Isla Aguada

History

Spanish charts from 1518 and 1519 marked this spot as Puerto Deseado and then Puerto Escondido, but for a long time nobody lived here. Sailors used it only as shelter during the season of northerly storms. Tucked behind the Laguna de Términos, it also suited pirates. In 1762, after a band of them robbed a cargo boat coming down from the Usumacinta and settled on the island, Governor Bernardo Sáenz Montero sent two armed vessels that took them by surprise, recovered the goods and captured several men. He then ordered a small fort and a watchtower built, and the soldiers posted there were probably the first residents.

A local judge was appointed in 1824, and the town grew in the mid 1800s as families fleeing the Caste War in Yucatán settled here. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ships from Spain, France and England were calling at the port. They arrived with Marseille roof tiles and big clay jars of olives and wine as ballast, and left with chicle, fine hardwoods and sea turtles. That trade justified a masonry lighthouse in French neoclassical style, documented from 1907, to replace the old wooden tower.

The town received its ejido lands in 1923. The lighthouse was restored in 2010, and Isla Aguada joined the Pueblos Mágicos program in 2020.