The Hidden Jews of New Mexico
By Nan Rubin

Published in the Melton Journal, Spring 1992



To Jews, 1492 signifies not the beginning of the era of Spanish discovery and exploration, but a tragic ending. The Edict of Expulsion finally brought to a devastating close the "Golden Age of Spain" by forcing more than 200,000 Jews to choose conversion or exile. Thousands left, and thus began the Sephardic diaspora.

But thousands more stayed and were baptized as Catholics. In the eyes of the exiled Jewish community, they were marranos -- filthy swine. To the Church, however, they were conversos -- converted ones or New Christians. Many of these New Christians were insincere converts who continued to practice Judaism in secret, and despite the constant threat of exposure, they risked becoming crypto-Jews: hidden Jews. As baptized Catholics, crypto-Jews were special targets of the Inquisition courts, and thousands were tortured, imprisoned and burned at the stake for trying to maintain their true faith.

When the Spanish Crown began looking in earnest for colonizers willing to venture across the great Atlantic to settle in New Spain, crypto-Jews immediately took advantage of the chance to leave. The Governor of New Spain, Luis de Carvajal, was himself from a converso family, so the colonies appeared to offer a haven. Within a short period of time, hundreds of converso and crypto-Jewish families were moving to the colonies and, with the relative freedom of distance, began to practice their faith again openly. Unfortunately, the Holy Office of the Inquisition followed close behind; it began operating in Mexico City by 1580 and continued to be active for the next 200 years.

Looking for refuge once again, an unknown number of crypto-Jews headed for the northern frontiers, to the territories now part of New Mexico, Southern Colorado and the Texas panhandle. There, they effectively disappeared.

* * * * * * *

"When I was going to be twelve, my great grandfather called my grandfather in Spanish and said 'It's time to tell the boy.' So the next morning, on my birthday, my grandfather woke me up and took me to get water. He began to tell me about the Jews in the Bible, the stories I had heard in catechism class. I asked him, 'why are you telling me all this?' 'Because,' he said, 'eres Judio -- you are a Jew.' And I said, 'No, I'm Catholic,' and he said, 'No, eres Judio.' I got angry, we had been taught to hate the Jews because they were the Christ killers, and here my own grandfather was calling me a Jew.

"Then he pulled the water out and poured it over my head and said 'No tas portisado,' that is, 'you are no longer baptized.' So by pouring the water over my head, he took away the baptism, it was time to wash it off. And all of a sudden, I realized that we had these strange foods and customs, these strange services we used to do, we were Jews, we were hidden Jews."

SC, a native New Mexican, related this dramatic story on audiotape a few years ago. He believes that his family must have been conversos from Spain. RS has a similar tale. "On my mother's side of the family, it seems to be common knowledge we were descended from Jews. Cousins on that side required in their will that they would be buried in a 'casia,' a wood casket with stars of David carved on the sides or in the coffin lining. We always knew." EB, who grew up watching his grandmother light candles secretly in a shed on Friday nights and bake flat biscuits around Passover time, didn't know his family traditions could be remnants of Jewish rituals. "They always told us not to tell anyone, but they didn't explain why," he whispers, "Everything was done in secret. But everyone knew some Catholic families in our town were Jews."

The people speaking are hidden Jews of New Mexico, and they told these moving stories on a radio documentary I produced a few years ago. Growing up in Boston, I first learned of the marranos in the religious school of my reform synagogue. It was, of course, only history which was centuries old, but the image of Jews, facing torture and death yet still willing to live a secret life to hide their true faith, stayed with me.

Many years later, while I was living in Colorado, friends from the southern part of the state told me about unlikely customs such as 'never eating pork after sundown because it would make you sick' and 'changing the family name to escape the Moors in Spain,' along with constant tales of Catholic families who were really Jews. When, as an independent radio producer, I had the opportunity to record some of these experiences, my ancient history lesson became very much alive.

Although hidden Jews in Latin America are well-documented, until quite recently the existence of hidden Jews in New Mexico remained merely a legend. For decades, rumors have persisted in certain regions of this sparsely populated state about families that didn't eat pork, or turned their mirrors around during mourning, or only used Old Testament names. But it took the attention generated by the Columbus Quincentennial to prompt a closer look.

Dr. Stanley Hordes, formerly the State Historian of New Mexico, has been trying to get a closer look for several years. "When I first began the job as State Historian, people would come into my office and whisper these stories," he relates," 'This one doesn't eat pork, that one lights candles Friday night, but my family would be very angry if they knew I was saying this.' Then they'd run out. After while a pattern emerged, which is when I knew that it was more than rumor - there was really something out there."

The hidden Jews of New Mexico and their descendants remain largely a mystery, and finding and speaking with them isn't easy. No-one knows how many there are. They have lived with generations of secrecy and contradictions, and those few who are willing to reveal themselves speak only personally to protect their families.

Raised firmly within the Church, crypto-Jewish families never questioned being Catholic. They needed the Church which, in traditional New Mexican society, has been a focus of spiritual and community life for generations. And, because the Inquisition in Mexico City kept a close watch on its flock for more than two centuries, there never was a time when they could safely 'return' to their true faith. So it is remarkable that some hispanic New Mexican families could know today that they are descendants of Spanish Jews. Cut off for centuries from the evolution of Jewish practice, nonetheless their families have passed on remnants of Jewish prayer, sabbath observances, burial and food preparation customs. Without knowing what they meant, they have preserved many small fragments of Sephardic tradition, disguised and hidden, for more than 400 years.

But why retain the secrecy today? Researchers speculate that after 400 years, secrecy has become part of the culture itself, inseparable from the rituals. Maintaining anonymity is part of the legacy. "To me, if you lived in a particular way secretly in order to maintain what you see as your relationship to God, the secrecy itself becomes part of the tradition," explains DM, a journalist. "While we may live in a more or less tolerant society, you don't give it up just because someone comes looking for you."

On top of the protective cover of culture, many individuals are compelled to remain silent because having a Jewish identity raises too many painful contradictions. DM continues "If you have poverty, discrimination and then don't know who you are, it can be very difficult. Some people have always had doubts that they were Catholic, but they resolve it by not thinking about it." She goes on, "One gentleman in his nineties, it upset him a great deal. 'We've got enough biases and prejudices against us,' he said, 'Adding Jewish on top of that might be maybe condemning our race to even more problems.' He quickly ended the conversation."

SC echoes that thought. "There is great mental anguish in living two lives," he says, "You can't decide which side to live in. If you do decide to become totally Jewish, you'll lose your friends and lose your family. And the other Jews may not accept you. The choice on either side is damned. It becomes a matter of conscience between you and God."

While individual conversos are struggling with who they are today, researchers are struggling to uncover who they were in the past. The emergence of hidden Jews has thrown dramatic uncertainties into some of the long-held assumptions about Southwest religion, history, and culture. Dr. Rowena Rivera, a professor at the University of New Mexico, is following that thread by tracing New Mexican folk songs to Sephardic songs from Spain and Portugal. "I've come across poems that are almost directly Jewish prayers, and some have been found in other converso communities. This gives us a sign of where the culture originated."

"We were always talking about how the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock as a refuge for them," observes Tomas Atencio, a sociologist with the Rio Grande Institute who first began to ponder the 'Jewish question among hispanics' in the sixties. "Couldn't New Mexico have been a region of refuge for the Spanish crypto-Jews? " Dr. Hordes agrees. "The stereotype is to think that all Southwest hispanics are Catholics. The continued existence of these crypto-Jews really challenges those commonly held myths and assumptions about ethnic identity."

* * * * * * *

What of the crypto-Jews themselves? Brought up as Catholics, they learned that Jews were the Christ-killers, to be hated and ridiculed. Their contact with contemporary Judaism is no different from many communities throughout the Southwest, where the Ashkenazic Jews who have been in the region since the mid-1800s are relatively small in numbers. With no exposure to or familiarity with Jewish customs, discovering that their mysterious family legacies are based on preserving the practices of medieval Spanish Jewry is astonishing news, casting their spiritual identity in a new and uncertain light and launching them on a very personal journey for individual reconciliation.

To some, the revelation causes shock and horror. "When my grandmother died, I inherited her diary," relates MM. "When I first started reading it, the word 'Jew' was there and it hit me right in the face. It was like the words were burning on my hand and I didn't want to get burnt. I thought please, please don't let me be a Jew." But she became deeply interested in Judaism, and although she had considered herself a devout Catholic, she and her husband now consider themselves Jews. Along with a few friends, they have created a hybrid spiritual framework which incorporates some of the basic tenets of Judaism with elements of the Catholic credo in which they were raised. The walls of their home are decorated with biblical phrases in Spanish, English and Hebrew.

For others, it is an exciting revelation. "I was exhilarated," RS tells, "Somehow, I felt I had been looking for this identity all my life. I had even travelled to Spain and Israel looking for clues to my past, but found very little to help. It was a thrill to come home and learn who I really was." Along with some others, RS has embraced his Jewish heritage fully and is taking the requisite courses toward formal conversion.

But he feels he cannot share his commitment with his family because for some of them, connection with Judaism is long past. "My mother refuses to discuss it, and my conversion will tear the family apart," he quietly explains. "She says we are Catholic and we should leave the rest alone. But my father has always disagreed. Between them, it is a constant argument."

Many families are torn along these lines, with some members rejecting their Jewish roots and others within the same family doing what they can to keep a fragile Jewish identity intact. Last year, DD who converted to Judaism even before learning about his crypto-Jewish heritage, invited a small number of crypto-Jewish friends to celebrate the Passover Seder and bring their relatives. Because many invitees expressed reluctance to involve their families, he anticipated only two dozen participants. At the last moment, though, people brought their fathers, mothers, and siblings, finally with fifty people celebrating the Festival of Freedom. For all of them, it was a very emotional moment, signifying the growing acceptance of a crypto-Jewish religious identity among themselves.

There are similar efforts to acknowledge crypto-Jews as having an important cultural identity. According to DM, "There is a movement among some New Mexicans to uncover their Jewish roots, and many people my age feel that part of our history as Chicanos living in New Mexico includes adding this Jewish element. To some of us, this history is a tremendous source of pride and addition to our heritage." Typical is a letter I received from PB in Boulder, Colorado. She wrote "My grandfather, from New Mexico, always used to joke about us having some Jewish blood. Now I know it wasn't a joke -- thank you for giving me a new history."

* * * * * * *

The existence of the hidden Jews of New Mexico seems to have struck a deep chord among American Jews, as my overflowing mailbox attests. To us, our identity is forged in history but the constant challenge is to maintain a meaningful belief in an environment which urges assimilation. They are a startling reminder that it is indeed possible to preserve faith over time.

But it isn't so easy for the hidden Jews themselves. Most of them feel little direct identity with Judaism; they might recognize their odd family customs as an interesting historic anomaly, but Judaism as a spiritual belief system is as much an abstraction as the events of 1492. To them, the challenge is to reconcile the contradictions of their living faith with the revelations of history.

Where we are trying to understand our faith, they are trying to understand their history. Passing on family customs simply by tradition are not enough. As a group, they are dying out, and any remnants that are preserved will be based on individual hidden Jews having an understanding of both worlds and choosing to pass that on. "We don't fit in with a culture that is American Jewish, but we don't fit in with Spanish culture here, either," SC has said. "We're neither, we're in a twilight zone. And when there's not enough of us anymore, another page will be taken out of Jewish history. I want something to remain."
* * * * * * * *

Special thanks to Benjamin Shapiro and Stanley Hordes for their assistance in preparing this article.

Hidden Jews of New Mexico, Community Media Services, Community Activities

Paper Cut Designs, Links, Home