Isla Mujeres

History

In Maya times the island belonged to the province of Ekab and was a sanctuary of Ixchel, goddess of the moon, love and fertility. Women made pilgrimages here, and the island's small interior lagoons produced salt that the Maya used to preserve food, as medicine and as a form of currency. When the expedition of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba arrived in 1517, the Spaniards found female figures left as offerings on the beaches and named the place Isla Mujeres.

For centuries afterward the island served mainly as a shelter for pirates and slave traders. Permanent settlement came with the Caste War: Maya and Yucatecan fishermen founded the village of Dolores on August 17, 1850. Around 1858 Fermín Mundaca, born in Bermeo in the Basque province of Vizcaya, settled here and between 1862 and 1876 built a hacienda that he dedicated to a local woman, Martiniana Gómez Pantoja, known as La Trigueña. Island lore says she never returned his affection.

By 1867 Dolores was recognized as a town and municipality, and in 1891 it became the seat of the Partido de las Islas. Tourism took hold from the 1970s, alongside the rise of Cancún, and in 1975 Isla Mujeres became the seat of its own municipality in the new state of Quintana Roo. Hurricane Gilbert badly damaged the temple at Punta Sur in 1988.