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Mel Goldberg Jews have lived in Mexico since the fourteenth century. In 1492, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain ordered the conversion or exile of all Muslim and Jewish subjects. Jews who had converted to Catholicism were called New Christians, or Conversos. Also known as marranos, they often continued practicing Judaism in secret after they had officially converted. Historians believe Hernn Cortes had converted Jews among his men when he conquered the Aztecs in 1521. In 1531, a group of Spanish Jews and Conversos who had originally found refuge in Portugal, emigrated to Mexico, then called Nueva Espaa, under the rule of Royal Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. In the New World, they believed they could retain their historical Spanish identity and continue to practice Judaism. Because Mendoza was a common name among Spanish Jews, some historians suggest the Viceroy himself had a Jewish or Conversobackground. Until 1571, those who had immigrated to the New World were able to practice Judaism openly. But that year marked the beginning of the Mexican Inquisition, an extension of the one in Spain. Again, both practicing Jews and Conversos lived in fear. During the Spanish Inquisition, thousands had been burned as heretics. The Mexican Inquisition was not as bitterly hostile as the Spanish. Records indicate that fewer than one hundred were denounced as heretics and executed by burning.
Mexico's crypto-Jews, descendants who maintain some Jewish traditions of their ancestors while adhering to Catholicism. Today about 20,000 Mexicans are able to trace their Jewish ancestors. Two genealogical studies of the eighteenth century, the Archivo General de la Nacion de
Mexico and the Ramo de la Inquisition, suggest that Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the father
of Mexican Independence, had a Converso background and that Bartolome de las Casas, a Bishop who fought to free slaves in Nueva Espaa, also had Jewish ancestors. Although their families were sincere converts it is ironic that expelling the Jews from Spain precipitated events that eventually led to Spain's loss of Mexico. Between 1700 and 1865, some adventurous Jews immigrated to Mexico to escape the grinding poverty and anti-Jewish attitudes of life in the Old World. While they were not allowed to become citizens, a right granted only to Catholics, many who came during the one hundred sixty-five years many carried housewares, clothing and novelties to remote villages of Mexico on the backs of burros or mules, similar to those who traveled to the West of the United States. In 1865, Emperor Maximilian I issued an edict of religious tolerance and invited a number of German Jews to settle in Mexico. Few accepted the emperor's invitation, because two years later, an official count listed only twenty Jewish families in Mexico City although there were probably more in the rest of the country.
All immigrants faced economically difficult lives, and Jews faced the same financial problems as all Mexicans. But coming from a part of the world where their lives were hard, they had no difficulty in adapting to conditions in Mexican villages. Mexican Catholics and Jews shared an important common characteristic. In both groups, the family was the predominant social group.
Why did Jews choose Mexico as a destination rather than the United States? Mexico was attractive to them. Many had relatives or friends already who had settled in the country. And in 1921 and 1924, United States enacted laws restricting immigration. From 1920 to 1930, Jews in Mexico enjoyed a period of stability during which they prospered. The only recorded incidents of anti-Semitism came in the 1930s, when neo-Nazi right wingers, financed from Berlin, staged anti-Jewish demonstrations in Mexico City. The demonstrators gained little support from the Mexican people. During the 1930s, the Jewish community battled anti-Semitism by forming the Federacin de Sociedades Judas, as well as the still active Comit
Emigrating to Mexico in 1891, he changed his name to Guillermo. The lover of Leon Trotsky and flamboyant artist maintained that her father was a Hungarian Jew and never denied her Jewish heritage. In 1935, her husband, Conversodescendant muralist Diego Rivera, wrote, "Jewishness is the dominant element in my life. From this has come my sympathy with the downtrodden masses which motivates all my work." Many other prominent Mexicans, like Presidents Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero and Jose Lopez Portillo, have referenced their Jewish descent from Converso roots. There was even a Jewish bullfighter, Sidney Franklin, born Sidney Frumkin in New York in 1903, who fought bulls in Spain and Mexico. Hemingway, in Death in the Afternoon, wrote "Franklin is brave with a cold, serene and intelligent valor." He died in 1976, after a career fighting bulls and presenting bullfights on American TV.
Published or Updated on: February 8, 2013 by Mel Goldberg 2013 Contact Mel Goldberg