Cuba to seek Spanish help, to Jamaica to gain aid from the United Kingdom, and to the United States, but none of these foreign powers would intervene. In the United States, the situation in the Yucatán was debated in Congress, but there was no will to fight. Subsequently, Barbachano turned to Mexico City and accepted a return to Mexican authority. Yucatán was officially reunited with Mexico on 17 August 1848. Yucateco forces rallied, aided by guns, money, and troops from Mexico City, and pushed back the Maya from more than half of the state. By 1850 the Maya occupied two distinct regions in the southeast. In the decade that followed, a stalemate developed, with the Yucatecan government in control of the northwest, and the Maya in control of the southeast, with a sparsely populated jungle frontier in between. In 1850, the Maya of the southeast were inspired to continue the struggle by the apparition of the "Talking Cross". This apparition, believed to be a way in which God communicated with the Maya, dictated that the war continue. Chan Santa Cruz (Small Holy Cross) became the religious and political center of the Maya resistance, and the rebellion became infused with religious meaning. The largest of the independent Maya states was named Chan Santa Cruz, as was its capital city (now named Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Quintana Roo). The followers of the Cross were known as the Cruzo. The government of Yucatán first declared war over in 1855, but regular skirmishes and occasional deadly major assaults continued by each side. The United Kingdom recognized the Chan Santa Cruz Maya as a de facto independent nation, in part because of the major trade between Chan Santa Cruz and British Honduras (present-day Belize). During the war, the Yucatán government sold Maya prisoners into slavery, and the Peninsula became a platform for the Cuban slave trade. Mayan independence The Chan Santa Cruz state, stretching from north of Tulum to the Belize border and a considerable distance inland, was the largest of the independent Maya communities of the era but not the only one. José María Echeverría, a sergeant in the army taken captive by the Maya, resided in the town in 1851–53. He reported later that it had about 200 Maya and 200 whites, all well-armed and apparently fighting together. The whites were under their commander, "a man of reddish complexion". They also had several