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In 1848 a massive Maya rebellion against the dzul (non-Maya authorities) was about to succeed, even advancing toward the main city of the Yucatan Peninsula, Merida. But the revolt failed after most of the Maya decided to leave to plant corn.
The fall of the rebellion forced many Maya to flee into the practically empty jungles of the southeast Yucatan Peninsula. There the desperate Maya discovered marks on a mahogany tree that looked like a Cross, a sign that God would be with them (after centuries of Spanish rule, most Maya were now Catholic). This is why they called it Chan Santa Cruz, since "Chan" means "little" in Maya and "Santa Cruz" is "Holy Cross" in Spanish.
This Cross was believed to be able to speak, the medium through which God communicated to the Maya. The first interpreter of the Cross's words was a mysterious man named Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross), who was believed to be the Second Coming of Jesus. In 1850, for example, De la Cruz spoke with the voice of Jesus:
Seven times I entered at night in the presence of my Father [...] in order that I might obtain their permission, in order that I might initiate war for the second time over the whites, with my Indian children over the whites.
The Cross and its words provided a religious inspiration for the Maya refugees, who gained the name 'Cruzob' ('Cross people'). War continued in the 1850s and a stalemate soon ensued. The Cruzob gained control of a major town on the way to British territory in 1858, assuring that the Maya would have access to British weaponry.
After the stalemate, the Cruzob leadership focused on creating a new Maya state. Even though it was a Speaking Cross-worshipping theocracy, in other respects it was remarkably similar to the city-states that had ruled the region 400 years ago. Nancy Marguerite Farriss, in Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival, says that the cruzob state was:
A replica of the centralized late Postclassic province, complete with war captains, a supreme ruler similar to a halach uinic, a provincial capital centering around a major shrine, and a cult that not only gave supernatural support to their struggle but also defined the boundaries of their polity.
Basically the Cruzob population - all 50,000 of them - was organized into military companies, headed at the top by four generals. All men above the age of 16 were required to serve as soldiers. The supreme ruler (the Cruzob equivalent of preconquest kings) of the civilian government was the 'Patron of the Cross,' but the ventriloquist who spoke the words of the Cross and the interpreter who, well, interpreted them were all important. But ultimately the actual head of state was the Cross itself, and by extension, God/Jesus. The Crosses (the Speaking one and two others, representing the Trinity) resided in a large church called the Balam Na, the Jaguar House, but they could be taken out during important battles just like the effigies of the old preconquest gods were.
The Cruzob had the support of the British, mainly since the Mexican government was opposed to the existence of British Honduras. So they acquired British weaponry with which they could fight off the Mexicans, and the Cruzob even tried to send a letter to Queen Victoria asking if they could be part of the British Empire (the Queen never read the letter).
In 1893 a treaty between Mexico and the UK defined the border between Mexico and Honduras, getting rid of the need for British support of the Cruzob. The Cruzob population was also falling quickly due to epidemics, war, and migration. In 1901 the Mexican army invaded, aided by a measles epidemic that killed thousands of Maya (just as smallpox and measles had aided the conquistadors in their own conquest of Maya so long ago) and finally captured Chan Santa Cruz (now renamed Santa Cruz de Bravo after the Mexican general in charge, not unlike those conquistadors centuries before who gave Christian names to Maya towns) and fouled the Jaguar House church by using it as a stable and a prison.
During the Mexican Revolution a few years later the remnants of the Cruzob briefly regained the city, but then a smallpox epidemic killed the majority of the Cruzob population. Afterwards the movement disintegrated as a political force, but the Church of the Speaking Cross remains a noteworthy religion among local Maya even today. The main center of the Church is the village of Tixkakal Guardia, where there is a cross that still makes prophecies and whose words are still recorded and preserved (along with a pile of older sacred Maya books). The Cruzob scribe at Tixkakal may be the last of the Maya scribes.
The practice of hieroglyphic writing may have disappeared [...] but the present-day scribe and guardian of the books at Tixkakal Guardia, who in his own hand continues to add to the sum of ancient tradition, can be seen as the linear descendant of the [...] Keeper of the Holy Books of Classic times.
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