Getting to Islas Marias, however, will be a challenge for even the most discerning tourist: a five-hour boat ride in the often turbulent waters.
But some people, like Beatriz Maldonado, are already imagining the journey.  When Maldonado was imprisoned between these “walls of water” – as described by a Mexican writer who was also confined there – she thought she would never see her mother again.
Maldonado spent just one year of her six-year sentence for possession of drugs and weapons, but it was the most painful.  “I lost my smile, my happiness,” he said.  Now 55, a laundry worker and activist defending other women prisoners, she wants to return to her wounds.
The Islas Marias Prison Colony was founded in 1905 on Mother María Island, the largest of the four islands and the only inhabited area, more than 60 miles off the coast of Nayarit State.  Frequently hit by hurricanes off the coast of Mexico, the government closed the jail in 2019.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had turned it into an environmental training center, but about 150 young people passed it.  Now the government wants to make it an ecotourism destination where visitors can watch seabirds and enjoy the beaches.
Last year, authorities said they would now allow camping or hotel construction because it is a shelter.  It was not clear if it would provide accommodation in existing buildings, but without it, attracting tourists would be difficult.  It is not as easily accessible as Alcatraz, the infamous San Francisco access prison.  It could end up like Panama’s prison colony, Coiba, which closed in 2004, being recovered from the jungle.
Maldonado planned to attend López Obrador’s visit to the island this weekend.  “I would like to go into his pocket,” he said.
The island now bears no resemblance to the dungeons reminiscent of a dirt depot and five bathrooms for the 500 women Maldonado remembers.  “We lived in a coop,” he said.
Now a colorful mural by former South African leader Nelson Mandela, who has been held for years on the island’s prison, welcomes visitors to renovated buildings, a whitewashed church and a cultural center.
“What was hell becomes paradise,” said López Obrador.
There was a time when it was considered the “tomb of the Pacific”.
Writer José Revueltas, who was imprisoned there in the 1930s for his work in the Communist Party, said the prison was far more horrific than he could describe in his book The Walls of Water.  The worst could not be described, he said, because of modesty or because you do not know how to show that it is really true.
Island prison colonies were common all over the world to make escapes almost impossible or to rehabilitate through forced labor.  Most tried to be self-sufficient.
The prisoners on Mother Maria’s island collected salt and shrimp were raised.  They tried to make some money by making their own alcohol from fermented fruits, illegally trading in exotic birds or killing boas to make belts.
In later years it was known as a “prison without walls” where some prisoners lived with their families in semi-free and relatively good conditions.
That changed when President Felipe Calderon launched the war on drug cartels in 2006 and hundreds of new detainees were sent there.  In 2013 the population of prisoners reached 8,000.
Maldonado served her time at the time.  He said women, who were in the minority, were treated the worst.  Unlike men, they were not allowed to get out of the fences, although they had skills and barely got enough food.  Maldonado’s weight dropped to about 45 kg.  “They did not care when someone got sick,” he said.  “My friend’s gallbladder broke.”
Extreme isolation was the most punitive part, breaking only on the 15th of each month, when they were allowed a 10-minute phone call with a relative.  Some who tried to escape drowned.  Occasionally the Navy rescued others embarking on makeshift boats.
“The boats came on Thursdays to bring us supplies and letters and I saw my mother’s tears on the stained pages,” Maldonado said.  “The worst thing was to think I would never see her again.”
Rarely did some relatives make visits that then included 12 hours at sea.
Maldonado’s only colorful memory was a tube of red lipstick, the only personal item she picked up.  When she finished she buried it solemnly because she felt it gave her life.
A year after Maldonado was taken to a prison in Mexico City, six people lost their lives on the island in a food shortage.
It closed in 2019 due to high operating costs, about $ 150 per day per prisoner, which was much higher than on the mainland.  Prison reform had also significantly reduced the prison population.
Devil’s Island in French Guiana, which was immortalized in the movie “Papillon”, closed in 1946. Alcatraz closed in 1963. Later, others in Chile, Costa Rica and Brazil closed.  The sharpest was Peru’s El Fronton in 1986, when the government used gunboats to quell an uprising, killing more than 100 prisoners.
Maldonado welcomed the closure of Islas Marias and supported the idea of ​​inviting visitors.  He said the proceeds should be donated to reintegration programs for detainees.
He has already written to their former cells to see if they would like to go with her to the place she thought she would never see again.