The Underground World of Secret Jews and Africans: Two Tales of Sex, Magic, and Survival in Colonial Cartagena and Mexico City

Abstract

In this concise volume, Jonathan Schorsch focuses on two cases covered in his much longer work, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century (2009). Here the emphasis is on four individuals caught up in two different persecutions done by the Holy Office in its Novohispanic and neogranadino tribunals. Schorsch examines the extremely complex topic of the connections and conflicts that these case studies reveal as existing between judeoconversos and African-descended subjects within the Spanish empire. In the preface, the author acknowledges that a study of the tensions that simmered between these groups will resonate with current and highly polemical debates.This book has a different structure and analytical style than a conventional academic work of history, which allows Schorsch's text to range broadly and creatively in terms of both sources and the interpretations that he applies to his provoking topic. After an introduction providing brief background information on the two groups and the setting, there are really only two long chapters in the book, which are further divided into short sections.The first case study delves into the well-documented witch crazes of the 1620s and 1630s in Cartagena de Indias. Of course, these particular Holy Office trials have been studied since the nineteenth century. Several excellent historians working out of Colombia revived the topic in the 1990s. Since then a number of scholars writing in English have entered the discussion, to the point that the focal figure of the trials, Paula de Eguiluz, probably has now joined Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz among the most famous women from the era of the Spanish viceroyalties. Eguiluz's investigation alone numbers over 800 pages. When combined with the prosecution of Diego López, the main focus of Schorsch's analysis, there are endless possibilities for interpreting this material.Schorsch examines the relationship between López; one of his mistresses, an enslaved woman named Rufina; and the Portuguese surgeon and alleged judiazante Blas de Paz Pinto. Along with an excellent medical education, a specialty in local herbs, and hardworking, detail-oriented leadership of Catholic brotherhoods, Pinto also made an incredible fortune as a slave trader. Over the course of years of interrogations and statements made by witnesses on trial themselves, Pinto gradually developed a persona as a ringleader, even a rabbi, for a significant Jewish community. López and Rufina provided damning evidence through their strange hobby of spying on Pinto, which led them to testify bizarre and stereotypical tales of his desecration of Christian images and symbols as well as disturbing reports of his hemorrhaging as a kind of twisted menstruation. Schorsch speculates on why Rufina and López would choose to destroy Pinto's reputation as a leader in Cartagena's Catholic society. Is it a form of race-based rebellion? A facet of magic practitioners who thrived on gossip and persuasive talk? A desire to feminize converso men? Simply an attempt to bring down a professional rival, because of course López was also a surgeon practicing in Cartagena? There is certainly a range of interpretations of these testimonies. Ultimately however the end remains tragic—Pinto died an agonizing death 11 days after a horrific torture session and only participated in the later auto de fé in effigy.If possible, Schorsch's second case study is even more complex, involving an enslaved Spaniard with a New Christian father, Esperanza Rodríguez, who married a German and resided in Mexico City when she came before the Holy Office in the viceregal court city. Rodríguez seems to have belonged to a circle of practicing Jews, and she supplemented her meager resources by performing some form of religiously framed fasts to spiritually assist others in her extensive circle. While Rodríguez and her three daughters endured autos de fé, lashes, and incarceration, unlike Pinto they survived the ordeals. Although fitting into a community seems to have motivated the Rodríguez family, Schorsch also speculates on the potential rebelliousness of Esperanza's actions.The book ends with a provocative conclusion regarding the lack of unity between these two oppressed groups under Spanish rule. In his final pages, Schorsch argues that any Judaism practiced among them was not as coherent as some scholars assume. He also observes that many of the testimonies, similar to those made by Rufina and López, more resemble Catholic fantasies than any actions that so-called crypto-Jews actually did. Overall, Schorsch seeks to both appreciate the sophisticated survival skills of his subjects and complicate the responses of two dominated groups within the Spanish empire. This unique book should be read by scholars and students interested in the historical complexities of religious and racial identity and power. It will certainly provoke a debate, which one can only hope will be more fruitful and lack the bitterness and violence of the cases presented in this book.