The Chosen Folks: Jews on the Frontiers of Texas

Chapter One. Los Judíos en la Fronte

one  Los Judíos en la Frontera By some accounts, the history of Judaism in the United States began in Texas. In 1579, nearly seventy-five years before the first Jews arrived in New York, the Spanish crown granted an enormous land charter in New Spain, including much of what is now northern Mexico and South Texas, to a Christian descendant of Portuguese Jews. Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva was born in Portugal to New Christian parents, Jews who had converted to Catholicism under threat of punishment by the Spanish Inquisition. In his youth, Don Luis traveled and worked throughout Portugal and Spain, but after a series of business setbacks he decided to sail for Mexico with a cargo of Spanish wine to sell there. With the proceeds, he purchased a cattle ranch near Panúco and soon entered naval service under the viceroy. In this capacity, Carvajal led an expedition against British pirates who had washed ashore after suffering defeat at sea against Spanish vessels. Outnumbered, he captured eighty-eight prisoners, whom he turned over to the Mexico City authorities. Soon after, Carvajal led attacks against the Chichimecan Indians of northern Mexico and quelled a native insurrection that threatened colonial settlement in the farthest reaches of the Spanish frontier. As a reward for these exploits, King Philip II made Carvajal governor of forty thousand square leagues of territory to subjugate and colonize with Spanish and Portuguese settlers.1 The New Kingdom of Leon (or Nuevo Reyno de Leon), as Carvajal titled his grant, was the first European polity to include portions of Texas, and its conqueror and governor came from a formerly Jewish family. The 1589 document, called a processo, with which the Mexican Inquisition brought charges against Luis de Carvajal, identified here as the governor of the New Kingdom of Leon (“nuevo Reyno de Leon”) in Mexico. He is described as descended from New Christians (“christianos nuevos de Judíos”) and is suspected of following Mosaic law and of seeking to teach and convert others (“Sospechoso en la lei de moison en que le quisieron enseñar y convertir”). The left side of the document lists the legal procedure he was to undergo. American Jewish Historical Society. The Chosen Folks 24 Don Luis’ rising fortunes would have been impossible had his New Christian status been known, and he was careful throughout his life to keep it secret. For many in his extended family, however, Judaism was more than a secret inheritance. The governor’s sister, Francisca; her husband Francisco Rodríguez de Matos; eight of their children, including Luis de Carvajal the Younger, the governor’s namesake and heir apparent; and even the governor ’s wife Guiomar were crypto-Jews, official converts to Catholicism who covertly maintained Jewish ritual practices. Many of these joined the governor in settling his colony, which, far from the center of Inquisitional power in Mexico City and even farther from the Spanish crown in Madrid, briefly provided refuge for as many as several hundred crypto-Jews. Ordinarily, Spanish land grants in the New World required that potential colonists certify to the government that they were descended from Old Christians rather than from converts to the Holy Faith. For reasons that remain unclear, Carvajal’s charter did not contain this provision, requiring only that Carvajal himself certify their Christian ancestry. This, significantly , he neglected to do. It may be that he leveraged his military successes to open a loophole through which his family could pass into the relative safety of the Mexican frontier; it is also possible, as Carvajal attested, that he knew nothing of his relatives’ reversion to the Jewish faith. In any case, there were probably crypto-Jews among Carvajal’s colonists, some of whom may have been not only the first Jews in Texas, but also the first to enter lands that would become the United States. Granting Carvajal’s colonists this important distinction raises great problems , however. The Mexican Inquisition investigated and punished many of Carvajal’s family members and other colonists, burning three of his near relatives at the stake, and Don Luis himself died a prisoner, in part because of his role in harboring them. But because of the secret nature of their religious devotion, and because the only evidence of it that exists today comes from documents prepared by the Inquisition in prosecuting them, it is impossible to verify with certainty that the...