218 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
Box 5.3 The Tzeltal Revolt, Chiapas, 1712One day in May 1712, María López, a thirteen-year-old Tzeltal Mayan girl from the town of Can-
cuc, was walking along the outskirts of her town when she experienced an apparition of the Vir-
gin Mary. As Agustín López, María’s father, later described the encounter, the Virgin said to the
girl, “María, you are my daughter.” María responded, “Yes, Lady, you are my mother.” The Vir-
gin then told her, “Daughter, make a cross on this place and mark the earth. It is my will that a
shrine be made here for me to live in with you.” When María told her husband and parents what
had happened, her mother encouraged her to tell the townspeople of the miracle, and her fa-
ther erected a cross on the site that the Virgin had designated. With the support of the town’s
native leaders, the whole populace turned out to help build a small chapel on the site. The Vir-
gin continued to visit María, appearing to her in a hidden room within the chapel.
María’s apparition experience followed a standard European pattern: The Virgin Mary or
another saint appears to a worshipper, often a shepherd boy or a young woman, on the edge of
town and asks that a chapel be built on the spot. However, in eighteenth-century Chiapas, there
was little chance that an Indian girl’s personal religious experience would be considered au-
thentic by the local Spanish ecclesiastical authorities. In June, Fray Simón de Lara, the Domini-
can priest in charge of Cancuc, heard of these events and came to investigate. He denounced
the new cult as the work of the Devil and flogged María and her father with forty lashes each. How-
ever, he did not dare to anger the townspeople by tearing down the chapel.
Later that month, sixteen citizens from Cancuc went to see the bishop of Chiapas. They
told him of the miracle and requested permission to maintain the chapel and have a priest say
Mass there. The bishop had them imprisoned in Ciudad Real, the capital of Chiapas, and declared
that he would send soldiers to burn the shrine if the townspeople did not tear it down. The reli-
gious authorities’ next step was to imprison some of Cancuc’s town officials and install more obe-
dient replacements.
Meanwhile, people from other native towns were flocking to Cancuc to make offerings at
the chapel and listen to María convey messages from the Virgin. María’s father organized an inner
circle of cult leaders. These included men from other villages, some of whom had held religious
offices and had had negative experiences with Spanish priests. One, a Tzotzil man named Se-
bastián Gómez from the town of San Pedro Chenalho, carried with him a small statue of Saint
Peter. Gómez claimed that he had gone to heaven and had spoken with the Holy Trinity, the Vir-
gin Mary, Jesus Christ, and Saint Peter. Saint Peter had given him the authority to ordain literate
Indians as priests and had told him that the Indians were now free from Spanish rule and no
longer had to pay tribute. What had apparently begun as a local attempt at community religious
revitalization within the framework of the Catholic Church was—because of the authorities’ re-
pressive responses—escalating into a rebellion against the Church and the Spanish colonial state.
Warned that his life was in danger, Fray Simón de Lara fled the town.
The imprisoned Cancuc officials escaped and returned home, ousting the men who had
been appointed in their places. The townspeople removed the religious images from their main
church and took them to the new chapel. Using ceremonies that imitated the Mass and the rite
of baptism, Sebastián Gómez took on the role of Indian bishop and began ordaining rebel priests.
The new priests, and María herself, dressed in priestly vestments taken from the old church. María
became known as María de la Candelaria, after the Virgen de la Candelaria (Candelaria is a Span-
ish name for Candlemas, the feast of the purification of Mary). Cancuc was renamed Ciudad Real
Cancuc, symbolizing that the town was to replace the Spanish city of Ciudad Real as the politi-
cal center of the region.
In early August the cult leaders sent a letter, written in Tzeltal Mayan language, around to
the leaders of other communities in the region. The letter read, in part, as follows:I, the Virgin of Our Lady of the Rosary, command you to come to the town of Cancuc. Bring
all the silver from your church, and the ornaments and bells, with all the coffers and drums, and
all the books and money of the confraternities, because now there is neither God nor King.