CHAPTER 5 THE COLONIAL PERIOD IN MESOAMERICA 219The letter was signed, “The Most Holy Virgin Mary of the Cross.”
That the cult leaders framed their call to war as orders from the Virgin Mary demonstrates
how the political rebellion continued to be conceived in religious terms. Throughout the revolt,
the participants held to the ceremonial forms and institutional structures of the Catholic Church.
The rebel priests conducted Masses, baptisms, and marriages; the communities celebrated
Catholic festivals with processions and other customary practices. The rebels were attempting to
legitimize their movement by associating it with the objects, behaviors, and words that they had
learned to consider sacred, while also usurping control over these symbols of authority as a way
of declaring independence from Spanish rule. The attempted power reversal is well illustrated by
María López’s role as the cult’s spiritual leader: An Indian girl represented the antithesis of the adult
male Spaniards who controlled the colonial Church and government. The cult simultaneously
drew on older Mayan beliefs about the supernatural; for example, one source indicates that some
of the men chosen as military leaders were shamans believed to have powerful naguales,or spirit
guardians.
In all, people from twenty native towns joined Cancuc in the revolt. Thirteen of these shared
Cancuc’s Tzeltal Mayan language; five were Tzotzil, and two were Chol. Two of the Tzotzil towns,
Santa Marta and San Pedro Chenalho, had seen local miracle-based cults discounted and forcibly
suppressed by the Church only the preceding year.
Because of the prevalence of Tzeltal speakers, the movement is often called the Tzeltal Re-
volt, even though some Tzeltal communities remained loyal to the Spanish king. The rebels began
raiding non-Indian communities, killing priests and militiamen. Some of the women were taken
back to Cancuc, where they were forcibly married to Mayan men: The Virgin had declared, through
María, that in the future there would be no difference between Spaniards and natives. The rebels
also attacked Indian towns that refused to join the uprising. At one point, Spanish defenders
claimed to have faced an army of 6,000 Mayas, but this estimate was probably exaggerated.
An army of Spanish, mixed-race, and native militiamen eventually suppressed the revolt.
Toribio de Cosío, president of the Audiencia of Guatemala, came to Ciudad Real in September
1712 to oversee the campaign. After he issued an offer of amnesty in November, a number of the
rebel villages put down their arms; others were forcibly occupied by the Spanish-led army. In
February 1713, the last of the rebel soldiers abandoned the cause. Cosío then supervised the
execution of dozens of captured rebel leaders and the floggings of many more. Others were ex-
iled or barred from future public office. New officials were appointed in all of the towns. Cancuc
was destroyed, and its residents were forcibly resettled on a new site.
Cosío attempted to prevent further violence by issuing a series of edicts. Native leaders
were forbidden to publicize any new miracles or to purchase gunpowder. The economic situation
of the Chiapas highlands was also addressed: Several of the edicts were intended to limit and bet-
ter regulate the economic exploitation of the Indians by, for example, reducing the repartimiento
labor drafts imposed on some of the towns and demanding that cattle ranchers sell beef to the
Indians at fair prices. These and later reform efforts had little effect, however. Ethnic relations re-
mained polarized, and the native population remained impoverished.
Toward the end of the revolt, María López had fled Cancuc. She and other members of her
family had gone into hiding near the rebel town of Yajalon. They spent the next three years in hid-
ing, growing food for themselves, their presence known only to a few people from Yajalon who
remained loyal to the cult. María continued to commune daily with the Virgin in a small chapel
built by her father. Early in 1716, she died from complications brought on by her first pregnancy.
Two weeks after her death, the hiding place was discovered. María’s father and two other family
members were arrested and executed, the last of the rebels to be put to death. Sebastián Gómez,
the rebel bishop who claimed to have visited heaven, was never found. (Based on Gosner
1992:122–159; see also Bricker 1981:59–69.)