History of Cryptos in Mexico
Quote from Ryan Augustine on August 31, 2023, 20:50https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft396nb1w0&chunk.id=d0e8383
Eleven—
The Inquisition and the Crypto-Jewish Community in Colonial New Spain and New MexicoStanley M. Hordes
Within the scope of Mexican history, the subjects of the Inquisition and crypto-Jews have long been the focus of heated controversy and misplaced value judgments.[1] The unfortunate result of this has been, and still remains today, a lack of understanding of the Inquisition, particularly in its relation to the crypto-Jewish community. The polemical nature of the historiography reflects the same Black Legend-versus-White Legend debate that has plagued colonial Latin American historiography continuously since the Spanish conquest. Because the theme of inquisitorial persecution strikes at the very nerve center of this debate between assailants and defenders of the Spanish colonial system, that is, the rigid enforcement of Catholic orthodoxy and exclusivity, historians of both schools have demonstrated a great deal of emotion and self-righteousness in the pursuit of their respective causes. Many authors have placed a heavy emphasis on the role that the Holy Office of the Inquisition played in the persecution of crypto-Jews, despite the fact that the inquisitors concerned themselves far more with more mundane breaches of faith and morals such as blasphemy, bigamy, witchcraft, impersonation of priests and solicitation of women in the confessional. One of the great barriers to gaining an understanding of the Inquisition and the crypto-Jews in New Spain has been the inappropriate imposition of current value-judgments on people and events in the past. The stress placed by certain historians on the persecution of crypto-Jews reflects an implicit and explicit application of twentieth-century values to an institution and a society of an earlier age.It will be the purpose of this essay to examine in a more critical and dispassionate manner the experiences of the crypto-Jewish community of New Spain in the colonial era, not only their treatment at the hands of the Holy Office of the Inquisition but their role in the economy and society of the viceroyalty. I will conclude by offering some preliminary observations concerning a new project, just under way, to study a living remnant of the Mexican crypto-Jewish community only now emerging from the shadows in New Mexico.
With the conquest of New Spain by Hernando Cortés in 1521, the long arm of the Inquisition extended across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain to Mexico. The small number of Judaizing cases tried by the Mexican Inquisition during the first half-century of Spanish colonization in New Spain indicates that crypto-Jews were able to practice their faith in an atmosphere of relative toleration.[2] This situation began to change in the 1580s, when crypto-Jewish immigration to New Spain increased dramatically. The establishment of Spanish hegemony over Portugal in 1580 motivated Portuguese conversos to move in unprecedented numbers to other areas of the world, including the Indies. The new arrivals were considerably more educated and better versed in Jewish doctrine than were their predecessors, and their presence resulted in a new infusion of religiosity in the viceroyalty.[3]
The increase in the number and activity of the crypto-Jews in New Spain did not go unnoticed by the Mexican Inquisition, only a few years earlier strengthened by elevation to the status of Tribunal del Santo Oficio. Between 1589 and 1596 almost two hundred persons were tried for the crime of judaizante . During this period, the most notable and celebrated campaign by the Holy Office was directed toward Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo, his family and associates.[4] The vigorous activity of the Mexican Inquisition against the crypto-Jews at the end of the sixteenth century was short-lived, however. After the auto de fe of 1601 the prosecution of those accused of judaizing declined, and the tribunal concentrated on other breaches of Catholic orthodoxy. The nucleus of Portuguese crypto-Jewish settlement formed in the late sixteenth century served to attract ever-increasing numbers of their countrymen in Spain and Portugal to New Spain in the early seventeenth century.
Indeed, the climate in New Spain was favorable for the settlement of crypto-Jewish immigrants in the early 1600s. The Mexican economy was experiencing a boom period at the end of the sixteenth century that carried over into the early decades of the seventeenth century. The mining sector enjoyed unprecedented expansion from the 1590s through 1620. Agriculture, stock raising, and textiles kept pace with the demand produced by the mining boom, and the level of trade between
― 209 ―New Spain and Europe reached new heights. In the succeeding decades the Mexican economy grew more autonomous, and, despite the decline in trans-Atlantic trade, it continued to grow.[5] In this atmosphere of economic expansion, enterprising crypto-Jewish merchants found themselves ready and able to participate actively in all levels of commerce throughout the viceroyalty.
While crypto-Jews were to be found in almost every region of New Spain in the mid-seventeenth century, Mexico City served as the focal point for converso society just as it did for the larger Spanish economy and society. With few exceptions, crypto-Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal traveled directly to the capital after landing at Veracruz.[6] Of the majority who initially settled in Mexico City only a little over half remained there after two or three years. The rest dispersed to more remote regions of the viceroyalty in search of greater economic opportunities. Many left to take advantage of the lucrative trade in the mining areas of Pachuca or northern New Spain; others established themselves in the ports of Acapulco, Veracruz, or Campeche, where they had direct access to the fleets arriving from Spain or in the Philippines. Still others continued westward in search of greater opportunities in the Philippines themselves.
The crypto-Jews who arrived in Mexico City from their distant homelands in Spain and Portugal were quickly absorbed into the mainstream of economic and social life. The established converso community in the capital was a closely knit group with a well-developed system of extended family and patron-client relationships. Several extended family units operated in Mexico City from the 1610s through the 1640s, the most notable of which was the family of Simon Váez Sevilla, without question the wealthiest crypto-Jewish merchant in the viceroyalty. At the head of each such clan there generally appeared a wealthy patron who, like Váez, not only directed the commercial activities of his family but also supervised such mundane functions as the housing, relocation, marriage, burial, and religious ceremonies of those in his charge. Often the passage of a nephew or cousin from Spain or Portugal was financed by the head of one particular clan, arranged through contacts with a relative in Seville or Lisbon.
In their role as merchants, the crypto-Jews blended very well into the mainstream of Mexican society, not distinguishing themselves as a distinct element apart from the general community, except, perhaps, by their particular orientation toward mercantile careers. In a sense it is proper to see the converso experience in this perspective. Crypto-Jews were, after all, first and foremost Iberians, maintaining the language and customs of their forebears in Spain and Portugal. Many had the opportunity to leave the Spanish dominions in favor of lands where they were free to practice Judaism openly and in peace, but most opted to remain in familiar cultural surroundings.
Mexican crypto-Jews were not singled out as a separate group until 1642, when for a variety of reasons to be examined below, the Inquisition embarked on a campaign against the community. It must be emphasized that from 1610 until 1642 there was very little attention paid by the Inquisition, or by any other body, to the crypto-Jewish element in New Spain. Nevertheless, to judge from the testimony offered by the conversos in the trials of the 1640s, it is evident that in certain respects Mexican conversos did conduct themselves in a manner that reflected a consciousness of their ethnic identity.
The patterns demonstrated by crypto-Jews living in Mexico City strongly suggest the presence of a certain degree of ethnocentrism. The Mexican conversos exhibited a strong tendency to live in close proximity to one another, clustered mostly in a three-block area between the cathedral and the Church of Santo Domingo, ironically within a stone's throw of the palace of the Inquisition. Converso traders tended to concentrate their commercial associations within the ethnic community. In almost every area of trade, crypto-Jewish merchants relied upon one another as sources of supply and credit, as agents in remote regions, as fiadores , and as bondsmen in business ventures.
A further demonstration of ethnocentrism may be seen in the propensity of Mexican crypto-Jews to marry within the faith. The practice of endogamy was almost universal. In over ninety-five percent of the marriages, conversos chose partners from within the community. In certain instances efforts were made to "convert" a prospective bridegroom to Judaism in order to gain the approval of the bride's family. In 1638 Isabel Tinoco, niece of Simon Váez Sevilla, found herself being courted by Manuel de Acosta, a young man recently arrived from Lisbon. Relations between Acosta and Isabel's family were cordial throughout the courtship, and eventually Acosta asked her grandfather, Antonio Rodríguez Arias, for her hand in marriage. On the day that Rodríguez's response was to be delivered, Acosta visited him at his house on Calle Tacuba. During a stroll around the nearby Alameda, Rodríguez offered his consent to the marriage, but only on the condition that Acosta abandon the Law of Jesus Christ in favor of the Law of Moses. Acosta agreed, proceeded to learn the practice of Judaism from Rodríguez's wife, and married Isabel Tinoco shortly thereafter.[7]
Perhaps more than any other factor, religious observances served as
― 211 ―
a vehicle for achieving and maintaining a sense of religious identity within the Mexican crypto-Jewish community. Fast days, especially that of Yom Kippur (referred to as el día grande ), provided an opportunity for families to stop their normal routine and gather together in the home of one of the worshipers. Inquisition procesos are filled with the detailed accounts of Yom Kippur observances, identifying the location of the service and the names of the worshipers, and vividly describing the manner in which the fasts were broken. Not all conversos were able to meet the stoic test of the fast. Pedro de Espinosa, a traveling merchant in the mining region of Tierra Adentro, stole away from the service at about three o'clock in the afternoon to relieve his hunger.[8] The Sabbath was also generally observed by Mexican conversos. Men refrained from working, and women bathed, changed clothes, and put out clean bed linen on Friday in preparation for the day of rest. Upon the death of a member of the community, the body was prepared for burial in the traditional manner whereby it was bathed, dressed in a shroud, and then placed in virgin soil.[9] Another jewish rite that was almost universally practiced among Mexican conversos was that of male circumcision. Inspections by Inquisition surgeons revealed that almost ninety-one percent of male conversos were circumcised. When confronted with this evidence, one crypto-Jew made an effort to exonerate himself, explaining that the scar was due to "an earlier infirmity that I had in those parts." Another dismissed it as the result of "the mischief of women." Still another admitted that he subjected himself to the circumcision, but protested that it was only to please a Jewish lover in Italy.[10]
These expressions of ethnic identity manifested by the crypto-Jewish community of New Spain passed virtually unnoticed from 1610 to 1642 by the Holy Office, the body entrusted with the enforcement of religious orthodoxy in the viceroyalty. With few exceptions, Mexican conversos lived their lives, pursued their careers, and discreetly practiced their observances in relative obscurity. In the early 1640s, however, a complex series of developments took place that would dramatically shatter the calm that had prevailed in the converso community for the previous three decades.
In 1640 the Portuguese Duque de Bragança led a successful movement for independence from Philip IV of Spain, thus ending a sixty-year period of Spanish domination. Fear on the part of royal officials in Mexico City that a Portuguese invasion of New Spain was imminent stimulated a series of anti-Portuguese measures aimed at potential subversives.[11] The viceroy suspected of harboring pro-Portuguese sympathies was deposed in 1642 and replaced by the strongly anti-Portuguese
archbishop of Mexico, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza.[12] It is no coincidence that within days of Palafox's assumption of viceregal power, the Holy Office issued orders for the arrest of nearly one hundred persons, most of Portuguese descent, on suspicion of being judaizantes . Letters sent by Mexican inquisitors to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid after the mass arrests shed a good deal of light on the motivation for their actions. The letters clearly place the arrests in the context of the widespread fear of invasion by the Portuguese armada that gripped Mexico in June and July of 1642. Constant reference was made to the threat posed to New Spain by these "portugueses, " not so much because of their Judaizing activities as on account of their allegiance to the leaders of the Portuguese revolt. The inquisitors felt that it was their duty as zealous defenders of the kingdom to lend whatever assistance was necessary to counter the threat posed by these perceived subversives within their midst.[13]
On Saturday night, 12 July 1642, agents of the Inquisition arrested seven persons for Judaizing. The next night thirty more were apprehended. Within a year, over seventy-five conversos had entered the secret prisons of the Holy Office, charged with the criminal offense of observing the Law of Moses. By 1647, over 130 had been taken. The Holy Office issued warrants for the arrest of many more but could not follow through on them because the suspects had either died or successfully evaded the Inquisition's agents.[14] Only a small percentage of those convicted were relaxed and burned at the stake (and only one person burned alive). Most were reconciled by the Holy Office, suffering confiscation of their goods and exile from the Indies. In many cases, this sentence of exile was never enforced, and certain crypto-Jews were found to be living in New Spain years after leaving the Inquisition prisons.[15]
Following the Gran Auto de Fe of 1649, little attention was paid to the crypto-Jewish community of New Spain by the Inquisition. The period of vigorous activity against judaizantes from 1642 to 1649, like that of 1585–1601, stands as an aberration in the context of three centuries of colonial Mexican history. What happened to those crypto-Jews who left the secret prisons of the Holy Office, or to those countless others who successfully evaded the suspicions of the Inquisition? One can only assume that most melded into the mainstream of Mexican society, some gradually losing all ethnic identity, others passing on vestiges of their Sephardic heritage from generation to generation.
Today, in the former Spanish frontier province of Nuevo México, it appears that a small remnant of these crypto-Jews is just beginning to
― 213 ―emerge from the shroud of secrecy that has protected it for two dozen generations. Stories of Hispanic Catholic residents in diverse parts of the state refraining from eating pork, lighting candles on Friday nights, and marrying only within certain families who performed the same customs, have appeared with such regularity that they cannot be dismissed out of hand as anomalies.
There appears to be some strong historical evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that New Mexico was the locus of converso settlement. The period of the expansion of New Spain's northern frontier into New Mexico coincided directly with the most significant crypto-Jewish immigration to New Spain, as well as with the conversos' difficulties with the Inquisition in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Following the disappointing search for the mythical Seven Cities of Cíbola and the Kingdom of Quivira undertaken by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540–1542, Spanish officials and entrepreneurs turned their attention toward exploiting the lucrative silver mines on northern New Spain closer to central Mexico. But in the 1580s and 1590s several entradas, both official and unsanctioned, were initiated northward into New Mexico. There are indications that at least three of these expeditions might have been designed to allow crypto-Jews from central Mexico and Nuevo León to escape from the inquisitorial persecutions that centered on the Carvajals and their coreligionists.
In 1582, Governor Carvajal commissioned the expedition of Antonio de Espejo, ostensibly for the purpose of rescuing three Franciscan friars who had been left behind by the Rodríguez-Sánchez Chamuscado mission the year before.[16] The timing of this expedition, coinciding with the arrival of growing numbers of secret Jews into Nuevo León, however, suggests that Carvajal may have had another motive. Perhaps he sought to undertake a discreet search for a refuge on the northern frontier of New Spain for crypto-Jews, should the need arise. Such a need did indeed arise after the crackdown by the Holy Office of the Inquisition against the governor's nephew and his associates in 1589. The following year, Carvajal's lieutenant governor, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, led a hastily organized and unauthorized expedition of some 170 men, women, and children northwestward out of Nuevo León, to the Pecos River, and upriver into northern New Mexico. Castaño's mission did not receive the authorization of the royal officials in Mexico City, and thus was considered to be illegal.[17]
The close ties maintained by Castaño to Governor Carvajal, and the allegations that he might have been a practicing crypto-Jew in Nuevo León,[18] suggest strongly that he might have initiated the dangerous ex-
pedition for the purpose of leading other secret Jews to a secure haven on the far northern frontier. This hypothesis is strengthened by a comparison of names of the expedition with those found in contemporary Inquisition records, accused of the crime of judaizante. Others possessed family names identical to those tried by the Holy Office in Mexico City, such as Rodríguez, Nieto, Carvajal, Díaz, Hernández, and Pérez, and may well have been practicing crypto-Jews themselves.[19]
In 1598, after several years of preparation, Governor and Adelantado Juan de Oñate led some 135 colonists and soldiers northward to establish the first permanent colony in New Mexico. Substantially more is known about the makeup of this expedition than that of Castaño de Sosa. As in the case of the earlier expedition, several indicators point to a crypto-Jewish presence among the founding settlers of New Mexico. The names of several individuals listed on the 8 January 1598 Muster Roll recruited for the enterprise also appear in the records of the Inquisition. Juan Rodríguez, Francisco Hernández, Miguel Rodríguez, and Antonio Rodríguez were cited by the Holy Office as "fugitives"; three of them were burned in effigy in the autos de fe of 1596 and 1601. Sebastián Rodríguez, another member of the Oñate expedition, was possibly one of two individuals by that name taken by the Inquisition. One was reconciled in the auto de fe of 1596, and the other denounced by another judaizante in 1601 as a crypto-Jew. Several other soldiers and colonists maintained either family names associated with conversos, or demographic profiles similar to others known to be practicing crypto-Jews.[20]
Because the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 resulted in the destruction of almost all of the locally generated documentation from New Mexico, very little is understood about life in the new colony during the seventeenth century. On the basis of material unearthed in the archives of Spain and Mexico by pioneer scholars such as France V. Scholes, it is known that the Inquisition was administered by the Franciscan missionaries from their base in the Salinas Province. The inquisitorial powers vested in the friars, however, appeared to have been used selectively for political purposes in their struggle for power with governors and other civil officials. The most notorious case during this period was initiated against Governor Bernardo López de Mendizábal, his wife, Teresa de Aguirre y Roche, and certain members of his entourage in 1661–1662 for the crime of judaizante. Most of those charged were ultimately acquitted, including Francisco Gómez Robledo, against whom the inquisitors had amassed the most compelling evidence.[21] Regardless of the official outcomes of these and other trials, the evidence presented
― 215 ―raises provocative questions concerning the extent of the crypto-Jewish presence in New Mexico in the seventeenth century.
In the wake of the Reconquest of New Mexico by Governor Diego de Vargas in 1692–1693, thirteen years after the Pueblo Revolt came a new wave of settlers to recolonize New Mexico. By this time the Inquisition was no longer actively prosecuting judaizante cases anywhere in the viceroyalty, and consequently there are no contemporary lists of prisoners against which to compare. Nevertheless, the account of new colonists who accompanied Vargas in 1693, and of those recruited by Juan Páez Hurtado two years later, reveal some familiar names and demographic profiles, strongly suggesting a renewed crypto-Jewish presence.[22] Vargas's secretary, for example, was named Alfonso Rael de Aguilar. A persistent family legend repeated by the present-day descendants of Rael holds that the name derives from "Israel." This story is validated by an examination of baptismal records from the mission of Isleta, where two entries from the year 1756 include references to María Manuela Israel de Aguilar, the granddaughter of Alfonso.[23] Several of Rael's descendants have come forward and acknowledged the presence of Judaic practices among the family's customs.
The families that persevered in this remote province for the next three hundred years left behind few clues to explain their ethnic identity and origins. Many of the descendants of the converso families who settled here apparently assimilated, to a greater or lesser extent, into the mainstream. On the basis of preliminary ethnographic evidence, however, it appears that others continued to practice vestiges of their ancestral faith, some with no consciousness of their ethnic identity, and others maintaining a strong sense of Jewish identity.
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft396nb1w0&chunk.id=d0e8383
Eleven—
The Inquisition and the Crypto-Jewish Community in Colonial New Spain and New MexicoStanley M. Hordes
Within the scope of Mexican history, the subjects of the Inquisition and crypto-Jews have long been the focus of heated controversy and misplaced value judgments.[1] The unfortunate result of this has been, and still remains today, a lack of understanding of the Inquisition, particularly in its relation to the crypto-Jewish community. The polemical nature of the historiography reflects the same Black Legend-versus-White Legend debate that has plagued colonial Latin American historiography continuously since the Spanish conquest. Because the theme of inquisitorial persecution strikes at the very nerve center of this debate between assailants and defenders of the Spanish colonial system, that is, the rigid enforcement of Catholic orthodoxy and exclusivity, historians of both schools have demonstrated a great deal of emotion and self-righteousness in the pursuit of their respective causes. Many authors have placed a heavy emphasis on the role that the Holy Office of the Inquisition played in the persecution of crypto-Jews, despite the fact that the inquisitors concerned themselves far more with more mundane breaches of faith and morals such as blasphemy, bigamy, witchcraft, impersonation of priests and solicitation of women in the confessional. One of the great barriers to gaining an understanding of the Inquisition and the crypto-Jews in New Spain has been the inappropriate imposition of current value-judgments on people and events in the past. The stress placed by certain historians on the persecution of crypto-Jews reflects an implicit and explicit application of twentieth-century values to an institution and a society of an earlier age.It will be the purpose of this essay to examine in a more critical and dispassionate manner the experiences of the crypto-Jewish community of New Spain in the colonial era, not only their treatment at the hands of the Holy Office of the Inquisition but their role in the economy and society of the viceroyalty. I will conclude by offering some preliminary observations concerning a new project, just under way, to study a living remnant of the Mexican crypto-Jewish community only now emerging from the shadows in New Mexico.
With the conquest of New Spain by Hernando Cortés in 1521, the long arm of the Inquisition extended across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain to Mexico. The small number of Judaizing cases tried by the Mexican Inquisition during the first half-century of Spanish colonization in New Spain indicates that crypto-Jews were able to practice their faith in an atmosphere of relative toleration.[2] This situation began to change in the 1580s, when crypto-Jewish immigration to New Spain increased dramatically. The establishment of Spanish hegemony over Portugal in 1580 motivated Portuguese conversos to move in unprecedented numbers to other areas of the world, including the Indies. The new arrivals were considerably more educated and better versed in Jewish doctrine than were their predecessors, and their presence resulted in a new infusion of religiosity in the viceroyalty.[3]
The increase in the number and activity of the crypto-Jews in New Spain did not go unnoticed by the Mexican Inquisition, only a few years earlier strengthened by elevation to the status of Tribunal del Santo Oficio. Between 1589 and 1596 almost two hundred persons were tried for the crime of judaizante . During this period, the most notable and celebrated campaign by the Holy Office was directed toward Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo, his family and associates.[4] The vigorous activity of the Mexican Inquisition against the crypto-Jews at the end of the sixteenth century was short-lived, however. After the auto de fe of 1601 the prosecution of those accused of judaizing declined, and the tribunal concentrated on other breaches of Catholic orthodoxy. The nucleus of Portuguese crypto-Jewish settlement formed in the late sixteenth century served to attract ever-increasing numbers of their countrymen in Spain and Portugal to New Spain in the early seventeenth century.
Indeed, the climate in New Spain was favorable for the settlement of crypto-Jewish immigrants in the early 1600s. The Mexican economy was experiencing a boom period at the end of the sixteenth century that carried over into the early decades of the seventeenth century. The mining sector enjoyed unprecedented expansion from the 1590s through 1620. Agriculture, stock raising, and textiles kept pace with the demand produced by the mining boom, and the level of trade between
― 209 ―New Spain and Europe reached new heights. In the succeeding decades the Mexican economy grew more autonomous, and, despite the decline in trans-Atlantic trade, it continued to grow.[5] In this atmosphere of economic expansion, enterprising crypto-Jewish merchants found themselves ready and able to participate actively in all levels of commerce throughout the viceroyalty.
While crypto-Jews were to be found in almost every region of New Spain in the mid-seventeenth century, Mexico City served as the focal point for converso society just as it did for the larger Spanish economy and society. With few exceptions, crypto-Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal traveled directly to the capital after landing at Veracruz.[6] Of the majority who initially settled in Mexico City only a little over half remained there after two or three years. The rest dispersed to more remote regions of the viceroyalty in search of greater economic opportunities. Many left to take advantage of the lucrative trade in the mining areas of Pachuca or northern New Spain; others established themselves in the ports of Acapulco, Veracruz, or Campeche, where they had direct access to the fleets arriving from Spain or in the Philippines. Still others continued westward in search of greater opportunities in the Philippines themselves.
The crypto-Jews who arrived in Mexico City from their distant homelands in Spain and Portugal were quickly absorbed into the mainstream of economic and social life. The established converso community in the capital was a closely knit group with a well-developed system of extended family and patron-client relationships. Several extended family units operated in Mexico City from the 1610s through the 1640s, the most notable of which was the family of Simon Váez Sevilla, without question the wealthiest crypto-Jewish merchant in the viceroyalty. At the head of each such clan there generally appeared a wealthy patron who, like Váez, not only directed the commercial activities of his family but also supervised such mundane functions as the housing, relocation, marriage, burial, and religious ceremonies of those in his charge. Often the passage of a nephew or cousin from Spain or Portugal was financed by the head of one particular clan, arranged through contacts with a relative in Seville or Lisbon.
In their role as merchants, the crypto-Jews blended very well into the mainstream of Mexican society, not distinguishing themselves as a distinct element apart from the general community, except, perhaps, by their particular orientation toward mercantile careers. In a sense it is proper to see the converso experience in this perspective. Crypto-Jews were, after all, first and foremost Iberians, maintaining the language and customs of their forebears in Spain and Portugal. Many had the opportunity to leave the Spanish dominions in favor of lands where they were free to practice Judaism openly and in peace, but most opted to remain in familiar cultural surroundings.
Mexican crypto-Jews were not singled out as a separate group until 1642, when for a variety of reasons to be examined below, the Inquisition embarked on a campaign against the community. It must be emphasized that from 1610 until 1642 there was very little attention paid by the Inquisition, or by any other body, to the crypto-Jewish element in New Spain. Nevertheless, to judge from the testimony offered by the conversos in the trials of the 1640s, it is evident that in certain respects Mexican conversos did conduct themselves in a manner that reflected a consciousness of their ethnic identity.
The patterns demonstrated by crypto-Jews living in Mexico City strongly suggest the presence of a certain degree of ethnocentrism. The Mexican conversos exhibited a strong tendency to live in close proximity to one another, clustered mostly in a three-block area between the cathedral and the Church of Santo Domingo, ironically within a stone's throw of the palace of the Inquisition. Converso traders tended to concentrate their commercial associations within the ethnic community. In almost every area of trade, crypto-Jewish merchants relied upon one another as sources of supply and credit, as agents in remote regions, as fiadores , and as bondsmen in business ventures.
A further demonstration of ethnocentrism may be seen in the propensity of Mexican crypto-Jews to marry within the faith. The practice of endogamy was almost universal. In over ninety-five percent of the marriages, conversos chose partners from within the community. In certain instances efforts were made to "convert" a prospective bridegroom to Judaism in order to gain the approval of the bride's family. In 1638 Isabel Tinoco, niece of Simon Váez Sevilla, found herself being courted by Manuel de Acosta, a young man recently arrived from Lisbon. Relations between Acosta and Isabel's family were cordial throughout the courtship, and eventually Acosta asked her grandfather, Antonio Rodríguez Arias, for her hand in marriage. On the day that Rodríguez's response was to be delivered, Acosta visited him at his house on Calle Tacuba. During a stroll around the nearby Alameda, Rodríguez offered his consent to the marriage, but only on the condition that Acosta abandon the Law of Jesus Christ in favor of the Law of Moses. Acosta agreed, proceeded to learn the practice of Judaism from Rodríguez's wife, and married Isabel Tinoco shortly thereafter.[7]
Perhaps more than any other factor, religious observances served as
― 211 ―
a vehicle for achieving and maintaining a sense of religious identity within the Mexican crypto-Jewish community. Fast days, especially that of Yom Kippur (referred to as el día grande ), provided an opportunity for families to stop their normal routine and gather together in the home of one of the worshipers. Inquisition procesos are filled with the detailed accounts of Yom Kippur observances, identifying the location of the service and the names of the worshipers, and vividly describing the manner in which the fasts were broken. Not all conversos were able to meet the stoic test of the fast. Pedro de Espinosa, a traveling merchant in the mining region of Tierra Adentro, stole away from the service at about three o'clock in the afternoon to relieve his hunger.[8] The Sabbath was also generally observed by Mexican conversos. Men refrained from working, and women bathed, changed clothes, and put out clean bed linen on Friday in preparation for the day of rest. Upon the death of a member of the community, the body was prepared for burial in the traditional manner whereby it was bathed, dressed in a shroud, and then placed in virgin soil.[9] Another jewish rite that was almost universally practiced among Mexican conversos was that of male circumcision. Inspections by Inquisition surgeons revealed that almost ninety-one percent of male conversos were circumcised. When confronted with this evidence, one crypto-Jew made an effort to exonerate himself, explaining that the scar was due to "an earlier infirmity that I had in those parts." Another dismissed it as the result of "the mischief of women." Still another admitted that he subjected himself to the circumcision, but protested that it was only to please a Jewish lover in Italy.[10]
These expressions of ethnic identity manifested by the crypto-Jewish community of New Spain passed virtually unnoticed from 1610 to 1642 by the Holy Office, the body entrusted with the enforcement of religious orthodoxy in the viceroyalty. With few exceptions, Mexican conversos lived their lives, pursued their careers, and discreetly practiced their observances in relative obscurity. In the early 1640s, however, a complex series of developments took place that would dramatically shatter the calm that had prevailed in the converso community for the previous three decades.
In 1640 the Portuguese Duque de Bragança led a successful movement for independence from Philip IV of Spain, thus ending a sixty-year period of Spanish domination. Fear on the part of royal officials in Mexico City that a Portuguese invasion of New Spain was imminent stimulated a series of anti-Portuguese measures aimed at potential subversives.[11] The viceroy suspected of harboring pro-Portuguese sympathies was deposed in 1642 and replaced by the strongly anti-Portuguese
archbishop of Mexico, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza.[12] It is no coincidence that within days of Palafox's assumption of viceregal power, the Holy Office issued orders for the arrest of nearly one hundred persons, most of Portuguese descent, on suspicion of being judaizantes . Letters sent by Mexican inquisitors to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid after the mass arrests shed a good deal of light on the motivation for their actions. The letters clearly place the arrests in the context of the widespread fear of invasion by the Portuguese armada that gripped Mexico in June and July of 1642. Constant reference was made to the threat posed to New Spain by these "portugueses, " not so much because of their Judaizing activities as on account of their allegiance to the leaders of the Portuguese revolt. The inquisitors felt that it was their duty as zealous defenders of the kingdom to lend whatever assistance was necessary to counter the threat posed by these perceived subversives within their midst.[13]
On Saturday night, 12 July 1642, agents of the Inquisition arrested seven persons for Judaizing. The next night thirty more were apprehended. Within a year, over seventy-five conversos had entered the secret prisons of the Holy Office, charged with the criminal offense of observing the Law of Moses. By 1647, over 130 had been taken. The Holy Office issued warrants for the arrest of many more but could not follow through on them because the suspects had either died or successfully evaded the Inquisition's agents.[14] Only a small percentage of those convicted were relaxed and burned at the stake (and only one person burned alive). Most were reconciled by the Holy Office, suffering confiscation of their goods and exile from the Indies. In many cases, this sentence of exile was never enforced, and certain crypto-Jews were found to be living in New Spain years after leaving the Inquisition prisons.[15]
Following the Gran Auto de Fe of 1649, little attention was paid to the crypto-Jewish community of New Spain by the Inquisition. The period of vigorous activity against judaizantes from 1642 to 1649, like that of 1585–1601, stands as an aberration in the context of three centuries of colonial Mexican history. What happened to those crypto-Jews who left the secret prisons of the Holy Office, or to those countless others who successfully evaded the suspicions of the Inquisition? One can only assume that most melded into the mainstream of Mexican society, some gradually losing all ethnic identity, others passing on vestiges of their Sephardic heritage from generation to generation.
Today, in the former Spanish frontier province of Nuevo México, it appears that a small remnant of these crypto-Jews is just beginning to
― 213 ―emerge from the shroud of secrecy that has protected it for two dozen generations. Stories of Hispanic Catholic residents in diverse parts of the state refraining from eating pork, lighting candles on Friday nights, and marrying only within certain families who performed the same customs, have appeared with such regularity that they cannot be dismissed out of hand as anomalies.
There appears to be some strong historical evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that New Mexico was the locus of converso settlement. The period of the expansion of New Spain's northern frontier into New Mexico coincided directly with the most significant crypto-Jewish immigration to New Spain, as well as with the conversos' difficulties with the Inquisition in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Following the disappointing search for the mythical Seven Cities of Cíbola and the Kingdom of Quivira undertaken by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540–1542, Spanish officials and entrepreneurs turned their attention toward exploiting the lucrative silver mines on northern New Spain closer to central Mexico. But in the 1580s and 1590s several entradas, both official and unsanctioned, were initiated northward into New Mexico. There are indications that at least three of these expeditions might have been designed to allow crypto-Jews from central Mexico and Nuevo León to escape from the inquisitorial persecutions that centered on the Carvajals and their coreligionists.
In 1582, Governor Carvajal commissioned the expedition of Antonio de Espejo, ostensibly for the purpose of rescuing three Franciscan friars who had been left behind by the Rodríguez-Sánchez Chamuscado mission the year before.[16] The timing of this expedition, coinciding with the arrival of growing numbers of secret Jews into Nuevo León, however, suggests that Carvajal may have had another motive. Perhaps he sought to undertake a discreet search for a refuge on the northern frontier of New Spain for crypto-Jews, should the need arise. Such a need did indeed arise after the crackdown by the Holy Office of the Inquisition against the governor's nephew and his associates in 1589. The following year, Carvajal's lieutenant governor, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, led a hastily organized and unauthorized expedition of some 170 men, women, and children northwestward out of Nuevo León, to the Pecos River, and upriver into northern New Mexico. Castaño's mission did not receive the authorization of the royal officials in Mexico City, and thus was considered to be illegal.[17]
The close ties maintained by Castaño to Governor Carvajal, and the allegations that he might have been a practicing crypto-Jew in Nuevo León,[18] suggest strongly that he might have initiated the dangerous ex-
pedition for the purpose of leading other secret Jews to a secure haven on the far northern frontier. This hypothesis is strengthened by a comparison of names of the expedition with those found in contemporary Inquisition records, accused of the crime of judaizante. Others possessed family names identical to those tried by the Holy Office in Mexico City, such as Rodríguez, Nieto, Carvajal, Díaz, Hernández, and Pérez, and may well have been practicing crypto-Jews themselves.[19]
In 1598, after several years of preparation, Governor and Adelantado Juan de Oñate led some 135 colonists and soldiers northward to establish the first permanent colony in New Mexico. Substantially more is known about the makeup of this expedition than that of Castaño de Sosa. As in the case of the earlier expedition, several indicators point to a crypto-Jewish presence among the founding settlers of New Mexico. The names of several individuals listed on the 8 January 1598 Muster Roll recruited for the enterprise also appear in the records of the Inquisition. Juan Rodríguez, Francisco Hernández, Miguel Rodríguez, and Antonio Rodríguez were cited by the Holy Office as "fugitives"; three of them were burned in effigy in the autos de fe of 1596 and 1601. Sebastián Rodríguez, another member of the Oñate expedition, was possibly one of two individuals by that name taken by the Inquisition. One was reconciled in the auto de fe of 1596, and the other denounced by another judaizante in 1601 as a crypto-Jew. Several other soldiers and colonists maintained either family names associated with conversos, or demographic profiles similar to others known to be practicing crypto-Jews.[20]
Because the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 resulted in the destruction of almost all of the locally generated documentation from New Mexico, very little is understood about life in the new colony during the seventeenth century. On the basis of material unearthed in the archives of Spain and Mexico by pioneer scholars such as France V. Scholes, it is known that the Inquisition was administered by the Franciscan missionaries from their base in the Salinas Province. The inquisitorial powers vested in the friars, however, appeared to have been used selectively for political purposes in their struggle for power with governors and other civil officials. The most notorious case during this period was initiated against Governor Bernardo López de Mendizábal, his wife, Teresa de Aguirre y Roche, and certain members of his entourage in 1661–1662 for the crime of judaizante. Most of those charged were ultimately acquitted, including Francisco Gómez Robledo, against whom the inquisitors had amassed the most compelling evidence.[21] Regardless of the official outcomes of these and other trials, the evidence presented
― 215 ―raises provocative questions concerning the extent of the crypto-Jewish presence in New Mexico in the seventeenth century.
In the wake of the Reconquest of New Mexico by Governor Diego de Vargas in 1692–1693, thirteen years after the Pueblo Revolt came a new wave of settlers to recolonize New Mexico. By this time the Inquisition was no longer actively prosecuting judaizante cases anywhere in the viceroyalty, and consequently there are no contemporary lists of prisoners against which to compare. Nevertheless, the account of new colonists who accompanied Vargas in 1693, and of those recruited by Juan Páez Hurtado two years later, reveal some familiar names and demographic profiles, strongly suggesting a renewed crypto-Jewish presence.[22] Vargas's secretary, for example, was named Alfonso Rael de Aguilar. A persistent family legend repeated by the present-day descendants of Rael holds that the name derives from "Israel." This story is validated by an examination of baptismal records from the mission of Isleta, where two entries from the year 1756 include references to María Manuela Israel de Aguilar, the granddaughter of Alfonso.[23] Several of Rael's descendants have come forward and acknowledged the presence of Judaic practices among the family's customs.
The families that persevered in this remote province for the next three hundred years left behind few clues to explain their ethnic identity and origins. Many of the descendants of the converso families who settled here apparently assimilated, to a greater or lesser extent, into the mainstream. On the basis of preliminary ethnographic evidence, however, it appears that others continued to practice vestiges of their ancestral faith, some with no consciousness of their ethnic identity, and others maintaining a strong sense of Jewish identity.