Mexican Inquisition - Colonial Period Inquisition

Colonial Period Inquisition

When Holy Office of the Inquisition had been established in New Spain in 1571, it exercised no jurisdiction over Indians, except for material printed in indigenous languages. Its first official Inquisitor was Pedro Moya de Contreras, who established the “Tribunal de la Fe” (Tribunal of the Faith) in Mexico City. By this, he transferred the principles of the Inquisition set by Tomas Torquemada in Spain. However, the full force of the Inquisition would be felt on non-Indian populations, such as the “Negro,” “mulatto” and even certain segments of the European. Historian Luis Gonzalez Obregon estimates that 51 death sentences were carried out in the 235–242 years that the tribunal was officially in operation. However, records from this time are very poor and accurate numbers cannot be verified.

One group that suffered during this time were the so-called “crypto-Jews” of Portuguese descent. Jews who refused to convert to Christianity had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1537. When Spain and Portugal united shortly thereafter, many converted Portuguese Jews came to New Spain looking for commercial opportunities. In 1642, 150 of these individuals were arrested within three or four days, and the Inquisition began a series of trials. These people were accused of being ‘judaisers,’ meaning they still held Judaic beliefs. Many of these were merchants involved in New Spain’s principal activities. On 11 April 1649, the viceregal state staged the largest ever auto da fe in New Spain, in which twelve of the accused were burned after being strangulated and one person was burned alive. Most of the remainder were ‘reconciled’ and deported to Spain.

The best known case of this type was that of Luis de Carabajal y Cueva Born Jewish in Spain in the 16th century, he was a sincere convent to Christianity. However, he was married to a woman who would not give up her Hebraic faith even though he tried to convert her. Finally, when she decided to stay behind as he went to the West Indies to trade wine, he moved on to New Spain. There he became a businessman but was more noted as a soldier. He fought for the Spanish against the Indians in Xalapa and the Huasteca areas. Having made something of a name for himself, he brought a number of his family over from Spain to live there. His economic and political fortunes gradually reversed themselves as businesses failed and it was rumored that the family were secretly practicing Judaic rites. He was brought before the Inquisition and had 22 chapters of charges, including slave trading, read against him but the main charge was reverting back to the Judaic faith. Under torture he not only confessed to abandoning the faith, but denounced associates and even members of his own family. On 8 January 1596, he was executed in the Zocalo along with his mother and three sisters.

Another case was that of Nicolas de Aguilar. Aquilar was a mestizo, the descendant of a Spanish soldier and a P'urhépecha Indian. He was appointed as a civil official in a district in New Mexico. He attempted to protect the Tompiro Indians from abuses by Franciscan priests. In 1662, he was arrested, imprisoned, and charged with heresy. Tried in Mexico City, Aguilar vigorously defended himself but was convicted and sentenced to undergo a public auto de fe and banned from New Mexico for 10 years and government service for life.

After a series of denunciations, authorities arrested 123 people in 1658 on suspicion of homosexuality. Although 99 of these managed to disappear, the Royal Criminal Court sentenced fourteen men from different social and ethnic backgrounds to death by public burning, in accordance to the law passed by Isabella the Catholic in 1497. The sentences were carried out together on one day, 6 November 1658. The records of these trials and those that occurred in 1660, 1673 and 1687, suggest that Mexico City, like many other large cities at the time had an active underworld.

The last group that had to be careful during this time was scholars. Early attempts to reform the educational curriculum to keep pace with contemporary European influences were exterminated during the 1640s and 1650s by the Inquisition. The central target was Fray Diego Rodriguez (1569–1668), who took the First Chair in Mathematics and Astronomy at the Royal and Pontifical University in 1637, and tried to introduce the scientific ideas of Galileo and Kepler to the New World. For thirty years, he argued the removal of theology and metaphysics from the study of science. He was the leader of a small circle of academics that met semi-clandestinely in private homes to discuss new scientific ideas. Political struggles of the 1640s, however, brought the suspicions of the Inquisition down upon them and a series of investigations and trials followed into the middle of the 1650s. When academics worked to hide books banned by the Holy Office’s edit in 1647, the Inquisition required all six booksellers in the city to subject their lists to scrutiny under the threat of fine and excommunication.

Those sentenced under the Inquisition usually had these punishments carried out in a ceremony called the “auto de fe,” almost all of which were carried out in Mexico City. For such, all notables and most of the populace would turn out in their finest garb. The Church set up a stage with pulpits, rich furnishings for the noble guests, tapestries, fine cloth draped for decoration and to serve as a canopy over the stage. No expense was spared in order to show the power and the authority of the ecclesiastical authorities in this matter. In addition, all nobles from the viceroy himself, his court, and all others in position of authority would be conspicuously in appearance. The ceremony began with a sermon and a long declaration of what constituted the true faith. The assembly was required to swear to this. The condemned were led onto the stage dressed capes with marks showing their crime and their punishment. They also were a kind of dunce cap. They were given a chance to repent, in many cases, to modify their sentences, such as strangulation instead of burning alive at the stake. Then sentences were carried out.

The Inquisition remained officially in force until the early 19th century. It was first abolished by decree in 1812. However, political tensions and chaos led to something of its return between 1813 and 1820. It was abolished for good in 1820.