The Conquistadores and Crypto-Jews of Monterrey

Among the cities of Mexico, Monterrey has a mystique all its own, marked as it is by an enduring and controversial "Jewish question" regarding its founding in 1596. One Saltillo scholar, Vito Alessio Robles, has made the provocative claim that "all the citizens of Monterrey are descended from Jews."
This books reviews the evidence in support of the claim that many of the first settlers in Monterrey were of Jewish descent. In addition, this work contains new and exciting information, never before published, about the prominent Garza family in Monterrey that has long claimed to be descended from Jews. In the absence of documents to substantiate such a claim,scholars have viewed such assertions of the Garzas with benign skepticism. With the use of archival records of the Spanish Inquisition, it is demonstrated that the Garzas are indeed descended from Jews. Specifically, ancestors of the Garzas were burned at the stake by the Inquisition in the 1526 auto-de-fe held in the Canary Islands.
The historical problem of crypto-Jews, Jews who were outwardly professing Christians but who secretly practiced Judaism, arose during the forced conversion of Jews to Christianity in Spain (1391) and Portugal(1497). Many of the new converts,called New Christians or Conversos, rejected the Christianity thrust upon them and reverted to their Jewish religious practices. The Inquisition was established in Spain and Portugal to find and punish these heretical "false Christians". Although legally prohibited from leaving the country, New Christians in Spain and Portugal nonetheless found clandestine methods by which to escape, with the Inquisition in determined pursuit.The Conversos fled to safer havens in the Ottoman Empire,North Africa, Europe, and the New World.One of those temporary safe havens was el reino de Nuevo Leon (the kingdom of Nuevo Leon) in the northern part of New Spain (Mexico), of which Monterrey was to be its capital.
The first governor of this kingdom was the Spanish Conquistador,Luis De Carvajal y de la Cueva, himself of Jewish descent, who paved the way by arranging the crown's authorization of an entire shipload of crypto-Jewish relatives and recruits to serve as settlers in the region under his control. Although the governor and his immediate kinsmen were to suffer ultimately a tragic fate at the hands of the Inquisition, Carvajal attracted to his side many converso settlers who migrated northward, battled the indigenous natives, and founded the villas that later became major cities in northern Mexico. In this historical process,the Conversos of New Spain became conquistadores in theor own right, although at a cost to their original Jewish identity.
In this work, the saga of the principal figures in the Monterrey region during that formative era- Carvajal, Canto, Castano de Sosa, Montemayor is presented against the backdrop of the ongoing settlement effort amid battles with the Indians. Not forgotten is the contribution made by the Tlaxcalans, the Indian allies of the Spaniards, who co-founded the neighboring city of Saltillo and made the conquest of New Spain complete.
This book offers a fascinating literary portrait of the Spanish conquest of northeastern New Spain, and of the role played by Conversos of Jewish descent in the colonizing effort.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David T. Raphael received his M.D. and Ph.D. degree in Biomathematics from the University of Washington in Seattle. He has written two historical novels: The Alhambra Decree (winner of the 1992 International Fernando Jeno Literary Award) about the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain; and the Cavalier of Malaga, which deals with Converso life in 15th century Spain. He also edited The Expulsion 1492 Chronicles: An anthology of Medieval Chronicles Relating to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal.