Southern Colorado's (Possibly) Hidden Hispanic Jews

by Ellen Marsalis

Mike Atlas-Acuña began his quest shortly after his mother’s death. Since his teenage years in Catholic school, he had doubted the religion that his family had practiced for generations. He wondered how Jesus could be the Messiah. Although his family was “more Catholic than the Catholics,” Acuña’s great-grandmother taught her children and grandchildren that it was not right to pray to the saints. They went to mass on Saturday, never on Sunday. When he became engaged to Helen Atlas, a Jew faithful from childhood, his’s mother gave them her blessing. “In fact, she was ecstatic that I chose to marry a Jew.”

When he and Helen adopted their daughter, Sara, Mike Acuña converted to Judaism. He wanted their child to grow up in a home that practiced religion, a family that “walked the walk.” Soon after Sara’s adoption, Mike’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“I don’t want to die as a Catholic,” she told her son. On her deathbed, a local rabbi where she lived in California granted her wish and assisted her conversion to Judaism. That same year, 1990, Mike’s brother David converted to Judaism and another brother, Daniel, has subsequently begun studying for his conversion.

In one of the ironic results of the American “melting pot” with its loss of foundational cultural knowledge over several generations, the death of Mike and David’s mother made them want to know more about their heritage. They were especially puzzled and curious about their mother’s desire to convert to Judaism. Earlier that year, Mike had read about a culture called secret or hidden or crypto-Jew.

The Inquisition and the Jews

On August 3, 1492, the day before Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain, the Spanish Inquisition ordered Jews to convert to Catholicism, leave the Iberian Peninsula, or die as heretics. Many sought refuge in the Netherlands, in Great Britain, and in the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Many stayed.

Those who remained converted to Catholicism. These converts were called conversos. Although the term conversos includes all converts to Catholicism, whether formerly Protestant, Muslim, or Jewish, this article deals only with Jewish conversos.

Sephardad is the Hebrew word for the Iberian Peninsula: Spain and Portugal. Jews who lived there were called Sephardim or Sephardic Jews. (The term Ashkenaz or Ashkenazic Jew applies to Eastern European Jews.) Some Sephardic conversos were not faithful to the forced Catholic religion. “Crypto-Judaism” is the term used to define the secret beliefs and customs of those who adhered secretly to the Law of Moses while publicly upholding Catholicism.

As Jews, these people had been separated and ostracized from mainstream Catholic society, but as conversos, they had access to societal privileges and jobs that were formerly denied them. They were viewed as a threat because they were no longer identifiable Jews who could be kept “in their place.” They were technically Christians. Although many converted voluntarily and became devout Catholics, all “New Christian” Jews were perceived as insincere and unfaithful. Catholic society soon established a new separation between itself and the conversos, refusing to accept them as equals. By the mid-sixteenth century, “Old Christians” had established “purity of blood” laws to exclude “New Christians” from many areas of society.

The threat of these “heretics” was one reason given for instituting the Spanish Inquisition. Prior to the Inquisition, conversos could quietly practice Jewish customs with no risk to life or property. Conversos had already been rejected from the larger Christian community regardless of their religious practices, and by the mid 1500s the majority of Spanish conversos were born into Catholicism. As descendants of the original forced converts, they had no personal experience as Jews. Yet, assimilation into Christian culture was denied by the hatred, rejection and intolerance they suffered because of their “impure” blood.

From the beginning of the Inquisition, any observance of Jewish law or ritual became a punishable act. The penalty was confiscation of property or death, not only for the person found guilty, but for family members and associates as well. The Jewish culture was forced underground. One reason cited for the 1492 expulsion was to rid Spain and Portugal of the teachers, mentors and suppliers of Jewish goods for the crypto underground. After the expulsion, there were no rabbis, no ritual slaughterers to supply kosher meat, no mohels (circumcisers), and no synagogues. The sources essential to knowledge and guidance were destroyed. The Jewish community apparently disappeared.

Oral tradition became the only means for transmission of law, ritual and custom. Over time, much of the culture and most beliefs were lost. Certain rituals, such as circumcision, were abandoned. As time passed, most crypto-Jews assimilated into the Catholic mainstream and nearly all their Judaic practices were abandoned. Standardized religion could not be maintained in crypto-Jewish society. A few, however, maintained the customs of their ancestral faith and passed the traditions to their children and grandchildren. These family customs and traditions give today’s searchers valuable clues to their Jewish heritage.

Inquisition transcripts are the only documentation of the presence of crypto-Judaism that survive today. Researchers believe that some settlers who came to Spain’s American colonies were conversos or descendants of conversos. Fleeing the inquisitors after 13 people were burned to death in Mexico in 1649 for being crypto-Jews, somemay have ultimately made their way to the remote areas of northern New Mexico and later, during the nineteenth century, Southern Colorado, either from fear of the Inquisition and execution or from loyalty to Judaism.

NEXT: gravestones with six-petaled lilies that crypto-Jews used to disguise the Star of David.

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