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The Sephardic Awakening in

America

Dell F. Sanchez, Ph.D.

Sephardic Jews of America's Southwest have just begun to surface after 500 years of ob-
scurity. This Diaspora, during which these particular Jews were totally stripped of their identity,
has been longer than the 240 years of exile in Egypt or the 70 years in Babylon. These are remnants
of the Spanish and the Mexican Inquisitions of which so many people are unaware.

Inquisition and Autos de Fe

In Spain, the Inquisition spread all across Europe and parts of North Africa while in the
West it spread across Latin America and the entire Republic of Mexico. The Mexican Inquisition
forced Sephardic Jews to find refuge across the Rio Grande River and in south central Texas, New
Mexico and Southern Colorado. They were fleeing the horrific and dehumanizing acts of forced
conversions to the Catholic faith through what is called Autos de Fe and wearing of horrible vests
called San Benitos. Barbaric acts perpetrated against them included the confiscation of all wealth,
the kidnapping of their little children, forcing the first-born sons into Catholic monasteries, psy-
chological as well as physical tortures, hangings, garroting, decapitations, and most predominantly
death by hogueras (burning at the stake).

The fact is that throughout this 500-year period, most Sephardic Jews hid the secret of their
identity so well, they forgot the secret! They are finally discovering that the only way to resolve
this travesty is by directly confronting the truth about the past. They are discovering that the only
way to be healed and to fulfill their God-given destiny is to gain a clear understanding of their his-
torical roots. As expressed in this anonymous quote: "The difference between history and the past
is that history was written, the past actually occurred."

Facing the Past

In order to come to grips with the past, we must recognize that many historians have failed
to report that long before the Western cowboys herded their cattle, or the Texas Rangers shot it out
with outlaws, Sephardic Jews were already establishing much of Mexico and America's South-
west. In fact, eighty-eight years after Columbus "discovered" America and forty years before the
Mayflower landed, La Santa Catalina and its Sephardic human cargo landed at the port of Tam-
pico in Mexico. Twenty-four years after Columbus' initial "discovery," the Franciscan missionar-
ies, who were vested with Spanish Inquisition powers, reported the increasing numbers and the
increasing influence in Mexico by Sephardic Jews who were called la gente prohibida (people
prohibited from entering the New World). Much of what is known today as New Mexico and
Texas belonged to Mexico. It is interesting to note, therefore, that Sephardic Jews were in Texas
way before the Alamo was founded in 1718 and the U.S. annexed Texas in 1846.

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