Are there crypto Jews in New Mexico in the United States? The claim is that ancestors of the Hispano community of New Mexico and parts of Colorado were secretly Jewish and fled north from colonial Mexico for religious freedom.
This may be a minority belief in the Hispano population but is often promoted and amplified by liberal-minded Ashkenazi Jews.
Native American Narrative
In one telling, the ancestors of the Hispano community (the “crypto Jews”) were conquistadors who murdered and enslaved local peoples. They became the local ruling class until the region was conquered by the United States in 1846, when they suffered a loss of status.
In 2020, statues of their founding fathers were removed at the insistence of Native American activists.
Dr Stanley Hordes’ Hypothesis
An alternative account is hypothesised by former New Mexico State Archivist, Dr Stanley Hordes. In his book To the End of the Earth. Hordes’ hypothesis is that a group of crypto Jews travelled north from modern Mexico to live in greater religious freedom in the borderlands. These were the original crypto-Jews of New Mexico.
Hordes proposes a Jewish variant of the American foundational myth of the Pilgrim Fathers fleeing religious oppression. Lack of documentation meant that he could only review a minority of the alleged crypto Jews who migrated north. For these, the genealogical claims in his book do not come close to meeting accepted standards.
Advocates of Crypto Judaism in New Mexico
Some who have come after Hordes have presented his hypothesis as undisputed fact, which he never claimed.
A Society for Crypto Judaic Studies and others form a community of researchers who appear to be ideologically committed to a belief in crypto-Judaism. By virtue of everyone who regularly discusses the claim being supporters of it, a casual observer might assume it is true. However, there is very limited overlap between advocates of crypto-Judaism in New Mexico and mainstream academia.
Professor Judith Neulander’s critique of Hordes’ crypto Jew hypothesis
Hordes was challenged by Professor Judith Neulander who argued that there is a case of mistaken identity. Neulander’s argument is that a populations passed through Protestantism and later identify with the people of the ‘Old Testament’. This is a familiar story when reviewing Judaic claims of indigenous populations in Africa and Asia. In the case of the Hispanos of New Mexico, identifying as Jews also raised their status in some peoples’ eyes.
Neulander suffered abuse from some who had developed or supported a crypto-Jewish identity and chose to focus her studies elsewhere.
Who is right about crypto Jews?
I have not studied the subject in detail. Clearly there were a handful of identified individuals in the region in early modern times who secretly identified as Jews, but there is a lack of evidence supporting Hordes’ hypothesis.
Probably most Spanish colonial populations contained people of Jewish ancestry, but it is very difficult to ascertain if they even knew about this ancestry, let alone what they thought about it. In the absence of meaningful archival or genetic evidence, or historic artifacts, the claim of crypto-Jews in New Mexico seems weak.
As Jewish genealogists our encounter is mainly with advocates of crypto-Judaism in New Mexico. Many, perhaps most, New Mexican researchers reject the claim. Some feel it is an assault on their Catholic identity and religion.
A number of well-meaning Ashkenazi Jews, unfamiliar with Sephardic history and genealogy, have inserted themselves into the debate, bringing Ashkenazi folk traditions about Sephardim. In some cases, there seems to be an eagerness to connect with people of other skin tones. While their intensions are presumably good, the waters have been muddied for researchers.
Genetic Genealogy to the Rescue?
Ultimately, genetics may answer the question of crypto-Jews in New Mexico and Colorado. A paper published in 2005 suggested that local men were of Spanish but not Jewish origins. DNA research has significantly advanced since then, and the findings of this research will likely be superseded.
False Claims about Crypto-Jews in New Mexico
The waters have been further muddied by claims that are clearly untrue, including:
- The Hispano population spoke Ladino. Apparently this confuses the Ladino Jewish language of the Ottoman Empire, complete with local loan words, with a local dialect. Possibly this is based on an erroneous belief that all Sephardim spoke Ladino.
- Stars of David on graves indicate Jewish ancestry, but this symbol was not widely adopted by Sephardim as a symbol of Judaism until the second half of the 19th century.
- Traditions that may be local, Catholic or Ashkenazi are interpreted as being Sephardic
- A particular type of cancer is interpreted as indicating Sephardic ancestry
One non-local-born advocate of the existence of crypto-Jews in New Mexico, a self-described expert on Sephardic genealogy, stated that there is evidence of Sephardic ancestry, but it is secret.