Sephardic Jews of Panama and Colombia: the Curaçao Diaspora

These are daughter communities of Curaçao, and they should be researched as such.

From the early nineteenth century, Sephardi families from Curaçao — and from St Thomas and Jamaica — crossed to the mainland and settled along the Caribbean coast of what was then New Granada: Santa Marta, Riohacha, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and the isthmus of Panama. They were traders, they moved on established Curaçao commercial lines, and they carried the surnames of the Mikvé Israel congregation with them.

In Panama they built a congregation that survives. In Colombia most of them married into the local elite and became Catholic within two or three generations — which makes them one of the more interesting research problems on this site, because their descendants are numerous, frequently know exactly who they were, and are almost entirely absent from Jewish genealogical sources.

Why do these two countries share a page?

Because Panama was part of Colombia until 1903.

Before independence it was the Departamento de Panamá of the Republic of Colombia, and before that of New Granada. So for the whole period that matters here — the colonial New Christians, the Cartagena Inquisition, and the nineteenth-century Curaçao migration — Panama and Colombia are one jurisdiction with one set of archives.

A researcher looking for a Panamanian record from before 1903 needs to be looking in Colombia. That single fact justifies treating them together, and it is the mistake most likely to stall a search.

Was there a colonial Jewish presence?

Long before the Curaçao families, there were Portuguese New Christians on the isthmus and the Caribbean coast.

Panama was the hinge of the Spanish empire: silver from Peru came north to Panama City, crossed to Portobelo and Nombre de Dios, and sailed for Spain. Cartagena was the great slaving port of Spanish America. Both drew Portuguese merchants — and after the Union of the Crowns in 1580, that meant in substantial part New Christian merchants, working the asiento and the contraband trade.

They fall under the Inquisition of Cartagena de Indias, founded in 1610 — the third Spanish American tribunal after Lima and Mexico, with jurisdiction over New Granada, Panama, Venezuela and the Caribbean islands.

Cartagena had its own sweep against the Portuguese network in the 1630s, parallel to Lima’s of 1635–39 and Mexico’s of 1642–49 and driven by the same suspicion. The surgeon Blas de Paz Pinto is the best-known case; he died in the Inquisition’s cells in 1638.

Where those records are matters, and it is the same structural point as Macau, Hormuz and Manila on our other pages. The Cartagena tribunal’s own archive did not survive intact. The surviving case material is largely at the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid, in the Inquisition section, with related administrative papers at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville.

Absence from Colombian archives proves nothing.

There is no continuity between this layer and the modern communities.

The Curaçao diaspora

The community that matters for this site begins in the early nineteenth century.

Curaçao’s Sephardi community — the oldest continuous Jewish community in the Americas — had grown beyond what the island’s economy could support, and its trading houses had long worked the Spanish Main. As Spanish American independence opened the mainland to foreign merchants in the 1820s, Curaçao families settled the coast in numbers.

In Colombia they went to Santa Marta, Riohacha, Barranquilla and Cartagena, and Barranquilla in particular grew into a major commercial city substantially on their trade. In Venezuela the parallel settlement was at Coro, which our Venezuela page covers. In Panama they concentrated on the transit route.

The surnames are the Curaçao surnames — Senior, Curiel, De Sola, Cortissoz, Álvarez Correa, De Castro, Jesurun, Henríquez, Maduro, Pinedo, Sasso and others familiar from the Mikvé Israel registers.

The best-known descendant is Ernesto Cortissoz of Barranquilla, of Curaçao Sephardi family, who in 1919 founded SCADTA — the first commercial airline in the Americas and the ancestor of Avianca. Barranquilla’s international airport carries his name.

Panama: Kol Shearith Israel

Panama’s Jewish story turns on traffic.

The Panama Railroad, completed in 1855, and the California Gold Rush made the isthmus one of the busiest crossings in the world, and Jewish merchants came from Curaçao, St Thomas and Jamaica to serve it. An early congregation formed in the 1850s and did not survive.

Kol Shearith Israel was founded in 1876 by Sephardim from Curaçao, St Thomas and Jamaica, and it is the oldest surviving Jewish congregation in Panama. It is a direct daughter of Mikvé Israel, and its early membership is effectively a Curaçao and St Thomas membership list transplanted.

Panama then acquired two further communities, and — as in Argentina — they remained separate:

Shevet Ahim, founded in 1933 by Syrian Jews, largely of Aleppan origin and many arriving by way of Jerusalem. This is now the largest community in the country and a notably observant one.
Beth El, founded in 1935, Ashkenazi.

Establish which of the three before searching, as on our Argentina page. The communities have separate institutions and separate records.

Panama is also one of very few countries outside Israel to have had a Jewish head of state — and it has had two, from the same family of Curaçao Sephardi descent: Max Delvalle, acting President in 1967, and Eric Arturo Delvalle, President from 1985 to 1988.

Colombia: the assimilation problem

Colombia’s older Sephardi families present a research problem that is genuinely unusual, and worth stating plainly.

They did not disappear. They became Catholic.

The Curaçao families of the Caribbean coast arrived as merchants into a society with no Jewish institutions, married into the local elite, baptised their children, and within two or three generations were Colombian Catholic families of Jewish descent. There was no persecution and no crypto-Judaism. There was intermarriage, and a small community without a rabbi or a synagogue.

Three consequences follow for a researcher:

The records are Catholic parish records — baptism, marriage and burial — not Jewish ones. For most of these families the parish register is the only surviving record of the generation that arrived.

The descendants are numerous and often know. Descent from the Curaçao families is well known and unembarrassed among the Barranquilla and coastal elite, and family tradition is frequently accurate.

They are almost invisible in Jewish genealogical sources, because they stopped being Jewish before those sources were compiled.

Colombia’s Jewish communities today — Barranquilla, Bogotá, Cali, Medellín — are largely of twentieth-century Syrian, Eastern European and, later, other origin, and are institutionally separate from the old coastal families.

Where are the records?

The Curaçao end — start here

For most families this is where the useful records are, and they are good.

Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, Curaçao — the congregational registers, and the Beth Haim cemetery at Blenheim, one of the oldest Jewish burial grounds in the Americas.

Isaac S. and Suzanne A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles — the standard work, with a marriage dictionary and extensive genealogical material. This is the first book to obtain for either country.

St Thomas and Jamaica records, for the other founding streams of Kol Shearith Israel.

The Nationaal Archief, The Hague, and the Curaçao archives.

Panama

Archivo Nacional de Panamá, Panama City.

Registro Civil — Panamanian civil registration effectively from 1914. For anything before 1903, search Colombian records.

Catholic parish registers, for intermarried families.

Kol Shearith Israel — congregational records from 1876, and the Jewish cemetery in Panama City. Shevet Ahim and Beth El hold their own.

Panama Canal Zone records, 1904–1979, are American and are held at the US National Archives — a separate jurisdiction inside Panama, and easy to overlook.

Colombia

Archivo General de la Nación, Bogotá.

Catholic parish registers — the principal source for the nineteenth century, extensively digitised by FamilySearch. For assimilated families these are effectively the vital records.

Notarial archives — Latin American notarial records are excellent and under-used, and for merchant families they are outstanding: contracts, powers of attorney, wills, inventories, partnerships. Held regionally.

Registro Civil — civil registration was legislated in 1852 but only became general much later; treat the twentieth century as the reliable period.

Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid (Inquisición) and Archivo General de Indias, Seville — for the colonial New Christian layer.

What has and hasn’t been researched

The Curaçao coastal diaspora has never been reconstructed. Emmanuel and Emmanuel document the Curaçao end thoroughly; the mainland end — who went, when, where and into which families — has not been assembled. This is one page’s worth of work that would serve Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Curaçao at once.

Kol Shearith Israel’s founding membership is effectively a Curaçao and St Thomas emigration list and does not appear to have been published or matched against the island registers.

The Colombian Catholic parish records have not been searched for these families, though they are digitised and the surnames are distinctive.

The Cartagena Inquisition’s Portuguese cases are catalogued in Madrid and have not been worked for genealogy, only for history.

The pre-1903 Panama-in-Colombia point is not made anywhere, and it will be quietly costing people searches.

Organisations and repositories

Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, Curaçao, and the Curaçao national archives

Kol Shearith Israel, Shevet Ahim and Beth El, Panama City

Archivo Nacional de Panamá; Archivo General de la Nación, Bogotá

Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, and Archivo General de Indias, Seville

US National Archives — Panama Canal Zone records

FamilySearch — Colombian and Panamanian parish and civil registers

Help us find records

These are small communities with scattered records, and a little would go a long way. We are looking for:

Kol Shearith Israel’s early registers and its founding membership
Documentation of Curaçao families settling at Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Riohacha and Cartagena — commercial papers, letters, notarial deeds
Catholic parish entries for members of the coastal Curaçao families, which are frequently the only record of their arrival
Cemetery transcriptions from the Jewish cemetery in Panama City
Anything on the Cartagena Inquisition’s Portuguese defendants beyond the published histories

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

Panama and Colombia are researched from Curaçao. The Emmanuel volumes and the Mikvé Israel registers will usually identify the family and its origins; the mainland records — Catholic parish registers, notarial deeds and, for Panama after 1914, civil registration — will trace what happened next.

Two things catch people out: Panama was Colombian until 1903, so earlier records are in Colombia; and for many Colombian families the records are Catholic, because the families became Catholic. Neither is a dead end once you know. If you would like help, including for a Portuguese or Spanish nationality application, you can hire a Sephardic genealogist.

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