To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (review)

Historian Stanley Hordes's first book, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, argues for their sustained presence in New Mexico from the state's founding as part of the Spanish colonies to the present, elaborating the significant contribution to regional history of Iberian converts (conversos) who, although nominally Catholic, practiced Judaism in secret. By virtue of being colonized by the Spanish, the northern frontier of New Spain was most likely home to descendants of Sephardim. The historical question concerning conversos in New Mexico is if, among them, there was an established community that continued practicing Judaism and whether they constituted an influential presence in society. To this end, Hordes documents the Sephardic ancestry of early colonizers and uncovers signs of crypto-Judaic practices during the past five centuries. In a case like this one, a historian's work is to determine the plausible existence of such a community because archival documentation is inconsistent, requiring him to unearth "the history of a group who for centuries tried desperately to cover their tracks, to leave behind as little evidence as possible" (3). Of necessity, the study must include calculated speculation, and it is this aspect of the text that is most vulnerable to criticism.

While Hordes has come under scrutiny for his claims about present-day Sephardim in New Mexico, To the End of the Earth, in its majority, treats the converso diaspora from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World in the colonial epoch. The study, a culmination of more than twenty years of research, deserves to be evaluated on its merits as well as for its part in the ongoing debate on Hispanos who have claimed Jewish ancestry in recent years.¹

On the whole, Hordes's extensive archival research opens up the possibility of on-going crypto-Judaic influences in New Mexico and affirms a converso presence in the northern periphery of the Spanish Empire. The opening chapter chronicles the first Jews who arrived in the Iberian Peninsula after the destruction of the Second Temple (200 B.C.E.) and traces their history under Roman, Visigoth, Islamic, and medieval Christian rule when they served as unequal partners to the majority regime. In the fifteenth century, the anti-Semitic policies of the Catholic Monarchs led to pogroms and mass forced conversions that culminated in the 1492 order of expulsion.

The strongest chapter of Hordes's work discusses the well-documented community of hidden Jews in Mexico City. Detailing their participation in the life of the city as well as their community, the author both draws on and complements David Gitlitz's Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (1996).

In the following three chapters, Hordes argues that conversos played a significant role in the settlement of the shifting northern frontier. He contends that waves of Inquisitorial prosecutions of judaizantes (judaizers) on both sides of the Atlantic led conversos to head first to Nuevo León, then to New Mexico, in search of an atmosphere of greater tolerance.

The following chapter describes the participation of crypto-Jews in the politics of the New Mexican colony as advocates for civil governance throughout the protracted struggles between the Franciscans and local authorities.

Without punitive records, archival traces of possible crypto-Jews also decline throughout the period of the transfer of New Mexico to the United States in 1846 and after. In his penultimate chapter on nineteenth-century "Anglo" society, Hordes conjectures that conversos could have been among the early converts to Protestantism and that, ultimately, remaining believers were assimilated into mainstream American culture.

In general, sloppy thinking about religious identity undermines the argument of the text. Hordes fails to accommodate the sizeable middle ground between crypto-Jews and Old Christians in early modern Spain, privileging any trace of Jewish blood as determinant of one's fundamental "Jewishness." Thus, the author makes...