Sephardic Jews in Mexico: the Inquisition's Victims and the Ottoman Arrivals

Mexico’s Sephardi history is two separate stories that share a name but not a bloodline, and keeping them apart is the first task of any researcher.

The first is colonial: New Christians — conversos of Iberian origin, many of whom concealed a Jewish identity — who arrived with the conquest and were hunted down and effectively destroyed by the Mexican Inquisition between the 1580s and the 1640s.

The second is modern: Sephardim who immigrated from the crumbling Ottoman Empire — above all from Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, and from Turkey, the Balkans and Morocco — from the late nineteenth century onward, and who form the living Sephardi community today.

The two are not descended from one another, and the modern community is not a continuation of the colonial one.

Why does this split matter for research?

Because it decides which archive you work in.

The colonial New Christians left almost no records of their own — those who kept a Jewish identity did so in hiding — so they are documented mainly by the machinery built to destroy them: the Inquisition trial records in the Archivo General de la Nación.

The modern Sephardim, by contrast, are documented like any recent immigrant community, through civil registration, immigration files, community institutions and cemeteries.

Colonial New Christians (1519–c.1650). Conversos of Spanish and, especially, Portuguese origin, some of whom concealed a Jewish identity, persecuted by the Inquisition. Documented through trial records.

The modern Sephardi community (1880s–). Ottoman and North African Sephardim — Damascene, Aleppan, Turkish, Balkan, Moroccan — who built the living community. The main object of practical genealogy.

A note on descent claims

A movement, mainly in the southwestern United States, holds that large numbers of Hispano families are the continuing secret descendants of colonial conversos, still keeping hidden Jewish customs.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. See our page on Crypto-Judaism, New Christians and Bnei Anusim.

What does “Mexico” mean here?

For the colonial period, the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1521–1821) — far larger than modern Mexico, reaching into what is now the US Southwest.

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was formally established in Mexico City in 1571; before that, bishops and friars exercised inquisitorial authority. Practising Jews could not legally enter Spanish colonial territory at all, so those New Christians who retained a Jewish identity necessarily kept it concealed.

The colonial persecution had a specific political trigger. During the Iberian Union (1580–1640), when Spain and Portugal shared a monarch, Portuguese New Christian merchants moved freely into Spanish America; when Portugal regained independence in 1640, they became suspect, and the great persecutions of 1642–1649 followed.

Independence in 1821 abolished the Inquisition; the nineteenth-century Liberal reforms and the 1917 Constitution brought the religious toleration under which the modern community could live openly.

Where did the colonial Sephardim come from?

From Iberia by way of forced conversion, with a strong Portuguese element.

Conversos accompanied Cortés in 1519 — Hernándo Alonso, who built the boats used against Tenochtitlan, was among the soldiers executed as a Judaiser. From the 1530s New Christians migrated to New Spain despite the prohibition, settling in Mexico City, Veracruz, Acapulco, Campeche and mining towns such as Zacatecas.

Many of the families caught up in the great persecutions of the 1640s were of Portuguese New Christian origin, having entered during the Iberian Union; the immigrant generation was often Portugal-born, while their children were born in New Spain.

Gabriel de Granada, whose trial (1642–1645) is a translated and published proceso, is a good illustration: he was a Mexican-born boy, brought into Jewish practice by his mother and a wide maternal kin network whose roots ran back to the Iberian conversos.

The Carvajal episode

One episode stands out: the New Kingdom of León, granted in 1579 to Luis de Carvajal y Cueva, whose family included many who secretly kept a Jewish identity and whose settlement in the northeast (around Monterrey) drew conversos and Judaisers.

Carvajal and his family were prosecuted from 1589. His nephew, Luis de Carvajal the Younger, left memoirs now regarded as the earliest known writings by a Jew in the Americas — the Carvajal Manuscript, stolen in 1932 and recovered in 2017.

How were they destroyed?

The wealthy among them were transatlantic and trans-Pacific merchants; most were shopkeepers and artisans.

Some, like Simón Váez Sevilla — whose house served as a clandestine synagogue — rose to socialise with crown officials, their wealth built on slave-trade licences (asientos), tax farming, and supplying the fleet.

Then the Holy Office destroyed the community. After an initial purge of 1585–1601 (the execution of Mariana de Carvajal in 1601 became part of Mexican memory), the great persecutions of 1642–1649 culminated in the Gran Auto de Fe of 1649.

The Inquisition succeeded: it eliminated organised Jewish practice in colonial Mexico entirely.

What was an auto de fe?

The public instrument of this destruction — a solemn, theatrical ceremony of sentencing and punishment, staged in a main square before a crowd, in which penitents processed in the sambenito and coroza and the condemned were handed to the secular arm to be burned.

The 1574 Mexico City auto (which tried English and French Protestant sailors) and the 1649 auto against Portuguese New Christians accused of Judaising are the best documented.

It is worth remembering, for perspective, that Judaising was only ever a fraction of the Inquisition’s business — an eighteenth-century tally of over 500 cases is dominated by bigamy, solicitation, blasphemy and superstition, with Judaising by then a mere handful.

Where did they go?

Into silence and into the general population.

The colonial community did not migrate onward as a body; it was destroyed in place, and its survivors assimilated into Catholic Mexico. Where an individual line can be followed at all, it is followed backwards — through the trial records, and from there to the family’s Iberian origins — not forwards into a surviving hidden community.

The modern Sephardim followed the opposite trajectory — inward. From the 1880s, and heavily during and after the Revolution (1910–1920) and once the United States imposed immigration quotas in 1921, Ottoman Sephardim arrived: Damascenes, Aleppans, and Jews from Turkey and the Balkans, alongside Ashkenazim. They first settled in Puebla, Veracruz and the historic centre of Mexico City before concentrating in the capital.

Which modern community did your family belong to?

The modern Sephardi community is not one body but several, divided by place of origin — a division that persists in institutions and is essential to genealogy.

Alianza Monte Sinaí — from Damascus, founded 1912, Mexico’s first formal Jewish organisation
Comunidad Maguén David — from Aleppo
Comunidad Sefaradí — Ladino-speaking Jews from the Balkans and Turkey

These are distinct from the Ashkenazi community (Nidje Israel).

Two smaller congregations are often asked about and sit apart from the immigrant institutions: the Kahal Kadosh Bnej Elohim of Venta Prieta (Hidalgo), organised from the early twentieth century, and a small group in the Vallejo neighbourhood of Mexico City. Both have at times claimed descent from colonial conversos. The established communities generally do not recognise that descent, and we would treat any such claim as something to be shown from records, not assumed.

What records survive?

The records divide exactly as the two histories do.

Inquisition records — the colonial source

The Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in Mexico City holds the records of the Mexican Holy Office — the trials (procesos), denunciations and auto de fe relations that are the principal, often the only, documentation of individual colonial New Christians.

These are dense genealogical sources. A Judaising trial routinely names parents, spouses, children, kin and associates across the diaspora, precisely because the Inquisition mapped families.

Some are published and translated (for example the proceso of Gabriel de Granada), and there are printed auto de fe relations such as the souvenir account of the 1649 Gran Auto. Henry Charles Lea, Seymour Liebman, Solange Alberro, Eva Uchmany and Jonathan Israel are the scholarly guides to this material.

Modern civil and immigration records

For the immigrant community, the ordinary Mexican record set applies: civil registration from 1859, the 1930 national census, and — crucial for an immigrant community — the immigration files of the Archivo Histórico del Instituto Nacional de Migración (records from 1926) and the immigrant registration forms.

Much is on FamilySearch. Community institutions hold their own membership, marriage and burial records.

Community, cemetery and press

The Comité Central Israelita, the Centro de Documentación e Investigación Judío de México, and the individual communities (Monte Sinaí, Maguén David, the Sephardic Community) hold institutional records.

Jewish cemeteries are indexed through the IAJGS cemetery project; the National Library of Israel holds Mexican Jewish newspapers, including the Ladino and Yiddish press.

What has and hasn’t been researched

The colonial Inquisition is heavily studied; the modern community less so genealogically; and the link between them is genuinely unresolved.

The colonial trials are well worked but not exhausted. A large scholarly literature exists, but the AGN Inquisition series still holds unpublished procesos with untapped genealogical detail, especially on the Portuguese networks of the 1640s.

The Portugal connection. Because a large share of the accused families were of Portuguese New Christian origin, their genealogy runs back into Portugal and across the Portuguese-Atlantic diaspora — linking Mexico to Amsterdam, and to the same networks that reached Jamaica and the Caribbean.

Descent claims are not a substitute for records. A large movement asserts continuous secret Jewish practice among Hispano families, and genetic studies report Sephardi ancestry across the Mexican population. Neither establishes an unbroken Jewish line: genetic ancestry is not documented descent, and a family custom is not a genealogy. We do not build lines from these claims, and where a colonial converso descent is asserted we ask to see it proved from records.

The modern immigrant genealogy. The Syrian, Turkish and Balkan communities are under-documented in English-language genealogical work, though their own institutional records are rich and their origins abroad (Damascus, Aleppo, Istanbul, Salonika) are traceable.

Organisations and repositories

Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Mexico City — the Ramo de Inquisición, the essential colonial source

Archivo Histórico del Instituto Nacional de Migración — immigration records from 1926

Centro de Documentación e Investigación Judío de México (CDIJUM) and the Comité Central Israelita de México

Alianza Monte Sinaí (Damascus), Comunidad Maguén David (Aleppo), and the Comunidad Sefaradí (Balkans/Turkey) — community institutional records

FamilySearch — Mexican civil registration (from 1859), the 1930 census, and church records

IAJGS International Jewish Cemetery Project (Mexico); National Library of Israel (Mexican Jewish and Ladino press)

For the Portuguese end of a colonial line: the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish archives and the Portuguese Inquisition records (Torre do Tombo, Lisbon)

Help us find records

We are looking for:

Transcriptions or abstracts of AGN Inquisition procesos naming New Christian families, especially the Portuguese networks tried in the 1640s
Records linking colonial New Spain conversos back to their Portuguese and Spanish origins and to the Amsterdam community
Material on the Carvajal circle and the New Kingdom of León / Monterrey settlement
Community membership, marriage and burial registers of Monte Sinaí, Maguén David and the Sephardic Community, and their origins in Damascus, Aleppo, Istanbul and Salonika
Immigration and naturalisation files for Ottoman and North African Sephardim arriving 1880s–1940s
Documentary evidence — as opposed to oral tradition or genetic ancestry alone — for any family claiming converso descent in Mexico or the US Southwest

If you hold any of this, or know where it is, please email [email protected]. Material contributed is credited, and we are happy to work under any conditions you set.

Research services

Mexican research means two very different skill sets. A colonial converso line is traced through Inquisition trial records in the AGN — sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish palaeography — and usually runs back to Portugal. A modern Sephardi line is traced through civil, immigration and community records, and back to Damascus, Aleppo, Istanbul or Salonika. Both are specialist work. If you would like help, you can hire a Sephardic genealogist.

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Sephardic Jews in Mexico: the Inquisition’s Victims and the Ottoman Arrivals