History of the Jews in Mexico

The history of the Jews in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of Conversos, often called Marranos or "Crypto-Jews", referring to those Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism and that then became subject to the Spanish Inquisition. During the period of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1521–1821), a number of Jews came to Mexico, especially during the period of the Iberian Union (1580–1640), when Spain and Portugal were ruled by the same monarch. That political circumstance allowed freer movement by Portuguese crypto-Jewish merchants into Spanish America. When the Portuguese regained their independence from Spain in 1640, Portuguese merchants in New Spain were prosecuted by the Mexican Inquisition. When the monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico was replaced with religious toleration during the nineteenth-century Liberal reform, Jews could openly immigrate to Mexico. They came from Europe and later from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, including Syria, until the first half of the 20th century. Today, most Jews in Mexico are descendants of this immigration and still divided by diasporic origin, principally Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim and Judaeo-Spanish-speaking Sephardim. It is an insular community with its own religious, social and cultural institutions, mostly in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara. However, since the 1880s, there have been efforts to identify descendants of colonial era Conversos both in Mexico and the Southwestern United States, generally to return them to Judaism. Jews and Conversos were part of the conquest and colonization in Mexico, and key participants in the transatlantic and transpacific trade networks, as well as development of domestic trade. Conversos accompanied Hernán Cortés in 1519. These were members of Jewish families which had been forcibly converted to Christianity to avoid expulsion from Spain after the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors. The reconquest was followed by the Spanish Inquisition, which made the Conversos one of their targets, with accusations of reverting to Judaic practice.