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Luis de Carvajal and His People
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 April 2008
Extract
This work discusses some aspects of the life of Luis de Carvajal, the head of the well-known Carvajal family. This man was Portuguese by birth, which meant that he was not allowed to go to the Spanish New World. Nevertheless, in 1579, Philip II awarded him a vast territorial entity in New Spain, called Nuevo Reino de León, and allowed him to bring to it a large number of people without having to certify their being Old Christians. Nearly ten years later, he was apprehended by orders of Viceroy Manrique de Zuñiga and brought to Mexico City, where he was jailed in the Crown's prison. On April 14, 1589, he was transferred to the secret jails of the Spanish Inquisition, where he was subjected to a nine-month-long trial, accused of heresy, of knowingly bringing Jews to New Spain, and of concealing their religious activities. Ultimately, he was found guilty of the last two charges and was sentenced to a six-year exile from New Spain. However, before the sentence was carried out, he was returned to the Crown's jail, where he died a year later.
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References
1. This was the name our protagonist used throughout his life, although official documents dating from 1579 refer to him as Luis de Carvajal de la Cueva. This was done to differentiate him from two well-known men, also named Luis de Carvajal. One was the admiral of the Spanish Armada off the coast of Flanders during the 1550s. The other was an artist who was then painting some frescoes in El Escorial.
2. Vicente Riva Palacios, México a Través de los Siglos, vol. II, El Virreinato (México: Ballescá y Compañía, 1888); and Alfonso Toro, Los Judios en la Nueva España en el Siglo XVI (México: Archivo General de la Nación, 1932).
3. Vito Alessio Robles, Monterrey en la Historia y en la Leyenda (Antigua Librería de Robredo de José Porrua e hijos, 1936); repr., Acapulco, Saltillo y Monterrey en la Historia y la Leyenda (México: Editorial Porrua, 1978), 290.
4. Mariano Cuevas, Historia de la Nación Mexicana (México: Talleres Tipograficos Modelo, 1940), chap. XXIV.
5. Primo Feliciano Velazquez, Historia de San Luis Potosí, vol. I (México: Sociedad Méxicana de Geografía y Estadistica, 1946).
6. Julio Jimenez Rueda, Herejías y Supersticiones (México: Imprenta Universitaria, 1946).
7. Eugenio del Hoyo, Historia de Nuevo León (Monterrey: Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey, 1972).
8. Abelardo Leal, Jr., El Nuevo Reyno de León (Monterrey: Universidad de Nuevo León, 1982).
9. Seymour B. Liebman, New World Jewry, 1493–1825: Requiem for the Forgotten (New York: Ktav, 1982).
10. Robert S. Weddle, Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500–1685 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985).
11. Martin A. Cohen, The Martyr: The Story of a Secret Jew and the Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001).
12. David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002).
13. Richard G. Santos, Silent Heritage: The Sephardim and the Colonization of the Spanish North American Frontier (San Antonio, TX: New Sepharad Press, 2000).
14. David T. Raphael, The Conquistadores and Crypto-Jews of Monterrey (Valley Village, CA: Carmi House, 2001).
15. Stanley M. Hordes, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
16. Milagro del Vas Mingo, Las Capitulaciones de Indias en el Siglo XVI (Madrid: Instituto de Coperación Interamericano, 1986).
17. Variants of this have also been proposed. For example, in El Nuevo Reyno de León, p. 1, Leal quotes Alessio Robles as saying that Philip II took a 2 million ducat loan from Carvajal in exchange for Nuevo Reino de León.
18. Hoyo, Historia de Nuevo León, chap. IV.
19. Seymour B. Liebman, Requiem por los Olvidados (Madrid: Altalena, 1984), 39.
20. The Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias was the body charged with advising Philip II on all matters concerning the Spanish territories in the New World.
21. AGI, Mexico, 103, S/N. The cover reads, “Información de Oficio recibida en la Real Audiencia de México sobre la que dio el Capitán Luis de Carvajal sobre sus Méritos y Servicios.”
22. The Real Audiencia de Mexico was the highest court in New Spain. It consisted of four to six oidores, or judges, appointed by the king, and the viceroy, who presided over it.
23. The document is cited in Spanish Sea by Weddle, who refers to it as Carvajal's “Declaration.” Unfortunately, his reading of the document is incorrect, for he believed it was the record of a trial against Carvajal, as his remarks on p. 338 show. There he states, “In January of 1578, he (Carvajal) was summoned to Mexico City to face accusations that he had deliberately falsified—to say the least, exaggerated, his own record, which was said to be less than honorable.”
24. Samuel Temkin, “Los Méritos y Servicios de Carvajal,” Revista de Humanidades (Instituto Tecnólogico de Monterrey), no. 21 (2006): 147–85.
25. AGI, Mexico, 103, S/N. MdC, sworn testimony by Luis de Villanueva.
26. AGI, Mexico, 103, S/N. MdC, sworn testimony by Francisco de Puga.
27. Included among these documents are powers of attorney given to Carvajal by two towns in New Spain: Tampico and S. Esteban del Puerto.
28. AGI, Mexico, 103, S/N. Letter from the Consejo de Indias to the king.
29. AGI, Contratación, 5538.L.1\1\478 recto–483 recto. A paleographic version by Israel Cavazos was published in 1977 by the Dirección General de Investigaciones Humanisticas de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León.
30. Eugenio del Hoyo, “Notas y Comentarios a la ‘Relación’ de las personas nombradas por Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva para llevar al descubrimiento, pacificación y población del Nuevo Reino de León. 1580,” Humanitas 19 (1978): 251–81.
31. Raphael, The Conquistadores and Crypto-Jews of Monterrey, chap. 7; and Hordes, To the End of the Earth, 85–86, 97 n. 14.
32. The Casa de la Contratación was the royal institution in Seville that dealt with all commercial trade with the Spanish New World.
33. Peter Boyd-Bowman, “Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the Indies until 1600,” Hispanic American Historical Review 56, no. 4 (1976): 580–604.
34. AHP, Escribanía de Juan Bernal de Heredia. Oficio 21, libro 1, February 15, 1580, folio 1019.
35. AHP 14288, Escribanía de Juan Bernal de Heredia. Oficio 21, libro 1, January 22, 1580, folio 815.
36. AHP 14288, Escribanía de Juan Bernal de Heredia. Oficio 21, libro 1, January 25, 1580, folio 819v.
37. AHP 14288, Escribanía de Juan Bernal de Heredia. Oficio 21, libro 1, February 7, 1580, folio 1001.
38. AHP 14288, Escribanía de Juan Bernal de Heredia. Oficio 21, libro 1, February 9, 1580, folio 1005.
39. It is true that the annexation of Portugal by Philip II opened the door through which many Portuguese crypto-Jews went to the New World, but that event took place in the second half of 1580, after Carvajal and his people had left Spain. See Francisco Ribeiro da Silva, Filipe II de España, rei de Portugal (Zamora: Fundación Rei Alfonso Henriquez, 2000).
40. Among these ninety-six, we count forty-nine adults, seventeen of whom were females, and forty-seven minors, twenty-four of whom were female.
41. A much higher proportion is given by Eugenio del Hoyo. However, as pointed out earlier, his lists include people who did not come with Carvajal.
42. As explained at length by Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, the Judaism practiced by crypto-Jews was limited to following only a few Jewish rituals, such as keeping the Sabbath and keeping some dietary laws.
43. Procesos de Luis de Carvajal (el Mozo) (Archivo General de La Nación, México, 1935), 55. The quotation also appears in Toro, Los Judios en la Nueva España en el Siglo XVI, 249.
44. See, e.g., Cohen, The Martyr, 56–58.
45. Alessio Robles, Monterrey en la Historia y la Leyenda, 290.
46. Cuevas, Historia de la Nación Mexicana, 267.
47. Hoyo, Historia de Nuevo León, 120.
48. Velazquez, Historia de San Luis Potosí, 1:323.
49. Cohen, The Martyr, 39–40.
50. Liebman, Requiem por los Olvidados, 39.
51. In the Spanish tradition, a person's given name is followed by the surname of his or her father and then by that of the mother. In the Portuguese tradition, the surname order is reversed, so that the surname of the father appears last. However, in both traditions, it is the father's surname that is transmitted to the following generation.
52. To arrive at these dates, we have assumed that Gaspar de Carvajal was in his mid- to late twenties when Carvajal was born. Though not exact, this range indicates that Gaspar was born around 1510. Proceeding in the same manner and remembering that Gaspar was the second-born son of Gutierre, we estimate that Carvajal's paternal grandfather was born around 1480 and married around 1505. The move to Portugal thus took place between the births of Melchor after 1505 and of Gaspar in 1510.
53. Pilar Huerga Criado, En la Raya de Portugal (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2001).
54. J. Lucio D'Azevedo, Historia dos Christãos Novos Portugueses (Lisbon: Livraria Classica Editora, 1921).
55. According to the Inquisition records of Carvajal's nephew by the same name, this Duarte de León was a rich man who lived in Lisbon and whose son-in-law was don Rodrigo de Castro (see Luis de Carvajal, (el Mozo), Archivo General de la Nación, México, 1935, p. 364). This Don Rodrigo de Castro seems to have been a distinguished sixteenth-century Jewish physician born in Portugal.
56. Alonso de León, Historia de Nuevo León (Mexico: Librería de la Viuda de Ch. Bouret, 1909), chap. VII.
57. Hoyo, Historia de Nuevo León, 104.
58. During Carvajal's years in Benavente, the Count of Benavente was Antonio Alonso Pimentel de Herrera, one of Spain Grandees. See Mercedes Sinal Lopez, Los condes-duques de Benavente en el Siglo XVII (Benavente: Centro de Estudios Benaventanos, 1984).
59. AGI, Mexico, 336B, Carta del Arzobispo de México a Su Majestad, November 20, 1582.
60. AGI, Mexico, 103, S/N. MdC, Sworn testimony by Francisco Aguilar, 1578.
61. Temkin, “Los Méritos y Servicios de Carvajal.”
62. This was Guiomar's name until the death of her father in late 1579 or early 1580, after which she changed her surname to Ribera.
63. This is, apparently, the first time that the names of Nuñez's parents have surfaced. Incidentally, it is possible that Nuñez's mother was related to Francisca Nuñez, Carvajal's maternal grandmother. If so, Carvajal and his wife Guiomar were related. The basis for this possibility stems from Miguel's surname, which often occurs in the Vazquez-Carvajal family, and the recurring appearance, over several generations, of the name Isabel Nuñez on both the Vazquez-Carvajal and León-Nuñez families.
64. Elias Lipiner, Os Baptizados em Pie (Lisbon: Vega, 1998), 282.
65. AHP, Protocolos, 14288, Escribanía de Juan Bernal de Heredia. Oficio 21, libro 1, February 13, 1580, folios 1073–79.