Tired from years of struggle, the Maya regained confidence from an unlikely source: a talking cross found deep in the jungle near a cenote. Revolutionary Jose Maria Barrera, driven from his Yucatan pueblo, led his band of people to an uninhabited forest and to a small cenote called Lom Ha (Cleft Spring). There he discovered a cross carved into a tree. The cross bore a resemblance to the Maya tree of life, La Ceiba, and a new religion formed around it, the cult of the speaking cross, centered in the Tulum area.Barrera, a mestizo, said the cross transmitted a message which was later given as a sermon by Juan de la Cruz (of the Cross), a man trained to lead religious services in the absence of a Mayan priest. Barrera also used a ventriloquist, Manuel Nahuat, as the mouthpiece of the cross, and through this directed the Maya in their war effort, urging them to take up arms against the Mexican government, assuring the people of the cross they would attain victory. From this speaking cross a community evolved -- Chan Santa Cruz (Little Holy Cross)-- and its inhabitants came to be called Cruzob, or followers of the cross. By chance, the cross bore three elements sacred to the Maya: the Ceiba tree, the cenote, and a cave. The cross was found growing on the roots of a Ceiba, the Maya tree of life, which sprung from a cave (caves were sacred spots to the Maya), by a cenote, which the Maya believed was the place where the rain gods lived, making it easy for the Maya to accept this supernatural phenomenon.
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