punta Molas had 12 men and 10 women living near it, and the lighthouse at Celarain had 6 men and 12 women living there. (For a comparison, Playa del Carmen only had 33 men and 27 women living in it at the time, while Isla Mujeres had 256 men and 229 women.) In 1922, Cedral had 74 inhabitants; 40 men and 34 women.

In 1930, the Mexican Federal Census counted 2,199 people living on Cozumel.

In 1950, the Mexican Federal Census counted 4,282 people living on Cozumel.

In 1960, the Mexican Federal Census counted 7,562 people living on Cozumel.

In 1970, the Mexican Federal Census counted 12,622 people living on Cozumel.

In 1980, the Mexican Federal Census counted 23,270 people living on Cozumel.

By 2020, the Mexican Federal Census counted 88,626 people living on Cozumel.

The Popol Vuh

Copyright 2018, Ric Hajovsky

An early text, often called “the Mayan Bible” (by folks who don’t know any better) is a manuscript written by Francisco Ximénez, a Spanish priest. He wrote this work between 1701 and 1703, in the K’iche’ Mayan language alongside Spanish text while he was living in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.

Above: a page from the Popol Vuh manuscript.

Today, we call this manuscript the Popol Vuh or sometimes the Popol Wuj. This manuscript by Ximénez is a collection of mythical and heroic tales of the K’iche’ Maya of the Guatemalan highlands and the Mayan language used by Ximénez is not Yucatec Maya, the Mayan language spoken in Yucatan, it is K’iche’ Maya, a Mayan language from Guatemala. The root language from which K’iche’ Mayan is derived (Eastern Mayan) separated from Yucatec Mayan over 4,000 years ago. That is a long time for two cultures and languages to develop separately and their tales, fables, religion, etc., must have mutated and diverged just like the language over this period of time.

Above: Over 3,500 years of divergence separates the Maya Yucatec culture from the Maya K’iche’ culture, that produced the Popol Vuh.

On the first page of the Popol Vuh manuscript, Ximenez wrote: “Empezan las historias del origen de los indios de esta provencia de Guatemala traduzido de la lengua Quiche en la castellana para más comodidad de los ministros del sto evangelio.” (Here starts the histories of the origin of the Indians of this province of Guatemala translated from the Quiche language to Spanish to make it easier to teach the evangelistic ministries). On the second page, Ximénez wrote: “Aquí escribimos y empezarémos las antiguas historias, su principio, y comienzo, de todo lo que fue hecho en el pueblo del quiche, su pueblo de los indios quiche.” (Here we write and will begin the old histories, the beginning, and start, of all that happened in the village of the Quiche, the Quiche Indian’s community).

Above: The first page of Ximénez’s Popol Vuh manuscript

So, the myths and beliefs portrayed in the Popol Vuh myths are not the beliefs and myths of the Yucatec Maya from Cozumel, but are the beliefs of their Guatemalan neighbors in the Post-classic period, described by a Spanish priest much later in the Colonial period.

After Ximénez died, the document remained in the library of the Dominican Order in Guatemala until the monks were expelled in 1830. The manuscript was taken then to the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City. In 1855, a French abbot, Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg stole the document and took it to France.

Above: The manuscript thief: Sticky-fingered Abbot Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg

After the abbot’s death, the manuscript passed to Alphonse Pinart, an explorer and ethnographer who, like the abbot, had a penchant for stealing works from archives. After visiting the Santa Fe, New Mexico archives in the 1870s, it was discovered he had also taken a large number of documents from there as well. Pinart later sold the Popol Vuh manuscript to American book collector Edward E. Ayer. Ayer donated the work to the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois in 1911, and there it still resides.

How Palancar Reef and Palancar Beach got their names

Copyright 2018, Ric Hajovsky

There is an oft-cited story that Palancar Reef’s name was derived from a Spanish verb that means “to pole or punt a boat”. However, I don’t buy it. It’s true, palanca means a pole used as a lever in Spanish, but the word palanca can’t be turned into a verb in Spanish by simply adding an “ar” ending. To lever something is hacer palanca in Spanish. Besides, the Spanish name of the staff or rod used to pole or punt a boat is pértiga, not palanca. To pole or to punt a boat is impelar, empujar, o impulsar con una pértiga.

It seems that in the attempt to explain the etymology of the word, Cozumeleños (and others) grabbed at a similar-sounding word and tried to make it fit when the original meaning was lost to the common memory. The added embellishment to the story that fishermen needed (or wanted!) to pole instead of using their sails or oars (prior to outboards) so as not to scare the fish does not really “hold water” either. We are not talking about shallow-water flats at Palancar; the water there way too deep to reach bottom using a pole. Other versions of the story say the fishermen went there to cut slender palm trees to use as boat poles. However, using a palm tree trunk, which is both very heavy and very rough, instead of a smooth hardwood sapling (the most common boat palanca) just does not ring true to me.

Above: To pole or punt a boat, which is “impelar, empujar, o impulsar con una pértiga” in Spanish.

My vote is that Palancar Point, Palancar Beach, and Palancar Reef all got their names from a nearby rancho that was named after its owner, in this case Palancar, a very good and proper Spanish surname. Most of the reefs off of Cozumel’s west coast are named after sites located on the shore adjacent to them. Punta Francesa (Francesa Reef), Punta Tormentos (Tormentos Reef), Punta Tunich (Tunich Reef), and Paso Cedral (Paso Cedral Reef) are just a few examples. Many other reefs and beaches are named after old adjacent ranchos: Rancho San Clemente (San Clemente Reef), Rancho San Martin (San Martin Beach), Rancho Paraiso (Paradise Reef), Rancho San Francisco (San Francisco Beach) and Hacienda Colombia (Colombia Reef). There are a few outliers to this “rule.” Cardona Reef was named after Rene Cardona who filmed there in the 1950s, and Barracuda Reef is self-explanatory. The Bricks was named for the load of bricks from a shipwreck at that location.

The earliest mention of Palancar on Cozumel I can find is the “Punta Palancar” described in a 1901 Mexican government report.

Miguel Molas, was a pirata, not a pirate!

Copyright 2011 by Ric Hajovsky

Miguel Molas was a Spaniard from Barcelona who immigrated to Mexico. In 1810, he moved into the old Spanish fort of El Cuyo, near Rio Lagartos, Yucatan. The fort had been abandoned since the late 1600s. He had been employed by the Yucatan Government as a military commander to preside over a newly formed watch-guard there assigned to keep an eye out for pirates and enforce the laws concerning unlawful trade with foreign vessels bringing contraband goods into Yucatan. In 1814, Molas quit his job at El Cuyo, after finding he could make more money dealing with the pirates and smugglers than he could on a government salary. Molas had made many contacts in the illegal trade and so began cruising the coast of Quintana Roo, dealing with and guiding the outlaws, eventually writing a book detailing the reefs, shoals, and ports of that coast in 1817 entitled Derrotero de la Península de Yucatán desde todas las costas e islas, bajos, puertos, y arrecifes, trabajado por la práctica, y cumplido conociemiento de Don Miguel Molas, en el año 1817. Soon, he was branded a “pirata” by the government, who used the same word, pirata, to describe both dealers in contraband as well as marauding buccaneers, similar to the way we used the word pirate to describe the act of counterfeiting videos and CDs. He was never actually what we today think of as a buccaneer.

When the Yucatan government wanted to open the new port of Nueva Malaga on the north coast, Molas managed to sweet talk his way back into their good graces and in 1821 he was re-hired by the government to collect taxes there. That job did not last long, and he was soon fired for his reluctance to turn over the funds he collected. Nueva Malaga was renamed Yalahau in 1823.

In 1821, the year Mexico gained its independence from Spain, Molas had a fight in Isla Mujeres with Pierre Lafitte, the brother of Jean Lafitte; both pirates (and buccaneers!) of world renown. Pierre died of his wounds shortly thereafter. That affair did not redeem Molas in the eyes of the law though, and a warrant was made out for the contabandista’s arrest, along with his side-kick, Buenaventura Leon, for trafficking in slaves in 1823. However, slick-talking Molas did his best to persuade the government that they would be better off by pardoning him and letting him help them ward off the coastal interlopers. In 1824, the government did just that. The partnership didn’t last very long, however, before Molas was up to his old tricks. Soon there was another order for his arrest issued and in 1828 he was captured and sent to Merida where he was sentenced to death by hanging.

Molas somehow managed to escape the gallows and fled to Cozumel with his wife and two children. Once on the island, the fugitive Molas built a rancho where the town now stands and named it San Miguel, using the name that Montejo had given the place 300 years earlier. Molas abandoned the island in 1830 and moved farther south to present-day Belize, and his rancho on Cozumel was re-occupied by another contrabandista who had moved to Mexico from Cataluña, Vicente Alvino Cammaño.

Still believing he was a wanted man, Molas stayed in hiding, unknowing that with the change in government, he was no longer considered a fugitive. He became ill and tried to get medicine in Chemax, but died on the road back to Belize. A Mayan who had accompanied him to Chemax buried the old rascal and went back to tell his family. Two young men were sent out to dig up the body and bring it home for a family burial, but after carting the putrid corpse for miles, then loading it unto a sailing canoe to get back to his family, they said the body slipped overboard in a storm. More likely they just couldn’t take the smell anymore!

In 1848, Miguel Molas’ nephew, Captain Miguel Molas, led a column of refugees from Valladolid to Dzilam, near Rio Lagartos, where they were picked up by an American sailing vessel named the True Blue and carried away to Cozumel. Later, these refugees became known as the Repobladores de 1848.

Punta Molas, the extreme northern end of Cozumel, is named after Miguel Molas (by Miguel Molas).

Who was buried in Dzilam, Jean Lafitte, or Pierre Lafitte?

Copyright 2019, Ric Hajovsky

An article in the Louisiana Courier, dated February 22, 1821, says Pierre Laffite left Charleston, South Carolina with a large crew aboard the heavily armed schooner Nancy Eleanor. A woman named Lucy (aka Lucie, Lucia, or Lucille) Allen left with him, as his consort.

On May 7, 1821 Jean Lafitte departed his compound on Galveston Island on his ship the Pride, never to return. Both Lafitte brothers began cruising the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean looking for ships to capture. After departing Charleston, Pierre Lafitte began prowling the waters near Cuba in the Nancy Eleanor, looking for prey. He soon captured a ship that was on its way from Cadiz, Spain to Veracruz. Aboard the captured prize, Pierre and his crew found 1,200 barrels of booze, 900 pottery jars full of olive oil, lace, leather goods, and silver, all worth an estimated total of over $50,000 dollars. They took the captured goods and buried them in Isla Mujeres for temporary safekeeping, leaving some of his men to guard the loot.

Pierre and his crew then took the Nancy Eleanor back out in search of more prey; instead, they themselves were captured. The particulars were kind of muddy, but the National Gazette of Philadelphia reported in April of 1821 that the Nancy Eleanor had been captured by an American cruiser and taken to Old Providence to be sold. There was no word about how Pierre, Lucy and the rest of the crew escaped, but we know that they all showed up back in Isla Mujeres in a smaller vessel armed with only one cannon not long after that.

In October of 1821, Pierre struck a deal with Yucatecan Clemente Cámera; in return for $6,500 cash and a promise give Pierre half the proceeds from taking the buried loot to Campeche and selling them there, Clemente could keep the other half of the profits. Pierre’s master-at-arms, a 26-year-old Canadian from Quebec named George Schumph, witnessed the agreement between Clemente and Pierre, as he later testified after he was captured. (“Notarias Publicas, Protocolos del Afio 1821, “Sumaria instruida contra el inglés don Jorge Schumph, Archivo de la ciudad de Mérida de Yucatán)

While Clemente sailed to Campeche carrying the first part of the captured goods to be sold, Pierre and his crew kicked back on Isla Mujeres and waited for his return. Their stay on the island didn’t turn out to be such a vacation, though. Late at night on October 30, the crew heard a commotion on the beach and went to investigate. To their surprise, they saw it was Comandante Miguel Molas and a dozen of his soldiers and volunteers from the nearby fortified port of Nueva Malaga, on the north coat of Yucatan. (A few years later, Molas would run afoul of the law himself and flee to Cozumel, but that is another story!) Molas heard about the pirates’ presence on Isla Mujeres and was there to arrest them.

Above: Garcia Cuba’s map showing Cancun, Isla Mugeres, Yalajau, and Nueva Malaga

When Pierre’s men realized they were about to be attacked, they opened fire first. Molas was slightly wounded, as well as a few of his men. Molas’ men returned fire, killing a couple of the pirates, wounding a few, and capturing five, including Pierre and Lucy Allen. Schumph and a few others escaped to their ship and sailed into the darkness. In the morning, Molas loaded his captives into his small vessel and headed back to Nueva Malaga, but he didn’t get far. Schumph and his surviving crewmates were waiting for them with the cannon loaded. Molas had no choice but to turn back to Isla Mujeres, run the boat up on shore and turn his captives loose while he fled the grape-shot fired from the pirates’ 8-pounder. Later, he and his men snuck away in a smaller boat, evading Schumph’s detection and getting away. Schumph, in turn, gathered Pierre, Lucy, and his surviving crewmates and then headed for the protected bay at Bocas Iglesias.

By this time, Pierre was very sick with a fever, as was Lucy. They decided to take Pierre to Dzilam and see if there was a doctor there, but Pierre didn’t make it, dying on the way November 9, 1821. They carried his body to Dzilam and buried Pierre in the church cemetery there on November 10. Soon after that, Schumph and Lucy began walking to Merida, but Lucy died of a fever at Dzemul. Spanish authorities there arrested the young Quebecois under suspicion of being in cahoots with Pierre Lafitte, but Schumph spun a tale of being a Canadian businessman captured by Pierre and all he was trying to do was get away. He was held and interrogated by the Spanish authorities in nearby Merida until December 4, 1821, when they decided to let him go.

The Grave is nowhere to be found

John Lloyd Stephens wrote in his book Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. 2, that he went to visit Dzilam in 1841, in search of the tomb of Pierre Lafitte a short 20 years after his death, but he did not find it. Stephens’ book describes his search: “The Father was not in the village [Dzilam] at this time, and nobody knows if he [Pierre] was buried in the graveyard or the church, but they supposed as Lafitte was a distinguished man, it was the last. We went there [to the church], and I examined the graves on the floor, and father pulled from a pile of rubble a cross with a name which the father supposed said Lafitte, but it didn’t. The Deacon who was the officer in charge of the burial of Lafitte was already dead; the Deacon went to look for several inhabitants, but a dark cloud covered the memory of pirate; everyone knew of his death, but no one knew where it was or was interested in where he was buried. We also heard that his widow was living in this place, but this was not the truth. It was a black woman who was a servant to the widow, and who, they said, speaks English; the priest sent for her, but she was so intoxicated that she could not come.”

Above: John Lloyd Stevens map showing his route through Yalahou (Nueva Malaga), Isla Mujeres, and Cozumel in 1842. Dzilam is labeled “Silan” on the far left of the map and is where Stevens departed on his voyage to Cozumel and back on the canoa Sol.

The Myth that says Jean was buried in Dzilam instead of Pierre

The often repeated story is that Jean Lafitte died in Dzilam in 1827 or 1828. This story originated in the Mirabeau B. Lamar Papers, a collection of Presidential letters which were published in 1922. What happened was, in 1837, Texas Navy Commodore S. R. Fisher wrote to Texas President Lamar (after Fisher had visited Isla Mujeres on his way to Cozumel to claim Cozumel for Texas, but that is another story!) saying that a turtle fisherman named Gregorio told him that Laffite died of a fever near “Teljas, a small village on the Yucatan coast”. In May of 1838 Fisher again wrote to Lamar, this time saying Laffite died at “Las Bocas, on the north coast of the Yucatan, about 1827 and was buried at Salam [Dzilam]”. It is obvious that Fisher’s source was talking about the death of Pierre Laffite in Dzilam in 1821 and not Jean Laffite. Nevertheless, the story was now in print, so it must be true, and it has been repeated over and over again in books and websites.

The Myth of Pierre or Jean’s Dzilam Descendant

The story that there were descendants of Pierre Lafitte and Lucia Allen in Dzilam began with a tale that Mr. Luis González of Mérida told Pablo Bush Romero in 1958. González told Bush that the consort of Pierre Lafitte, Lucy Allen, gave birth to a girl at Dzilam. Where he got this story is unknown and there is no proof of this legend, but Bush went to Dzilam to investigate it anyway. There, Bush interviewed José M. Estrada Alcocer, a resident of Dzilam. Estrada said that his family was descended from Jean Lafitte, and showed Bush a wooden cross, which was painted with the legend “Jean Lafitte, Re-exhumado, 1938.” Convinced that he just found the burial place of Jean Lafitte, Bush provided funds for a new headstone, in exchange for the old wooden cross.

Above: Pablo Bush (far right) and Jose Estrada (on left of monument with a bent leg) placing the monument to Jean Lafitte in the Dzilam Cemetery. From a July 28, 1960 article in the Novedades de Yucatan.

Above: A close-up of the cock-eyed 1958 inscription on the monument that Bush and CEDAM planted in Dzilam. It is dedicated to Jean Lafitte, not Pierre, and says he died in 1827, instead of 1821. From a July 28, 1960 article in the Novedades de Yucatan.

Not long after, the monument was damaged in a hurricane. Later, another monument to the wrong man was built by the local government using a salvaged piece of the old Bush monument, still bearing the name Jean Lafitte.

Above: Today’s Lafitte monument in Dzilam de Bravo.

The story of the purported genetic connection between Estrada and the pirate Jean Laffite has changed over the years, each time Mr. Estrada told it. For example, in the version Estrada told Lillian Paz Avila when he was 82, he says that he found a human bone on the beach when he was only 8 years old. He told Lillian that the bone was on the beach close to where the old cemetery had been eroded away by the sea. When he showed his find to his mother, she took it to the Dzilam Mayor, who said it was the bone of Jean Lafitte. They then buried the bone in the new cemetery with a wooden cross that said “Jean Lafitte.” Years later, this new cemetery also began to erode, so a third cemetery was built and some of the previous burials were relocated to this new place, including the supposed “bone of Jean Lafitte,” which was marked in 1938 with a cross bearing the words “Jean Lafitte, Re-exhumado, 1938.”

In conclusion:

1. Jean Lafitte did not die at Dzilam and in fact, was never there.

2. Jean’s brother Pierre Lafitte died on the way to Dzilam and he was buried in Dzilam in an old cemetery, which later eroded into the sea.

3. The old 1938 cross marked “Jean Lafitte, Re-exhumado, 1938” was made to mark the burial site of a bone that was found washed up on the beach where the old cemetery eroded into the sea. There is no way to know whose bone that was, but chances are very slim it was from Pierre Lafitte.

4. The consort of Pierre Lafitte, known as Lucia, Lucy, or Lucille Allan, left Dizlam walking to Mérida with George Schumph a few days after the death of Pierre, but she never got there; she became sick and died in Dzemul.

5. The myth that the widow of Pierre Lafitte, (or, supposedly, Jean Lafitte) gave birth to a girl at Dzilam is another legend, nothing more. There are no descendants of either of the Lafitte brothers in Dzilam.