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∞∞π A CONVERSO SURGEON IN THE VICEROYALTY OF PERU 5 In ∞∏≥Ω, more than a generation after Frei Diogo d’Asumpção’s death, the converso physician Francisco Maldonado de Silva was burned alive in Lima as an impenitent judaizer. During his twelve years in prison, he engaged in lengthy disputations with theologians summoned by the Inquisition. His dramatic career made a great impression on the ex-converso diaspora, further elaborating the emerging image (and self-image) of the celebrated judaizing martyr.∞ In terms of identity formation, Maldonado’s childhood had been a wrenching and bewildering one. His father, Diego Núñez de Silva, was a crypto-Jew from Lisbon, a surgeon by profession.≤ As was true of quite a few other Portuguese conversos, he had first immigrated to Brazil and then made his way via Río de la Plata to the silver mines of Potosí in the Viceroyalty of Peru (at the time this territory included most of Spanish-ruled South America).≥ He may have castilianized his name in Peru to obscure his Portuguese origins, which Spaniards invariably associated with Jewish ancestry.∂ It is not clear whether he arrived in Peru before or after an inquisitorial tribunal was established in Lima in ∞∑∏Ω. In Potosí, Diego Núñez practiced medicine and fraternized with other Portuguese New Christians. Some time before ∞∑πΩ, for unknown reasons (perhaps influenced by the first penancing of a judaizer by the Lima tribunal in ∞∑π∫),∑ he moved south to the small town of San Miguel de Tucumán. This town, in what is today northern Argentina, had been established at a major pass out of the Aconquija mountains as a strategic center to safeguard the roads to the plains.∏ The entire region of Tucumán was at the time developing as a vital source of food for the boomtown of Potosí, which was located in mountainous terrain not suitable for agriculture. A number of Portuguese New Christians settled there, perhaps in part because it was only in the early seventeenth century that comisarios of the Lima tribunal had begun to function in the region.π The province of Tucumán was a frontier area, with European women in short supply. Now in his thirties, Diego contracted a marriage with the daughter of a local Old Christian encomendero—a member of the tiny Spanish rural elite who were granted the right to exploit Indian labor. As an encomendero in the Tucumán province, making his livelihood from the sale of his crops and livestock, Diego’s ∞∞∫ DYING IN THE LAW OF MOSES father-in-law was probably not a man of impressive wealth or social status. He and his daughter, Aldonza Maldonado, presumably knew of (or suspected) Diego’s New Christian ancestry. But Tucumán was a world away from Seville or Madrid. In a place where the overwhelming majority of the population was Indian, with a growing mestizo population, customary social barriers between Europeans were instinctively relaxed. It is certain that Aldonza and her father knew nothing of the groom’s ancestral orientation to the ‘‘Law of Moses.’’ If Diego Núñez de Silva had hoped to find his fortune in the Americas, he was soon disillusioned. Driven to look for more profitable work, he uprooted his family numerous times, moving from town to town in the Tucumán province. But while he may not have thrived in his practice, he had ample opportunity in this region to develop contacts with other Portuguese New Christians. Beginning in the ∞∑∫≠s, the towns of Tucumán and Rio de la Plata became points along a route for contraband tra≈c that stretched from Potosí to Buenos Aires—a route that was opened and developed primarily by Portuguese New Christian merchants. Many of these merchants had entered New Spain illegally from Brazil. They used the route to transport untaxed silver from the Potosí mines to southern Brazil and then to Lisbon. In the opposite direction, they transported contraband European imports and slaves. The Spanish government sought to drive them out, perceiving their activity to be a threat to both the treasury and the faith. But its e√orts were largely fruitless. Records indicate that Portuguese New Christians continued to constitute a significant minority in the Tucumán orbit.∫ Between ∞∑πΩ and ∞∑Ω≤, five children were born to Diego Núñez de Silva and Aldonza Maldonado. Francisco Maldonado de Silva, the subject of this chapter, was the youngest. While Francisco was still a young boy, his father sought to inculcate crypto-Jewish beliefs...

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