The B*zone has it's own real pirate hero. On the tale end of the 1700s he was born right around here somplace- nobody's real sure just where but the church in Cabo Rojo keeps records of such things and for sure Roberto Cofresi is one of the zones' native sons. His real name was Kupferschein as his poppa was German but that name was too much for the people to pronounce, never mind write, so he became Cofresi. Roberto's mother was a Boricua named Maria. She was from around here as well. In those days there was alot of traffic in the Mona Passage and Boqueron with it's protected anchorage was a good spot for a gangs of pirates to kick back between murderous rampages.
The American Revolution had inspired alot of independent thinking in the Caribe and Spain was losing her grip and hauling alot of expensive stuff up through the Mona back over to the mother country. Roberto had stolen the schooner Ana down the coast and him and his buddies would pull the anchor regularly to relieve Spanish, French and Dutch ships of their burdensome cargos. The Mona had alot of good pickings.
There's some who say Roberto was a Robin Hood type guy who shared his loot with the poor, so down through the years he's become like some criminal hero and now there's baseball teams and roadside juice bars and pizzerias and lots of restaurants with waiters dressed up like buccaneers and skull & crossbone flags and such.
Somebody in the government paid a guy to create an actual statue of the young pirate and it's right down next to the beach encrusted with a dense layer of pelican guano.
The head man in San Juan at the time made a deal with an American named Sloat on the warship Grampus to lure Roberto out of hiding by sailing around and around the area acting like he was lost or something and Cofresi took the bait. When he attacked the ship that was disguised as a merchant vessel he was flummoxed by way too much cannon fire, was dismasted, and ran the Ana aground- him and his crew going by foot back to the B*zone to lay low. But they all got caught and in 1824 were taken up to San Juan where the head man had them executed at El Morro.
In Ibiza, Spain there's a monument to pirates in general who evidently protected the town from invasion. But the Spanish homage to pirates is just an obilisk looking thing that townsfolk deck out with flowers during their pirate days festival every August.- it's not a real statue of a real pirate with a machete.
In Tampa they've got their Gasparilla Day party for Jose Gaspar- a pirate made up mostly by the chamber of commerce, who's exploits are so fanciful they could only be thought up by modern day consumer advocate type pirates.
The stories about Roberto being such a nice guy dont ring true even if he does have his own statue. I think they put that statue up to remind everybody that nobody's ever found the Cofresi treasure and that it's still around here and could be anywhere. Some people say it's out on Mona Island and some say it's buried in town in somebodies yard or in nearby caves or maybe under the pool table at the Schamar - It is so Puerto Rican to hold a hope of buried treasure right around the corner somewhere near. It's part of the 'Ay Bendito' fatalistic latin resignation. It's why the lottery works- asking a mere buck-a-week to provide boundless hope and keeping Lottoman with his flapping apron of tickets in rum.
Roberto Cofresi is Boqueron's hero criminoid - he was always gracious to the ladies, tipped the barkeep, and only took stuff from the bad guys.
I wonder if Roberto was alive in our time if he would be revered for fighting off the invaders who have come weilding cement trucks instead of cannonballs to his birthplace. Surely, if he was to come ashore today and bang up the Ana against a concrete sidewalk in the mangroves he might feel inspired to wrap a shot of chain around some land baron developers and lead them to the plank.
Such extreme efforts at wetlands conservation in our time would certainly land him in jail- but it would also get the bird crap scraped off his statue.
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