In 1712, María López, a Maya teenage girl, reported encountering an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Suspecting fraud, Chiapas’ Catholic Church officials harshly repressed the burgeoning devotion. In response, López relayed a radical prophecy from the Virgin, that the time had come for native communities to overthrow Spanish colonialism and reclaim their “ancient freedom.” Thousands of Maya “soldiers of the Virgin” joined the Tzeltal Revolt of 1712, one of the largest and most radical native revolt in colonial New Spain before 1750. Throughout the rebellion, López, who became known as María de Candelaria, continually relayed orders from the Virgin Mary, as she also dressed in priestly vestments and presided alongside locally-ordained Maya priests during Mass.
This paper explores the wider historical context for María de Candelaria’s remarkable prophetic role in the Tzeltal Revolt. The enthusiastic reception of Maria de Candelaria’s prophetic authority built upon Maya Christian conceptions of female seers as best suited to act as divine “presenters” for the Virgin Mary, creatively improvising on a long Mesoamerican tradition in which certain humans converted into “god-surrogates.” Maria de Candelaria’s prophetic-political leadership position also reflected a much broader phenomenon of female authority and an enduring Maya value placed upon gender complementarity, as archival records indicate that dozens of native cofradias (lay religious sodalities) were formally electing female officials alongside male officials in blatant contradiction of Spanish norms.
María de Candelaria’s prophetic role in the Tzeltal role, and the wider context in which it occurred, shed new light on the ways that gender shaped Maya efforts to ensure community survival and renewal in the face of colonial exploitation.
In the summer of 1712, María López, a teenage Maya girl in the Chiapas highlands, proclaimed to have spoken with an apparition of the Virgin Mary who told her that Spanish colonialism would soon end. By early August, thousands of Maya “soldiers of the Virgin,” rose up in the Tzeltal Revolt, one of the largest and most radical Indigenous revolts in Spanish America before 1750. Throughout the rebellion, María López continued to relay the Virgin’s directives, dressed in priestly vestments, and presided alongside newly ordained Maya Catholic priests. Lopez could neither read nor write, but I argue she acted as an Indigenous intellectual, navigating gender restrictions and establishing her prophetic authority through a keen awareness of the sociopolitical context of Chiapas’ Maya highlands and creative intellectual engagement with European and Maya Christian prophetic traditions.