Crypto-Judaism - Central, South America and Caribbean

Central, South America and Caribbean

As in the American Southwest, in the department of Antioquia, Colombia, as well as in the greater Paisa region, many families also hold traditions and oral accounts of Jewish descent. In this population, Y chromosome genetic analysis has shown an origin of founders predominantly from "southern Spain but also suggest that a fraction came from northern Iberia and that some possibly had a Sephardic origin". The Medellín tradition of the marranada, where a pig is slaughtered, butchered and consumed on the streets of every neighborhood each Christmas has been interpreted as an annual affirmation of the rejection of Jewish law.

A safe haven destination for Sephardic Conversos during the Spanish Colony was Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In 1557 many Crypto-Jews joined Ñuflo de Chávez and were among the pioneers who founded the city. During the 16th century several Crypto-Jews that faced persecution from the Inquisition and local authorities in nearby Potosí, La Paz and La Plata also moved to Santa Cruz for it was the most isolated urban settlement and because the Inquisition did not bother the Conversos there for this frontier town was meant to be a buffer to the Portuguese and Guaraní raids that threatened the mines of Peru. Several of them settled in the city of Santa Cruz and its adjacent towns of Vallegrande, Postrervalle, Portachuelo, Terevinto, Pucarà, Bolivia, Cotoca and others.

Several of the oldest Catholic families in Santa Cruz are in fact of Jewish origin; some traces of Judaic practices are still alive among them and have also influence the rest of the community. As recent as the 1920s, several families preserved seven-branched candle sticks and served dishes cooked with reminiscing kosher practices. It is still customary among certain old families to light candles on Friday at sunset and to mourn the deaths of dear relatives on the floor. After almost five centuries, some of the descendants of these families still acknowledge their Jewish origin, but practice Catholicism (in certain cases with some Jewish syncretism).

Some Crypto-Jews established in the outskirts of San José, Costa Rica since the XVI century. They passed as Catholics in public and practiced their Jewish rituals in privacy. In the town of Itzkazú (modern day Escazú) some Crypto-Jewish families could not achieve total secrecy of their condition and locals started to associate their rituals and unintelligible prayers in Hebrew as witchcraft. Since then, Escazú has been known in Costarrican folklore as the ¨city of the witches¨.

In addition to these communities, Roman Catholic-professing communities who are descendants of Crypto-Jews are said to exist in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and in various other Spanish-speaking countries of South America, such as Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Ecuador. From these communities comes the proverb, "Catholic by faith, Jewish by blood".

All the above localities were former territories of either the Spanish or Portuguese Empires, where the Inquisition eventually followed and continued investigating Crypto-Jews who had settled there. The Inquisition endured longer in the colonies than it had in Spain itself.