Despite their reputation as the enemies of all mankind, every pirate always needed friends. Few could obtain the financial benefit of their plunder without sympathetic people in coastal port towns to clandestinely buy it from them. Once the pirates had money to burn, more opportunistic people emerged to help them spend it. As the pirate captain who kidnapped Aaron Smith demonstrated, a savvy pirate seeking to establish and maintain a piracy business built mutually beneficial relationships with those on the shore. Unfortunately for Benito de Soto, he was not such a person. Instead, he needed a town like Tortuga, used by the pirates of the Caribbean a century earlier.

Tortuga appealed to pirates because it was ruggedly inaccessible by land and offered a safe harbour, abundant fresh water, hunting, and timber opportunities. The little island's success in the 1660s to 1720s established two other conditions a pirate needed in a port: weak, ineffective and complicit local authority, and favourable geopolitical conditions. For decades, the often substantial gains of pirate plunder benefited Tortuga's residents, including those in charge. Governor Bertrand D’Ogeron, appointed by the French government to Tortuga in 1664, bought the pirate Francois L’Ollonois’ entire cargo of cocoa for a twentieth of its worth. This complicity undermined any sporadic efforts made to drive the pirates away. At the same time, Tortuga sat in the middle of a constant power struggle between Spain, England, and France over the island's political ownership. Eventually, the French gained the upper hand and, by 1726, the British and French won their struggle to secure their colonial assets and drive the pirates out of the Caribbean.

One hundred years later, as we saw in Chapter 3, support for ‘patriotic’ pirate captains like Pepe el Mallorquin, Roberto Cofresi and Diablocito came from their parochial relationships on Spanish-owned islands. They exploited their local communities and the weakened Spanish authority to maintain the profitability of their commercial operations. Puerto Rican towns along the Mona Passage, and isolated islands and towns around Cuba such as the Isle of Pines, Trinidad de Cuba and Matanzas, all supported local pirates. While it is theoretically possible these places could have provided a safe harbour for Benito de Soto, there were several drawbacks for him. Being from mainland Spain meant he was not a local.