Inquisition
Notable cases
The history of the Inquisition in New Spain against judaizantes is measured in concrete lives -- people who were denounced, arrested, interrogated, and in many cases executed for the crime of keeping the faith of their ancestors.
Hernando Alonso was one of the first documented cases. He arrived from Cuba with Hernan Cortes in 1520 and participated actively in the conquest and colonial life, serving as a witness in various legal matters from 1529. His case illustrates that the converso presence in New Spain is as old as the conquest itself.
Luis de Carvajal the Younger represents the most emblematic case. In 1589, he was accused and tried for practicing Judaism in secret. Under torture, he confessed that his family maintained Jewish customs. That confession sealed their fate: the Inquisition sentenced several family members to death at the auto de fe of 1596. His Memorias, written in prison, are the only first-person testimony of a judaizante in colonial Mexico.
Simon Vaez Sevilla, the powerful Portuguese merchant, was the central figure of the Gran Complicidad. His commercial and community network was dismantled piece by piece during the 1640s, dragging dozens of families into the dungeons of the Santo Oficio.
Tomas Trevino de Sobremonte, accused in 1625 and burned in 1649 after fourteen years of imprisonment, refused to recant until the end. His wife Maria Gomez died at the same stake. An anonymous sonnet remembers him as a martyr who died "to sanctify the name of God."
The autos de fe
The autos de fe were public ceremonies designed to display the power of the Inquisition and terrorize the population. They combined religious ritual, judicial theater, and public spectacle. The condemned paraded through the streets of Mexico City wearing sambenitos -- yellow tunics painted with crosses, flames, and demons indicating the severity of their offense.
The auto de fe of 1528 was the first to involve crypto-Jews in New Spain. Just seven years after the fall of Tenochtitlan, the episcopal authority was already persecuting judaizantes -- an unmistakable sign that conversos had arrived with the conquistadors.
The auto de fe of December 8, 1596 was the most devastating for a single family. Luis de Carvajal the Younger, his mother Francisca, and his sisters were burned in Mexico City's main plaza. Baltasar and Miguel, who had fled to Rome, were burned in effigy -- their likenesses consumed by flames in place of the fugitives.
The auto de fe of 1646 reconciled 41 judaizantes -- forcing them to publicly abjure their practices in exchange for penances and humiliations, but sparing their lives.
The auto de fe of April 11, 1649 was the largest in the history of New Spain. Held in the context of the Gran Complicidad, it marked the culmination of the persecution. Tomas Trevino de Sobremonte and others were burned alive. It was the last great wave of persecution against judaizantes in the viceroyalty.
Inquisitorial procedure
The inquisitorial process was designed to extract confessions and expose entire networks of judaizantes. Each stage served a specific purpose within a machinery of methodical destruction:
- Denunciation: Anyone could file a complaint. A suspicion, a rumor, a neighbor who noticed something unusual -- a dark house on Saturday, a kitchen that never smelled of pork, a burial with unfamiliar practices. Denunciations were anonymous: the accused never knew who had informed on them.
- Arrest and property seizure: The accused could be arrested without prior warning or explanation. At the moment of arrest, all property was seized by the Inquisition -- real estate, merchandise, cash, debts owed. Seizure was not provisional: property was rarely returned, even if the accused was acquitted.
- Hearings of admonition: The accused were interrogated in three formal hearings, admonished to tell the truth -- about themselves and about others. Pressure to inform on family members was a central tool: every confession produced new names, new arrests, new confessions.
- Torture: When admonitions failed to produce the desired confession, torture was employed. The rack (potro), the pulley (garrucha), and waterboarding (agua) were the most common methods. Torture did not seek truth -- it sought confession.
- Reconciliation: If the accused confessed and repented, they were "reconciled": they acknowledged their errors and submitted to penances including wearing the sambenito publicly, imprisonment, definitive confiscation of property, and perpetual prohibition from holding public office.
- Relaxation: For those who did not recant -- or for repeat offenders -- the sentence was relajacion al brazo secular: delivery of the condemned to the civil government for execution. The Inquisition did not execute directly -- it delegated death to civil authorities, maintaining the fiction that the Church did not shed blood.
Property seizure
The confiscation of property was, in many ways, the most devastating aspect of the persecution. When the Inquisition arrested a judaizante, it immediately seized all possessions: houses, shops, merchandise, cash, outstanding debts. Families were left destitute overnight.
Converso merchants -- who dominated key links in colonial commerce -- knew that arrest meant total economic ruin. That is why figures like Simon Vaez Sevilla placed their assets in the hands of trusted Portuguese friends when the threat became imminent. It was a race against time: protect the patrimony before the Inquisition could confiscate it.
Confiscated property financed the tribunal itself. The Inquisition did not rely solely on the Crown for its sustenance -- it fed on the fortunes it destroyed. This economic incentive partly explains why wealthy conversos were persecuted more aggressively than poor ones: every arrest of a prosperous merchant filled the coffers of the Santo Oficio.
Blood purity statutes
The Estatutos de Limpieza de Sangre were the silent weapon of persecution -- more insidious than the stake because they did not kill, but excluded. These rules verified the racial and religious "purity" of individuals, barring conversos and their descendants from institutions and positions of power, regardless of how many generations had passed since conversion.
In Spain, institutions such as the Colegio Mayor de San Bartolome in Salamanca adopted these statutes as early as 1480. The Statute of the Council of Toledo, devised by chief magistrate Sarmiento, went further: it excluded anyone who was not an Old Christian from all offices and positions.
In New Spain, blood purity determined who could enter guilds, universities, the clergy, and the government. Private foundations, schools, and artisan confraternities closed their doors to anyone with converso ancestry. For families of Jewish origin, the stain of blood was inherited as a perpetual sentence -- no matter how many generations had passed, no matter how devout their Christian life.
Conversos developed strategies to evade the statutes: strategic marriages with cristiano viejo families, falsification of genealogies, fraudulent blood purity certificates. Some went to the extreme of abandoning their children at church doors so they would be raised as Catholics with no trace of Jewish blood. The blood purity statutes did not just persecute the conversos -- they forced them to erase themselves.