María de la Candelaria, born María López, was the Tzeltal visionary of Cancuc around whom the highland rebellion of 1712 crystallised. She reported that the Virgin had appeared and spoken to her, and as the living voice of that cult she proclaimed a new dispensation in which the Maya would keep their own priesthood and king, drawing Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chol towns into revolt against colonial and ecclesiastical authority before the rising was crushed. Her figure endures as a touchstone of highland religious memory, a mortal woman remembered as the mouthpiece of the Holy Mother.