Chan Santa Cruz

Chan Santa Cruz was the name of a shrine in Mexico of the Maya Cruzob (or Cruzoob) religious movement. It was also the name of the town that developed around it (now known as Felipe Carrillo Puerto) and, less formally, the late 19th-century indigenous Maya state, in what is now the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, of which it was the main center. This area was the center of the Caste War of Yucatán beginning in 1847, by which the Maya established some autonomous areas on the east side of the Yucatán Peninsula. The main conflict ended in 1915, when they agreed to recognize the Mexican government, but the last time Mexican troops took action against a Maya village in this area was 1933.

The people of the former Chan Santa Cruz state are predominantly indigenous descendants of the Maya. The northern portion of the mapped area was probably included within the state of Coba during the Classic Period. One of two successors to the defunct League of Mayapan, this state consisted of the eastern half of the Yucatán Peninsula during the decades preceding the Spanish invasion.

Early post-invasion influences include Arawak and Carib refugees from the islands, shipwrecked Spaniards and escaped African slaves.

After the Spanish had begun to occupy areas near here, the Xiu Maya state of the western half of the peninsula, tired of fighting both the Itza' and the Spanish, allied with the Spanish Empire. This alliance subsequently inflicted massive property and population losses upon the Itza' Maya state. The Itza' state continued to train and educate indigenous Maya leaders in the sanctuaries of the southern province, Peten Itza', 'Lake of the Adepts', through the invasion and sack of the island capital Nojpetén by general Martín de Ursúa on March 13, 1697 ('6 Kimi, 9 Kank'in'). Scholars suggest that a Maya hieroglyphic manuscript, now held in Madrid, Spain, was created at Nojpetén some years after the invasion of Yucatán. This evidence includes pages from a Spanish book which were reused as writing paper for several pages of the manuscript (Coe 1998). This provenance is not universally accepted.

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