A Guide to Jewish References in the Mexican Colonial Era, 1521-1821 9781512817676

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A Guide to Jewish References in the Mexican Colonial Era 1521-1821

A Guide to Jewish References in the Mexican Colonial Era 1521-1821 Selected, compiled, and translated by

Seymour B. Liebman

Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania Press

© 1964 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania

Published in G r e a t Britain, India, and Pakistan by the O x f o r d University Press L o n d o n , Bombay, and K a r a c h i

Library of Congress Catalog Card N u m b e r : 63-15013

7405 Printed in the U n i t e d States of America

CONTENTS Introduction

7

Index to the Indice del Ramo

13

Index to the Riva Palacio Collection

90

Appendix A: Alfonso Toro

93

Appendix B: Luis Gonzales Obregon and José Toribio Medina

97

Appendix C: Sundry Documents

109

Glossary

113

Bibliography

115

Alphabetical List

121

Introduction While speculations about Mayan descent from the lost ten tribes of Israel have caught the imagination and interest of a number of historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, little attention has been given to the history of Mexican Jewry during the colonial period, 1521-1821, a particularly regrettable circumstance since the history of Colonial Mexico's Jews does not lack for sources. This little-known story is r e corded in the documents of the Inquisition—a history of devotion to faith, of persecution, intrigue, and martyrology, and, not least, of contributions to the national culture of Mexico. Colonial Jewry was a small, but not insignificant, segment of those who peopled Mexico and who, despite the illegality of their presence and the tenuousness of their position, played an important role in its development. This introduction is not intended to present a panoramic view of the fascinating, exciting, and at times almost fantastic history of the Jews in Mexico. Plots, intrigues, and daring were the basis of their survival. Accounts of systems of communication among prisoners in the secret cells of the Inquisition, the practice of sending one child of a family into a Catholic religious order, the changing of the wording of prayers to throw off suspicion, and feats of courage and bravery outdo fiction in drama and suspense. There were men and women who withstood the turn of the cord and the torture of the potro (rack) without revealing the names of their co-religionists, and there were others who implicated literally hundreds of other Jews. Suffice it to say that Colonial Mexico harbored a thriving Jewish colony which constituted an integral part of the territory's life. 1 Jews resided in every part of the country and were represented in every class and at every level. These people deserve honorable notice in the history both of Mexico and of world Jewry. In the Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN) a r e 1,553 volumes of Mexican Inquisition Documents, covering the years 1521 to 1823. The Index to these volumes, the Indice del Ramo de Inquisición, consists of fifteen volumes of over 3,000 singlespaced typewritten pages. It is arranged neither in chronological order, nor by subject, persons, or in any other fashion accepted by archivists. Fragments of the proceso2 of an individual may be found in three or more different volumes of documents. There are sections as well as whole procesos which a r e either in other Mexican institutions or in other countries. The AGN does not possess all Inquisition documents. (This will be discussed at greater length below and also in Appendix C of this work.) The Indice does contain many facts that a r e not normally found in an index. It is an enumeration of documents as they happened to be picked up by those who made the compilation. 3 In order to pursue research into the history of Mexican Jewry during the colonial era, it was necessary to prepare a Guide of all matters of Jewish interest as they appear in the Indice. From the Indice an alphabetical list of names was prepared. This made it possible to locate the various parts of the proceso of any individual. A total proceso consists of several hearings, some as manyas ten or more, held over a period of months and even years. A knowledge of paleography is indispensable for reading Inquisition documents, but the Indice is in modern Spanish. The draft of the Guide revealed the vast amount of 1 Alfonso Toro, Los Judíos en la Nueva España (Mexico, Publicaciones del Archivo General de la Nación, 1932), pp. xxii, xxiii. 2 A glossary has been appended for Spanish terms. 'Yolanda Mariel de Ibañez, La Inquisición en México durante el Sigle XVI (México, Universidad Nacional Autonoma, 1946), at close of Explicaciones which has unnumbered pages. In future footnotes, the details of publications will be omitted if the author and his book a r e included in the Bibliography appended hereto.

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8

JEWISH REFERENCES IN THE MEXICAN COLONIAL ERA

material available for study. The need to amplify it to include data from other authorative sources was obvious. Research led to the location of more documents, many outside of Mexico. There is no work that lists all Inquisition documents and their location. Even the excellent Repertorion Bibliográfico, etc., by A. Millares Carlo is incomplete. There is no record of privately owned documents. The discovery of additional procesos and parts of others began to fill numerous lacunae. Names such as Ana Rodriguez de Matos, Margarita Morera, and Leonor de Caceres appear in accounts of the Inquisition written during the last century, but documents pertaining to them are not in the AGN. Many documents have been hidden or destroyed. For instance, there is a legend that Francisco (Pancho) Villa used many documents that he had seized during the Mexican Revolution to make a victory bonfire in Querétaro or San Luis Potosí. The data in parentheses are from the following sources: geographical from the Indice and other from Luis González Obregón and/or José Toribio Medina. The Appendices include many additional names with explanations. The Alphabetical List does not, of course, represent a total census of the Jews of Colonial Mexico. The Inquisition was not infallible in its quest for heretics. The List includes only those apprehended or who are named in histories. The latter appear only if there are data in addition to the statement of their faith. It must be noted that even the Inquisition itself did not consistently seek out the Jews. On May 27, 1783, the Mexican Tribunal received an order from the Supreme Council in Spain adivsing it not to imprison Jews or to sequester their property. 4 At the end of the eighteenth century, the work load of the Inquisitors in reading for purposes of censorship the thousands of books arriving in Veracruz and Acapulco and the administration of the Customs House was so great that they requested increases in salary. For more than a century there had been difficulty in filling positions, especially in the provinces. The Inquisitors began to display a greater concern in the growing number of Protestants and the spread of new ideas like those of Voltaire, Locke, and Rousseau, and even the concept of f r e e dom as enunciated in the Bible.5 The Mexican Inquisition, while normally under the control of the Supreme Council in Spain, often acted autonomously. Translations herein are not literal and, in a few instances, are quite free. The amanuenses for the Inquisitors were not particular in their spelling, but seem to have been faithful in their reporting. The "criminal" had to read the transcript of his testimony and affirm its correctness. Every turn of the wheel was recorded; every imprecation against the Inquisitors or the Church was noted; every groan was immortalized. Instead of the designations marranos or cryptojudios, the Santo Oficio's terms, e.g., "judio" or "judaizante," etc., have been used. In the Appendices, the terms follow those of the authors cited. There is little difference between "b" and " v " in Spanish, and these letters appear interchangeably in the names in the Indice. The letters "x," " j , " and " s " can be sounded almost alike. The name Juárez is found to begin with any of these letters and may apply to the same person. 8 Many writers were not aware that Rios was used as an abbreviation for Rodríguez by many amanuenses.7 Undoubtedly, some errors have been made as a result of this confusion, in addition to those which are the author's. For the latter, apologies are extended. Archival material in Spain and documents in Amsterdam 4 José Toribio Medina, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en México, p. 306. 5 Luis González Obregón, México Viejo, p. 718. 6In 1946, Prof. J. Horace Nunemaker wrote that "punctuation, capitalization and accentuation are wholly erratic and utterly inconsistent in the documents," "Inquisition Papers of Mexico," Research Studies of State College of Washington, Vol. XIV (March, 1946), No. 1, p. 4. 7Obreg