Researchers have identified the wreckage of a paddle-wheel steamboat (discovered in 2017) as the remains of La Unin. It was once used to carry Maya people to Cuba to work in sugarcane fields there, before La Unin sank near the Yucatan port of Sisal in 1861. Although slavery was illegal in Mexico, the operators of La Unin and similar vessels are thought to have purchased Mayas who were captured as combatants or left landless during the rebellion known as the War of the Castes, which took place from 1847 to 1901. It is unknown if it was carrying enslaved Mayas during its final voyage.
The ship was identified thanks to oral history, according to lead researcher Helena Barba Meinecke: “One of the people in Sisal who saw how they led the Mayas away as slaves, told his son and then he told his grandson, and it was that person who led us to the general area of the shipwreck.”
