Mexican Legends Live on in Huatulco

Mexican legends live on in Huatulco

By Bob Schulman

Luxury hotels overlook the bays of Huatulco. Photo by Dawna Robertson

There's an odd-looking, pint-size church bravely but unsuccessfully trying to blend in with the luxury hotels, condos, discos and souvenir shops in the posh Huatulco resort area in southern Mexico.
You'll find the church next door to an exclusive beach club in the once-remote village of Santa Cruz, now one of the crown jewels of the resort. On the wall is a fading sign well worth reading – because it explains how a few pieces of ancient wood on display in the church tie some of the country's most colorful legends together.

Church of Guadalupe has the stuff of legends inside. Photo courtesy of the Mexico Tourism Board

One tale goes back thousands of years, when Mexico's top god was a feathered serpent called Quetzalcoatl. He was a good god, the story says, and was beloved by his people. But he was too good (for instance, he hardly ever required human sacrifices), so his less liberal priests conspired to get rid of him. One day, they tricked him into doing something that today would be described as inappropriate.
After that, he left town and traveled far across the eastern sea to repent. According to the legend, he told his people he'd eventually come back, and to look for a bearded stranger with fair skin.
Years later, around the time of Christ – and here's where another legend kicks in – Quetzalcoatl showed up on a beach near Santa Cruz. The story goes on to say he appeared in the form of “an elderly white man with long hair and a beard” and carried an immense wooden cross.
He planted the cross in the sand (another version of the legend says it was the Apostle Thomas who showed up and planted the cross), prayed for a few days and then left.

Could this be the spot where the great cross once stood? Photo by Dawna Robertson

Since it was brought by a god (or an Apostle), the local folks figured the cross must be a holy object and prayed to it for good fortune. Over time, the site became known as Quauhtolco, roughly meaning “the place where wood is worshipped.” When the conquistadores arrived there in the 1520s, the site's name became Huatulco in Spanish.
By the 1540s, Huatulco had been turned into a port for Spanish shipments of silver coming up the coast from the rich veins of Peru. And where there's loot, there's pirates – and still another legend.
As the story goes, when he wasn't off pillaging, the notorious buccaneer Thomas Cavendish had a very religious side. And he was irked by the still-standing cross on the beach because it was said to have been planted there by a pagan god.
He tried to burn it, but it wouldn't burn. So his men tried to chop it up with knives and saws, but they barely made a dent. He tried to dig it up, but it was planted too deep. Then he lashed it to his ship with long ropes, raised the sails and tried to pull it loose. That didn't work either. Defeated, Cavendish settled for burning down a nearby town, then sailed away.
Concerned that others might try to destroy the cross, the regional bishop later moved it (perhaps with a little divine help, since the story doesn't explain how he managed to dig it up) 1,600 miles inland to his cathedral in Oaxaca, the state capital. The story goes on to say the bishop chipped off pieces of the wood to make some small crosses, one of which was sent to a village close to the spot where the large cross had stood.
Tile-like remnants of the small cross are still there, inside the Church of Guadalupe in the village of Santa Cruz.

Original wooden pieces form a cross-in-a-cross. Photo courtesy of the Mexico Tourism Board.

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