The Portuguese, the Inquisition, and Local Society in Cartagena De Indias, 1550-1700

Home , Benzion Netanyahu, Dutch Brazil, Jacques de Sores, Jean Bontemps, Marrano, Mocatta

BETWEEN THE FOREIGN AND THE FAMILIAR: THE PORTUGUESE, THE INQUISITION, AND LOCAL SOCIETY IN CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, 1550-1700

BRIAN HAMM

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2017

To Elyssa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first and deepest note of thanks goes to my advisors, Ida Altman and Nina Caputo.

From the beginning of my time at the University of Florida, Ida has been a most encouraging mentor who has supported this project with unfailing generosity. At every stage, I could always count on her perceptive judgment and sagacious advice. Likewise, Nina has been an invaluable source of support and inspiration from my very first year in graduate school. In particular, she has always pushed me to expand my scholarly horizons and to pursue lines of inquiry that I had not considered. I also owe a great debt to Jessica Harland-Jacobs, who has provided much encouragement and guidance over the years. I would also like to thank David Geggus and Efraín

Barradas for their comments and critiques of this work.

In countless ways, both large and small, different scholars have contributed to the development of this project. I want to especially recognize David Wheat, Pedro Cardim, and Ben

Ehlers for their advice and support over the years. I am also deeply indebted to my undergraduate professors and mentors at Pepperdine University, especially Stewart Davenport,

Donald Marshall, Darlene Rivas, and Sharyl Corrado.

This dissertation is built on three separate research trips to Spain, which would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, and the

Graduate School at the University of Florida. I am also very grateful to the College of Liberal

Arts and Sciences for a dissertation completion award that enabled me to write the final chapters in relative tranquility.

The History Department at the University of Florida has been a marvelous place to learn and grow as a scholar. I am deeply grateful to all of my professors for their engaging seminars and continued interest and support of my work. I would also be quite remiss if I did not express

my gratitude to my fellow graduate students for their good humor and steadfast encouragement. I want to especially thank Shannon Lalor, Daniel Conigliaro, Rebecca Devlin, Reid Weber, Lexi

Baldacci, Jessica Taylor, Andrew Welton, Bryan Kozik, Alana Lord, Matt Koval, and Cacey

Farnsworth, who helped make these years in graduate school an immense joy.

Finally, I cannot begin to express the profound gratitude that I feel for all of the love and inspriation that I have received from my family. My parents, Robert and Donna Hamm, have steadfastly supported my education at every stage, from preschool to the Ph.D. Their example and encouragement have continually motivated me to take full advantage of whatever opportunities arise and to fight against whatever obstacles might stand in the way. I have been privileged to share the past several years with my beloved wife, Elyssa, who has been a devoted partner through good times and bad. She has helped me become not only a better historian, but also (and far more importantly) a better husband and father. This dissertation is dedicated to her.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 8

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 10

2 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY ...... 23

Crypto-Judaism and the Inquisition ...... 24 Legal, Socio-Economic, and Political Questions ...... 41 Recent Developments ...... 57

3 RENEGADES AND REDEMPTION IN THE AGE OF DRAKE ...... 69

The Value of Pilots ...... 73 The Danger of Renegades ...... 78 Spanish Responses ...... 88 Spanish Traitors, Portuguese Allies ...... 93 Ambiguous Motivations ...... 104 A Catholic/Protestant Paradigm ...... 109 Conclusion ...... 113

4 PORTUGUESE BEFORE THE CARTAGENA INQUISITION, 1610-1635 ...... 116

An Inquisitorial Experiment ...... 125 Early Failures ...... 131 Inquisitorial Perceptions of Portuguese Nationality ...... 141 Few Judaizante Cases ...... 150 The Revealing Case of Diego de Mesa ...... 158

5 LA COMPLICIDAD PEQUEÑA...... 165

A “Complicity of Jews” in Cartagena ...... 173 The Cofradía de Holanda ...... 187 The Auto de Fe of 1638 and the Endurance of the Status Quo ...... 205 Outcomes and Consequences ...... 216 Conclusion ...... 220

6 AFTER 1640: RUPTURE AND CONTINUITY ...... 224

The Plot of the Conde de Castelmelhor ...... 226 Jesuit Connections ...... 238

Within the Sephardic Orbit ...... 250

7 CONCLUSION...... 268

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 275

Archival Sources ...... 275 Printed Primary Sources ...... 275 Secondary Sources ...... 278

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 298

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

BETWEEN THE FOREIGN AND THE FAMILIAR: THE PORTUGUESE, THE INQUISITION, AND LOCAL SOCIETY IN CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, 1550-1700

Brian Hamm

August 2017

Chair: Ida Altman Cochair: Nina Caputo Major: History

In studying the complex history of the Portuguese in colonial Spanish America, scholars have long emphasized how the Portuguese were consistently categorized as foreigners, as well as frequently suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Inquisition looms large in these historical narratives. However, Spanish-Portuguese relations in the New

World were never uniformly negative. This dissertation seeks to rectify these one-sided portrayals of the Lusitanian presence in the Spanish Indies, arguing that the Portuguese were always situated between the foreign and the familiar, simultaneously negotiating societal pressures of both exclusion and integration. Ultimately, the central question rested on individual loyalty and fidelity—to the local community, the Spanish Crown, and the Catholic faith. This dissertation examines how these questions of loyalty and disloyalty, fidelity and perfidy were investigated and answered in the vital port city of Cartagena de Indias. As the primary entry point of both the slave trade and the silver fleets into the viceroyalty of Peru, Cartagena drew hundreds of Portuguese to its shores, and over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese in Cartagena were implicated in multiple geo-political threats and crises, each of which provoked heated debates about the trustworthiness of the local Portuguese.

Despite the variety of accusations hurled against them, the Portuguese repeatedly and effectively utilized multiple strategies of establishing their loyalty and rootedness in the local community— e.g., militia service, participation in Catholic lay brotherhoods, marriage to a local woman, and acts of public charity and patronage. These individual patterns of behavior proved convincing to most Spaniards in Cartagena, who testified on numerous occasions to the loyalty and orthodoxy of their Portuguese neighbors. In contrast, the Inquisition in Cartagena, which was established in

1610, enjoyed very little cooperation from local residents. The low number of denunciations against the Portuguese received by the Holy Office signaled a widespread antipathy towards the

Inquisition, as well as a general lack of concern regarding the potential threat posed by the

Portuguese to either the local community or the Catholic faith.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

By 1581, Philip II had made good on his claims to the throne of Portugal. This momentous addition to the Prudent King’s patrimony facilitated a conspicuous increase in

Portuguese migration to both Spain and Spanish America. Various historians have noted that this exodus from Portugal was viewed by many Spaniards as an unwelcome arrival of the “doubly prohibited,” as the Portuguese were not only considered from a legal standpoint to be foreigners to the kingdoms of Castile, but they were also further stigmatized as being “infected” with impure Jewish blood.1 Given how widespread this anti-Portuguese canard was during the seventeenth century, examples of this sort of discourse are not hard to find, such as the Peruvian inquisitor who bluntly declared that “the Portuguese are all Jews.”2 Furthermore, this stereotypical association was also manifested in the malevolent actions of some Spaniards against the Portuguese. For example, some disgruntled citizens of Antequera nailed a sambenito to the door of Francisco de Fonseca, a Portuguese lawyer who had been sent by the Council of the Indies to investigate a jurisdictional dispute in that city.3 Even more maliciously, Carlos de

Bayén, a mulato tailor, returned some fabric that Antonio Fernández Ferrer, a Portuguese

1 The phrase “doubly prohibited” comes from Eva Alexandra Uchmany, “The Participation of New Christians and Crypto-Jews in the Conquest, Colonization, and Trade of Spanish America, 1521-1660,” in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 192-193. Regarding “infection” by Jewish blood, see: Robert Rowland, “New Christian, Marrano, Jew,” in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe, 144; Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 159; Bruno Feitler, The Imaginary Synagogue: Anti-Jewish Literature in the Portuguese Early Modern World (16th-18th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 65. 2 Quoted in José Toribio Medina, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion de Cartagena de las Indias (Santiago: Imprenta Elzeviriana, 1899), 37. 3 I.A.A. Thompson, “Castile, Spain, and the Monarchy: The Political Community from patria natural to patria nacional,” in Spain, Europe, and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, eds. Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 150 n.76.

merchant in Campeche, had sold him. After hiding some pieces of bread that looked like

Eucharistic wafers, the tailor waited for the merchant to extend the cloth and drop the wafers to the ground. Feigning astonishment, Bayén asked Fernández Ferrer, “How does Your Grace have these pieces of the host amidst the cloth?”4

Drawing on examples such as these, countless numbers of scholars have long emphasized how Portuguese nationality was “synonymous” with Jewishness in the minds of Spaniards.5

4 Jonathan Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians, and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), I.95. 5 Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition in Spain, 4 vols. (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1907), III.270, 299; Elkan Nathan Adler, Auto de Fé and Jew (London: Oxford University Press, 1908), 85; Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 13, Inquisition, Renaissance, and Reformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 83; Zosa Szajkowski, Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848 (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1970), 260; 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), 27-28; Seymour B. Liebman, The Inquisitors and the Jews in the New World: Summaries of Procesos, 1500-1810, and Bibliographical Guide (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1975), 28; Stuart B. Schwartz, “Colonial Brazil, c. 1580-c. 1750: Plantations and Peripheries,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. II, Colonial Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 495; Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1: The Marrano of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 18; Frédéric Mauro, “Merchant Communities, 1350-1750,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 267-68; Jane S. Gerber, Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (New York: Free Press, 1992), 188; David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 44, 52; Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 13; Saul S. Friedman, Jews and the American Slave Trade (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 57; James Homer Williams, “An Atlantic Perspective on the Jewish Struggle for Rights and Opportunities in Brazil, New Netherland, and New York,” in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 371; Mordechai Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish- Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas (Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2002), 226; Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 2: From Mohammed to the Marranos (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 220; Stanley M. Hordes, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 85; Norman Simms, Masks in the Mirror: Marranism in the Jewish Experience (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 1; Maria Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 134; Lúcia Helena Costigan, Through Cracks in the Wall: Modern Inquisitions and New Christian Letrados in the Iberian Atlantic World (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 130; Jonathan Ray, After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry (New York: New York University Press, 2013); Nathan Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths [2001],

Indeed, this linkage between “Portuguese” and “Jew” has seemed so obvious and straightforward that the connection is often noted almost in passing, without much further analysis provided.

Unfortunately, this has led to a fair amount of confusion and contradictory assertions. For example, one basic point of disagreement is when this association began to be made. Norman

Simms dates the synonymic association to the forced conversions in Portugal in 1496-97.6

Mordechai Arbell puts the starting point at around 1530, perhaps in connection to the establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition during that decade.7 Finally, David Gitlitz argues that “the term ‘Portuguese’ instantly became synonymous with ‘Judaizer,’” thanks to the Union of the Crowns in 1580.8 None of these conflicting claims is supported by much evidence, leaving the reader without any means of deciding between them.

Compounding this problem of chronology is the frequent scholarly neglect of certain relevant historical contexts, most notably the tendency in the sixteenth century for Europeans to equate all of the Iberian Peninsula (“Hispania”) with Judaism, not just Portugal. For example,

Erasmus—who had famously declared, “non placet Hispania” (“Spain does not please me”)— described this displeasing land as being “strange, sinister, and Jew-ridden.”9 Around the same time, Pope Paul IV was said to have held Spaniards in low repute, due to their tainted Jewish blood.10 One French pamphleteer exclaimed in the 1590s that “those of Castile and Portugal are

trans. Nikki Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 12; Jeffrey Gorsky, Exiles in Sepharad: The Jewish Millennium in Spain (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 305. 6 Simms, Masks in the Mirror, 1. 7 Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean, 226. 8 Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 52, emphasis added. 9 Quoted in Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews, trans. Anthony Olcott (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 144. 10 José Álvarez-Junco, Spanish Identity in the Age of Nations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 215.

Jews, those of Galicia and Granada [are] Muslims, and their prince is an atheist.”11 What gave foreigners such fodder for these claims was the explosion of a converso population throughout all parts of Iberia, due to a century of forced conversions (starting in 1391) and expulsion decrees

(ending in 1498). It is telling that Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo felt compelled in the mid- sixteenth century to elucidate “what kind of thing a marrano is,” because “in France, as well as in Germany and Italy, Spaniards are commonly called marranos in a vituperative fashion.”12 For many sixteenth-century Europeans, Portugal was not a uniquely “Jewish” nation; instead, the entire Iberian Peninsula bore the same stigma.

Worst of all, however, is the fact that this association between “Portuguese” and “Jew” is frequently interpreted contrary to what it truly was: a stereotype. As with all stereotypes, this particular prejudice must not be construed as a straightforward reflection of either the social reality at the time or even the attitudes of all Spaniards—many of whom, in fact, held their

Portuguese neighbors in high regard without any misgivings concerning their fidelity to the

Catholic faith. While almost all Spaniards in the seventeenth century would have been aware of this linkage, it cannot be assumed that they were in agreement with it, much less that they acted upon such notions. By confusing prejudice for reality, many scholars have exaggerated Spanish xenophobia in both its dimensions and its consequences. To be clear, the problem here is not that these claims are wholly false, but that they are only partially true. This project does not dispute that xenophobia was a deplorably common feature of the Spanish Atlantic during the early

11 Quoted in David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 164. In another pamphlet, Philip II was derided as a “demi-More, demi-Juif, demi-Sarrazin.” 12 “qué cosa es marrano,” “a los españoles, así en Françia como en Alemania e Italia los llaman marranos por vituperio, commúnmente a todos.” Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, ed., Las memorias de Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo [c. 1550s], 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: U.N.C. Department of Romance Languages, 1974), I.125.

modern era, nor does it contest the fact that many Portuguese who arrived in Spanish America during the Union of the Crowns were indeed “doubly prohibited” on both legal and genealogical grounds. Nevertheless, objections must be raised when the history of the Portuguese in the

Spanish Indies is reduced, either explicitly or implicitly, to these conflictual dimensions.

In contrast, this dissertation argues that the Portuguese in colonial Spanish America were always situated between the foreign and the familiar, simultaneously negotiating societal pressures of both exclusion and integration. These negotiations took place on two separate yet interconnected levels: the conceptual and the performative. Conceptually, strong disagreements arose regarding the degree to which the Portuguese should be reckoned as “foreigners” to the kingdoms of Castile. Were Castilians and Portuguese equally “Spanish”? Did it matter that, after

1580, both kingdoms were under the rule of the same monarch? Should individuals of

Portuguese descent born in Castile be considered Portuguese or Castilian? All of these questions were particular iterations of much broader disagreements concerning how naturaleza

(“nativeness”) should be understood. Was naturaleza a static product of lineage and birthplace, or could it be altered based on changing personal circumstances, such as living in a different city for a certain length of time or marrying a native from a different city or region? Additionally, who decided what a person’s genuine naturaleza was? In general, these sorts of difficult questions were settled not so much by abstract ruminations, but by a person’s reputation and concrete public actions involving dress, language, comportment, marital status, social/commercial partnerships, and civic participation. Ultimately, nativeness and foreignness were embodied realities that were realized as they were being performed.13

13 Cf. Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), especially chs. 4-5.

In most cases, local behavior outweighed foreign provenance. For instance, what mattered most in the case of Blas de Herrera was not his Portuguese birthplace, but his dutiful service as an artillery captain in Cartagena, which included defending the city against Francis

Drake in 1586. For this record of loyalty, the governor suspended Herrera’s composición, allowing him to remain a vecino of Cartagena without further molestation (Chapter 3). Similarly, being a native of Portugal never proved to be a significant hindrance for Vicente de Villalobos, who married into a leading Spanish family in New Granada and eventually acquired the positions of regidor and alguacil mayor in Cartagena. A prominent member of the city’s elite, Villalobos cultivated close ties with the local Jesuit college and ensured that his son—also named Vicente— succeeded him on the city council (Chapters 5 and 6). Many more examples will be explored throughout this study, underscoring the variety of ways in which the Portuguese could integrate into local society, as well as provide convincing demonstrations of their loyalty and rootedness.

These sorts of proofs of loyalty were most needed in the wake of worsening geo-political circumstances, which often increased Spanish animosity towards the Portuguese, since they were not infrequently implicated as allies of Spain’s enemies. Yet, it is precisely these moments of increased hostility that can reveal both the true extent of Portuguese integration within Spanish colonial society and the genuine diversity of Spanish attitudes and perceptions regarding their

Portuguese neighbors. For this reason, this dissertation is structured around four separate geo- political episodes, each of which involved potential Portuguese treachery against the Spanish

Monarchy: 1) attacks by French and English corsairs during the sixteenth century, sometimes aided by Portuguese renegades; 2) the rise of the Portuguese New Christian merchant lobby at the royal court during the turn of the seventeenth century; 3) the sustained military offensive of the Dutch West India Company during the 1620s and 1630s, which was suspected of being

funded in part by certain wealthy Portuguese merchants; and 4) the rebellion of Portugal led by the Duke of Braganza in 1640, which attracted some sympathy from Portuguese residents in

Spanish America. By bringing such varied moments together within a single analytical framework, the variability of anti-Portuguese sentiments becomes clearly visible. Thus, for example, certain moments strongly emphasized the “Jewishness” of the Portuguese (cf. Chapter

5), while at other times, the Portuguese were denounced as Protestants (“luteranos”) with hardly any mention of the Law of Moses (cf. Chapter 3).

Complementing this geo-political perspective is a careful consideration of the local dynamics within which broader concerns and debates were translated. This local dimension is especially indispensable in understanding the performative aspects of these negotiations in belonging and identity. This dissertation focuses specifically on the vital port city of Cartagena de Indias, which served as the primary port of entry into Peru for both the silver fleets and the

African slave trade. Cartagena was also notable in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for its large Portuguese population. One official in 1630 complained about the “heaps of Portuguese” who were to be found in the area.14 Historians have also noted the importance of Cartagena as a

“neuralgic center” of Portuguese commercial activity.15 One leading scholar has gone so far as to say that the Portuguese became “omnipresent in daily life in Cartagena” during the Union of the

Crowns.16

14 Quoted in Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos [1977], 2nd ed. (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014), 120.

15 The phrase is to be found in Ricardo Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes en América española (siglos XVI-XVII) (Bogota: Editorial Universidad de Rosario, 2008), 25.

16 Antonino Vidal Ortega, “Portugueses negreros en Cartagena, 1580-1640,” in IV Seminario internacional de estudios del Caribe: Memorias (Bogota: Fondo de Publicaciones de la Universidad del Atlántico, 1999), 137.

Starting in the mid-sixteenth century, a mutually beneficial partnership developed between Cartagena and its Portuguese residents, which proved remarkably durable in the face of many seventeenth-century challenges and provocations, not least of which was the establishment of an Inquisition tribunal in the city in 1610. In large measure, this resilient collaboration between Cartagena and its Portuguese population resulted from the port city’s economic centrality and political marginality, which combined to open up a wide array of opportunities for foreign integration and social advancement. More specifically, due to its reliance on trans-

Atlantic commerce, Cartagena faced enormous military and medical needs, which were never fully met. For enterprising Portuguese soldiers and doctors, the city offered permanent employment, and those immigrants who demonstrated skill in their profession quickly became some of the most valued members of the community, irrespective of their foreign background.

The common stereotype of Portuguese doctors as (malevolent) Jews rarely proved to be a meaningful factor, as it sometimes was in other places.17 Furthermore, without many of the religious and educational institutions found in larger colonial cities, Cartagena’s social elite was comparatively truncated, which allowed ambitious Portuguese to ascend more easily to the top echelons of the city’s political and ecclesiastical hierarchy. As the first inquisitors of the

Cartagena Holy Office bitterly noted, “In this city council are some men of quality, honored hidalgos, who are recognized as such; as for the rest, some are foreigners and others are

17 François Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496-7) (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 292-94; Ines G. Županov, Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India (16th-17th Centuries) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 225-27. In sixteenth-century Spain, parallel suspicions circulated regarding morisco physicians as well. Stephen Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 230, 258.

Portuguese. ... There are commoners who are part of the cabildo, because greater quality is not required in order to be accepted for those who have money.”18

The history of the Portuguese in Cartagena is chiefly one of integration and indispensability, even if most immigrants from Portugal never achieved great wealth or high social rank. To be sure, only a minority of Portuguese were trans-Atlantic merchants, but as will be demonstrated in this study, acquiring large sums of money was never a necessary precondition to local integration. For instance, men of quite varied backgrounds found militia service to be a useful means of not only securing passage across the Atlantic, but also planting roots in the local community once arrived (cf. Chapter 3). On the whole, both affluent and impoverished Portuguese proved quite successful and resilient in rooting themselves in

Cartagena, even as threats of expulsion circulated and the menacing presence of the Inquisition became a local reality. Yet, whatever bigotry and animosity existed against the Portuguese was continually countered by a much wider acceptance on the part of most resident Spaniards, who viewed the Portuguese as important assets to the community. Given the high degree of social integration on the part of the Portuguese, as well as the demographic realities of the port city, most Spaniards did not deem the Portuguese to be particularly foreign. And even for those who were inclined to view the Portuguese more suspiciously, the economic and social realities of

Cartagena as an Atlantic port city strongly impelled city elites to cultivate a type of functional tolerance on the local level. This is seen quite clearly in times of heightened geo-political anxieties, when the majority of Spaniards consistently distinguished (in various ways) between those Portuguese who were faithful to the Crown and the Catholic faith and those who were

18 “en este cabildo...son hombres de calidad hidalgos honrados y conocidos por tales, los demás unos son extranjeros y otros portugueses ... el cabildo entran son personas muy comunes porque no se requiere más calidad para ser admitidos en ellos que tener dinero.” AHN, Inquisición, L.1008, f. 21v.

duplicitous and untrustworthy. And in these moments of perceived peril, most Portuguese residents of Cartagena (and throughout Spanish America) demonstrated themselves to be loyal vassals of the king by serving in local militias, patronizing Catholic monasteries and churches, and working to increase the wealth and prosperity of the kingdoms of the Habsburg Crown.

The outline of this dissertation is as follows: After a chapter examining the relevant scholarly literatures, Chapter 3 explores the fierce debate concerning the loyalty and trustworthiness of Portuguese pilots during the sixteenth century, when Spain’s colonial possessions were continually threatened by French and English corsairs. Portuguese pilots (and other renegades) were frequently found on board these enemy ships, which led some Spaniards to decry all Portuguese (or at least, all pilots from Portugal) as enemies of Spain, who should be driven out of the Indies. However, this chapter argues that this was very much a minority position, and instead, most Spaniards treated the betrayal of some Portuguese pilots as reflective of maliciousness on an individual level, not a collective one. Three significant factors contributed to this widespread judgment: 1) countless examples of Spanish traitors and renegades could be found, thus undermining the idea of the Portuguese as uniquely perfidious; 2) frequent instances of mitigating circumstances and pragmatic considerations, which made it much more difficult to assess the proper level of guilt; and 3) the interpretation of the geo-political conflicts of this era through a Catholic/Protestant paradigm, which benefited the Portuguese, who shared the same Iberian religious culture as Castile. Building on this final point, it is striking how little was said during this period about the “Jewishness” of the Portuguese; instead, these renegades and traitors were frequently denounced as “luterano” co-religionists of the English or the French

Huguenots. The stereotypical rendering of “Portuguese” as synonymous with “Jew” was a later development, not present for most of the sixteenth century.

By the early years of the seventeenth century, however, fears of Portuguese Jewish machinations, especially at the royal court, intensified greatly. It was during these years that an

Inquisition tribunal was established in Cartagena. However, as Chapter 4 demonstrates, these early years of the Cartagena Inquisition were most notable for their almost complete absence of judaizante cases from the city. Given the large Portuguese converso population of Cartagena, this inquisitorial failure requires explanation. A key factor was the lack of cooperation from city residents, due to inquisitorial arrogance, local political rivalries, and economic disincentives.

While these circumstances have received some attention from other historians, another critical factor that has gone almost completely unnoticed was the consistent refusal on the part of the inquisitors to turn circumstantial cases involving the Portuguese—who were usually accused of blasphemy or various heretical propositions—into potentially more lucrative investigations of judaizing. Drawing on those early cases involving Portuguese defendants, it is clear that the inquisitors did not make an automatic equation between Portuguese nationality and crypto-

Judaism. The fact that the inquisitors themselves did not act upon these anti-Portuguese stereotypes, even when it might have greatly enriched their coffers, should give historians real pause as to how influential these canards were in local colonial society. Furthermore, even in those few trials of Portuguese judaizing that did arise during the Inquisition’s first quarter- century in Cartagena, the inquisitors proved quite willing to hand down a wide variety of punishments, many of which were comparatively light given the severity of the charges.

Continuing the examination of relations between the Portuguese, the Cartagena

Inquisition, and local society, Chapter 5 analyzes the Cartagena’s so-called “complicidad” of

Jews, which contained many noticeable disparities to the complicidades grandes in Lima and

Mexico City during the same period. Not only did the inquisitors in Cartagena arrest far fewer

Portuguese than their counterparts in Mexico City or Lima, but in Cartagena, over half of those arrested were eventually released and had their confiscated goods returned to them—an outcome that is incongruous with the more popular image of the Inquisition as a greedy, bloodthirsty institution. This chapter investigates the causes of these perhaps surprising outcomes, emphasizing again how the Cartagena tribunal suffered greatly from a lack of cooperation from local vecinos in Cartagena, who refused to come forward with testimonies against the

Portuguese, even when the complicidad was well underway. Throughout the multi-year inquisitorial affair, only one resident of Cartagena, a mulatto surgeon who was himself arrested by the Holy Office, denounced any of the Portuguese for following the Law of Moses. Without support from the broader populace, the success rate for the Cartagena Inquisition plummeted.

This chapter also examines the strange testimonies that arose about a “cofradía de Holanda” that allegedly operated in Cartagena and gave money to the Jews in Amsterdam, in order to fund a

Dutch attack on Cartagena or some other important port in the Spanish Indies. Although certain curious details were given about the organization, very little hard evidence emerged, leaving the inquisitors largely skeptical about the veracity of these claims. This episode serves as a good reminder that even in moments of crisis or heightened anxiety, credulity and paranoia were not the sole order of the day.

The complicidad in Cartagena concluded in 1642, the same year in which a new

Portuguese conspiracy was purportedly uncovered. As the revolt in Portugal led by the Duke of

Braganza continued throughout the 1640s, the Portuguese living in Spanish America found themselves in a most uncomfortable position. Chapter 6 examines how for those Portuguese in

Cartagena, matters were made even worse by a failed revolt involving Portuguese soldiers stationed temporarily in the port. However, during this conspiracy and afterwards, the Spanish

response was never blindly hysterical. As was the case from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, distinctions were made between loyal and disloyal Portuguese. Although disagreements existed as to where the precise lines should be drawn in certain individual cases, there was a general consensus as to the fact that the Portuguese, even during the tumultuous decade of the 1640s, were not collectively to blame. This chapter also includes two additional continuities that remained intact, even after the political rupture of the Union of the Crowns. First, Portuguese strategies of establishing themselves as loyal subjects of the Crown and rooted members of the local community were largely unchanged. This can be seen in the decades-long relationship between the Portuguese in Cartagena and the local Jesuit college. Even after 1640, the

Portuguese continued to cultivate strong ties with the Society of Jesus, both as Jesuits and as benefactors. Second, this chapter shows how the increasing linkages between Spanish America and the Western Sephardic Diaspora was enabled by two long-standing patterns: the complicity of local officials and the fluidity that existed between Jews and conversos. Throughout the rest of seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, Portuguese residents as well as visiting traders were scattered throughout the Spanish circum-Caribbean, belying the idea that the history of the

Portuguese in the Spanish Indies ended abruptly in 1640.

CHAPTER 2 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL SURVEY

In large part, the scholarly literature on the Portuguese in Spanish America has been deeply segregated based on a priori associations formed by the historian. Those who maintained that “Portuguese” was synonymous with “Jew” form one line of scholarship. Another grouping has developed around the equation of “Portuguese” and “merchant.” For a third set of scholars, being “Portuguese” centered on legal dimensions of foreignness. Still other historians have pursued alternative lines of enquiry and have moved between established historiographical factions. The purpose of this chapter is to map out the broad outlines of this complex historiographical assortment of methodologies, questions, and arguments that have developed over the past several decades.

Taken as a whole, this dissertation stands at a historiographical crossroads—drawing significantly from multiple lines of inquiry into the Portuguese in Spanish America. Although questions of crypto-Jewish practices and beliefs are not central per se to this study, the vast literature on crypto-Judaism in the Iberian Atlantic world is of great importance, due to the emphasis in many recent works on plural identities and the processual construction of communal identification. Applying these insights to the label of “portugués,” this dissertation explores how being “Portuguese” carried a variety of shifting and contradictory meanings during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both the positive and negative aspects associated with Portuguese naturaleza greatly impacted integration strategies of the Portuguese in colonial Spanish America.

In order to analyze these questions of integration and local belonging, this study draws on a second large body of scholarship concerning legal, socio-economic, and political dimensions of

Portuguese life in the Spanish Indies. Drawing especially on the work of Tamar Herzog and others, this dissertation pays special attention to the performative dimensions of community

membership, as well as how Spanish-Portuguese relations existed on a local level, not just on an empire-wide scale.

Crypto-Judaism and the Inquisition

Somewhat ironically, the largest body of historical scholarship that concerns the

Portuguese in Spanish America has not generally been very interested in the Portuguese as such, but in what the Portuguese were stereotyped to be: crypto-Jews. For well over a century, countless scholars have been bedeviled by the basic question: what was crypto-Judaism? To be sure, this section does not pretend to give comprehensive coverage to the vast literature on crypto-Judaism in the Iberian world.1 Instead, the aim is to give the broad outlines of the main scholarly debates, while situating this present work in conversation with those positions.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, many scholars argued that the conversos were truly Jews who sought to preserve the knowledge and practice of Judaism as much as was possible given the hostile circumstances in which they found themselves. The nineteenth-century historian and philanthropist, Frederick David Mocatta, captures this perspective well, when he writes: “In secret they observed as many of the practices of Judaism as they were able to do without fear of discovery, studiously inculcating Jewish notions into the minds of their children, and endeavouring by every means in their power to keep alive in their descendants the memory of the old religion.”2 By the mid-twentieth century, perhaps the leading proponent of this school of thought—often termed “the Jerusalem School”—was Haim Beinart. While acknowledging that over the generations, it became “increasingly difficult to create the conditions necessary for

1 For a recent book-length treatment of the scholarship on conversos (and moriscos), see James Amelang, Historias paralelas: Judeoconversos y moriscos en la España moderna (Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 2011). 2 Frederic David Mocatta, The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Inquisition (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1877), 29.

religious observance and [that] fewer traditions were maintained,” Beinart puts great emphasis on the inner desire to be Jews: “the compulsion imposed on the Conversos [to appear outwardly as Christians]…could not stifle the longing of the faithful to live as Jews.”3 Thus, Beinart remains absolutely convinced of the Jewish identity of the conversos: “Drawing aside the veil of

Christianity that the Conversos were forced to don, we find them living a real Jewish life.”4 For these scholars, the authenticity of the conversos’ Jewishness was revealed most convincingly in the bold defiance of the Inquisition by various crypto-Jewish martyrs, such as Tomás Treviño de

Sobremonte and Isaac de Castro Tartas, as well as the public embrace of Judaism by New

Christian émigrés to Amsterdam, London, or other locales where Judaism was tolerated.

Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, forceful rejoinders were delivered to the main arguments

(and underlying methodological assumptions) of the Jerusalem School. Perhaps the most prolific scholar in this regard was Benzion Netanyahu, who advanced the following theses in The

Marranos of Spain (1966):

I adhere to the hypothesis I have advanced elsewhere that (1) ‘the overwhelming majority of the Marranos’ at the time of the establishment of the Inquisition were not Jews, but ‘detached from Judaism,’ or rather, to put it more clearly, Christians; (2) that ‘in seeking to identify the whole Marrano group with a secret Jewish heresy, the Spanish Inquisition was operating with a fiction,’ and (3) that ‘it was driven to this operation by racial hatred and political considerations rather than by religious zeal.’5

Netanyahu turns the arguments of the Jerusalem School on their head, arguing that it was the

Inquisition itself that created crypto-Judaism. In other words, crypto-Judaism was an inquisitorial

3 Haim Beinart, “The Conversos in Spain and Portugal in the 16th to 18th Centuries,” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1992), II.62; Haim Beinart, “The Records of the Inquisition: A Source of Jewish and Converso History,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2 (1968): 215-16. 4 Beinart, “The Records of the Inquisition,” 215. 5 B. Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain: From the Late 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources [1966], 3rd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 3.

fiction projected onto Christian descendants of former Jews. Thus, for Netanyahu and others, the existence of crypto-Judaism did not give rise to the Inquisition, but the reverse: “It was not a powerful Marrano movement that provoked the establishment of the Inquisition, but it was the establishment of the Inquisition that caused the temporary resurgence of the Spanish Marrano movement.”6 Furthermore, the Inquisition created this fictitious figure of the crypto-Jew “not to eradicate a Jewish heresy from the midst of the Marrano group, but to eradicate the Marrano group from the midst of the Spanish people.”7

At a foundational level, the debate over the nature of crypto-Judaism is always a debate over the nature of the historical documentation produced by the Holy Office. Unsurprisingly, for historians like Beinart, “the documents of the Inquisition…provide an abundance of knowledge on the Jewishness of the Conversos in Spain and Portugal.”8 Beinart suggests that the Inquisition did very little filtering of the testimonies and confessions—what was said was simply and accurately recorded. Furthermore, others argued that since the inquisitorial archive was kept strictly secret, there was no need for any deception or falsification of the records.9 Of course, for

6 Ibid., 3. 7 Ibid., 4. Ellis Rivkin makes a similar point in answering the basic question: “How Jewish were the New Christians?”: “The answer to the question…would consist of two parts: (1) As a fictional projection of the Inquisition, the Marranos were as Jewish as the Inquisition needed them to be to carry out effectively its goals of shattering the image of a respected class. (2) As an historical reality, the New Christians were not, with perhaps some individual exceptions, Jewish at all.” Rivkin, “How Jewish Were the New Christians?,” in Hispania Judaica: Studies on the History, Language, and Literature of the Jews in the Hispanic World, vol. I: History, eds. Josep M. Solà-Solé, Samuel G. Armistead, and Joseph H. Silverman (Barcelona: Puvil-Editor, 1980), 110. Cf. Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain [1995], 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 222-23. 8 Beinart, “The Records of the Inquisition,” 215-16. 9 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto. Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 23-24.

Netanyahu and others, this faith in the reliability of inquisitorial documentation was unforgivably naïve:

To be sure, I was baffled by the great credence given by historians to those documents and to the claims made by the Inquisition on their basis. Little value, I thought, could be attached to evidence originating in witnesses who remained anonymous and could not be cross-examined by the accused; little weight should be imputed to statements exacted under torture or fear of torture, and little store should be set in documents subjected to the Inquisition’s censorship. I could not understand why scholars of all persuasions, well aware of these crucial facts, somehow belittled their momentous meaning.10

For Norman Roth, it is the scripted quality of the inquisitorial sources that signals the falsity of the charges of judaizing: “After reading countless Inquisition ‘processes’ (trial records), one’s eyes begin to glaze over. The accusations have a monotonous sameness to them. That the litany of identical charges, no matter the city, is invented and totally false would be obvious, one might assume, to all who read them.”11 For other historians, however, a key sign of the veracity of the inquisitorial trials is the idiosyncratic details that could not have been imagined by the inquisitors.12

Perhaps the most famous intellectual dispute on the question of the veracity of the inquisitorial archive was carried out by António José Saraiva and Israel Salvator Révah in the pages of Diário de Lisboa throughout 1971. Like Netanyahu, N. Roth, and others, Saraiva argued that the Inquisition by its nature could not produce the truth of a defendant’s religious

10 B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain [1995], 2nd ed. (New York: New York Review of Books, 2001), xix. Cf. Ellis Rivkin, “The Utilization of Non-Jewish Sources for the Reconstruction of Jewish History,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 48 (1957): 183-203. 11 Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews, 218. 12 For example: Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos. Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 403; Kim Siebenhüner, “Inquisitions,” translated by Heidi Bek, in Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and Consistories in the Early Modern World, eds. Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-LeBeau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 145.

belief, because “its judicial rules were geared to produce results other than the objective truth about the accused.”13 Saraiva spends an entire chapter of his Inquisição e Cristão-Novos (1956) delineating the ways in which the Inquisition’s own regulations warped the judicial proceedings from beginning to end into a kind of “formalized justice” that was “incompatible with impartiality.”14 Thus, it follows, according to Saraiva, that the Inquisition was a “Marrano factory,” an institution that produced “Jews,” rather than discovering them.15 Saraiva’s most original arguments concern the defining quality of the Portuguese New Christians. Religiously, they were indistinguishable from the rest of the Portuguese population; their “inculpation by the

Inquisition on religious grounds was a hoax.”16 Ethnically, there was little differentiation as well. Therefore, according to Saraiva, “the perceived otherness of this New Christian entity…must be sought in its only distinctive ‘trademark’: the socio-economic one.”17 In short, the New Christians were identified with the rising bourgeoisie, who were seen as a threat by the old feudal elite, who utilized the Holy Office (and the “hoax” of crypto-Judaism) to further their socio-economic interests.18

13 José António Saraiva, The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians [1956], translated by H.P. Salomon and I.S.D. Sassoon (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 43. 14 Ibid., 43-65, quotation on p. 43. 15 Ibid., 130. 16 Ibid., xxxix. 17 Ibid., xl. 18 Unsurprisingly, Saraiva’s analysis has been repeatedly labeled as Marxist, an accusation that Saraiva strongly denied, claiming that his was not a “one-sided (Marxist)” approach, since “economics constitute just one of the many pieces of the jigsaw we are trying to reassemble.” Saraiva, The Marrano Factory, xxi. For a few recent examples of historians interpreting Saraiva as a “Marxist,” see: Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews, 365; Mercedes García-Arenal, “Religious Dissent and Minorities: The Morisco Age,” The Journal of Modern History 81 (2009): 903; François Soyer, “‘It is not possible to be both a Jew and a Christian’: Converso Religious Identity and the Inquisitorial Trial of Custodio Nunes (1604-5),” Mediterranean Historical Review 26 (2011): 81-82; Jessica Vance Roitman, The Same but Different?: Inter-Cultural Trade and the Sephardim, 1595-1640 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 39.

Saraiva’s sharpest critic was undoubtedly I.S. Révah, who denounced Inquisição e

Cristão-Novos as “a piece of demagogy.”19 In his polemical exchanges with Saraiva, Révah gave perhaps his most direct arguments for why the inquisitorial documentation is trustworthy. First and foremost, he emphasizes the secret nature of the proceedings. With no audience to convince, motivation to record falsifications is decreased. Révah lists “other controls to check the authenticity” of the records, which sum up to two: 1) specific details that could not have been imagined by the inquisitors; 2) comparisons to other sources, especially those not related to the

Holy Office.20 Révah put great stock in the writings and actions of Portuguese conversos after they “returned” to Judaism in northern Europe, a method of analysis that has been disputed by other historians. Given this attitude towards the sources produced by the Inquisition, it is no surprise that Révah subscribed to the main theses of the Jerusalem School, although he explicitly warned against confusing “the purely ethnic concept of ‘New Christian’ (applied to all descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism in 1497) with the religious concept of ‘crypto-Jews’ or ‘Marranos,’ which applies to those Portuguese who, from

1497 until our own days, although officially Catholics, clandestinely adhere to the essential dogmas of Judaism of which they observe some precepts.”21 While acknowledging that “some

New Christians attempted to assimilate totally into Portuguese society,” Révah argued that, contrary to Saraiva’s claims, “only a small fraction of the New Christians could have attained that goal” by the 1530s.22 Révah saw the religion of the conversos as “un Judaïsme potentiel”

19 I.S. Révah, “Interview with Abílio Diniz Silva” [1971], in The Marrano Factory, 235. 20 Ibid., 243-44, 255-59. 21 Ibid., 238. 22 Ibid., 238.

that could become transformed into a “real Judaism” upon entrance into a Jewish community.23

Nevertheless, for Révah as for others, the conversos comprised “an essential branch of Judaism,” regardless of their deficiencies in doctrinal or ritual knowledge.24

Without question, in the historical literature on conversos in Spanish America, the arguments put forward by the Jerusalem School have been much more commonly represented than their opponents. Perhaps the most widely cited author in this vein is Seymour Liebman, who published several books and countless shorter pieces. His basic approach to the question at hand can be grasped in his The Jews in New Spain: Faith, Flame, and the Inquisition (1974). The use of “Jews” in the title is already revealing of Liebman’s perspective. Although Liebman acknowledges the existence of sincere Christians among the converso population, the Inquisition trials are unfortunately interpreted as straightforward depictions of reality: “the testimonies

[were] recorded almost verbatim…[and] may be compared to a tape-recording of voices from the past.”25 What results from such an approach is obvious enough: anyone accused of “Jewish”

23 I.S. Révah, “Les marranes,” Revue des études juives 118 (1959-60): 55. 24 Ibid., 76. 25 Seymour B. Liebman, The Jews in New Spain: Faith, Flame, and the Inquisition (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1970), 52. Liebman is not the only historian to make such claims. Alexander Murray has characterized the Inquisition as “the nearest medieval equivalent of a tape recorder.” Alexander Murray, “Time and Money,” in The Work of Jacques Le Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History, ed. Miri Rubin (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1997), 7. It is interesting to compare these statements to those of Carlo Ginzburg: “The inquisitors’ urge for truth (their own truth, of course) has produced for us extremely rich evidence – deeply distorted, however, by the psychological and physical pressures which played such a powerful role… Obviously, the conflicting characters who speak in these texts were not on an equal footing. … The inequality in terms of power (real as well as symbolic) explains why the pressure exerted by inquisitors on the defendants in order to elicit the truth they were seeking was usually successful. These trials not only look repetitive but monologic…in the sense that the defendants’ answers were quite often just an echo of the inquisitors’ questions. But in some exceptional cases we have a real dialogue: we can hear distinct voices, we can detect a clash between different, even conflicting voices.” Carlo Ginzburg, “The Inquisitor as Anthropologist,” in Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 158, 160. For a critique of this argument, see: John H. Arnold, “The Historian as Inquisitor: The Ethics of Interrogating Subaltern Voices,” Rethinking History 2 (1998): 379-86.

practices automatically becomes a “Jew.” Secondary sources get the same uncritical treatment, leading to a number of astonishing statements, such as: “From Francisco Fernandez [sic] del

Castillo we learn that in the 1550’s in the Spanish colony in Mexico City there were more Jews than Catholics and there was a Grand Rabbi.”26 Finally, Liebman repeatedly makes elementary mistakes in Latin American history, which hardly inspires confidence in his broader arguments.27 With a few exceptions,28 much of the older scholarship on the Portuguese conversos in Spanish America falls into the same interpretative traps as Liebman’s work, as can be seen in the works of Boleslao Lewin,29 Manuel Tejado Fernández, and Lucía García de

Proodian.30

26 Liebman, The Jews in New Spain, 42. 27 To pick a few examples: Francisco de Vitoria was never archbishop of Mexico City (ibid., 125-26); there were never five Inquisition tribunals in the New World (137); the complicidad de judíos in Cartagena existed between 1635-42, not 1625-35 (220); and Manuel Bautista Pérez was never tried before the Cartagena tribunal (220-21). For other troubling errors and distortions, see the strongly critical review by H.P Salomon in the American Jewish Historical Quarterly 62 (1972): 190-201. 28 For example, in an excellent article from 1972, Martin Cohen outlines four “misconceptions” about the crypto-Jews that plague the historical literature: 1) equating crypto-Jews with normative Jews; 2) there were large numbers of “Jews” in New Spain from the beginning; 3) sincere crypto-Jews who were punished remained Jews; and 4) all convicted judaizers carried out a wide range of crypto-Jewish practices. Martin A. Cohen, Some Misconceptions about the Crypto-Jews in Colonial Mexico.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 61 (1972): 281-89. Unfortunately, until recently, few scholars on the New Christians in colonial Spanish America followed Cohen’s suggestions.

29 See especially: El Santo Oficio en América: y el más grande proceso inquisitorial en el Perú (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Hebraica Argentina, 1950); La Inquisición en Hispanoamérica: judíos, protestantes y patriotas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1962); and Los criptojudíos: Un fenómeno religioso y social (Buenos Aires: Milá, 1987). 30 Manuel Tejado Fernández, Aspectos de la vida social en Cartagena de Indias durante el seiscientos (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1954); Lucía García de Proodian, Los judíos en América: sus actividades en los virreinatos de Nueva Castilla y Nueva Granada, S. XVII (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1966). Unfortunately, both of these works are thoroughly marred by anti-Semitism. For example, Tejado Fernández refers to the “plague of Jews that invaded the New Kingdom of Granada” (p. 147), while in a chapter on “Activities,” García de Proodian includes robbery, arson, fraud, bankruptcy, homicide, and sodomy under the heading of “activities prohibited by natural law or otherwise immoral” (pp. 87-89).

Too often in these older works, the main binary options—Catholic or Jew—are rather static in character. Little differentiation occurs chronologically or geographically. The central terms of the debate—“Jew,” “Christian,” “religion,” identity”—remain as largely self-evident and stable categories. Over the past quarter-century, however, these categories have been much more rigorously interrogated. New questions have been asked, recognizing that there is more to the history of the conversos than simply their private religious convictions. In a seminal 1994 article in Past & Present, Miriam Bodian looked to move the question of converso identity beyond the “religious sphere.”31 Rejecting the idea that converso identity emerged from “some primordial Jewish consciousness,” Bodian investigated how it was a “changing cultural construction,” involving self-definition over and against other groups.32 Noting how judaizing became associated with “Portuguese” by the seventeenth century, Bodian discusses the influence of three separate encounters: “the encounter with a non-Iberian cultural sphere, the encounter with Jews of other backgrounds, and the encounter with normative Judaism.”33 Occurring simultaneously in northern European cities, such as Amsterdam and Hamburg, these experiences led to a self-identification utilizing both Iberian and Jewish features—e.g., “Portuguese of the

Hebrew Nation.” In this way, they were distinguished not only from non-Jews, but also from their poorer and culturally dissimilar Ashkenazic brethren. These “two clusters of identity”—

Portuguese and Jewish—did not always co-exist perfectly, and the continuing cultural and economic ties to the Iberian Peninsula were continual sources of tension and conflict for

31 Miriam Bodian, “‘Men of the Nation’: The Shaping of Converso Identity in Early Modern Europe,” Past & Present 143 (1994): 49. 32 Ibid., 50-51. 33 Ibid., 65.

community leaders.34 Ultimately, being “Portuguese” influenced how one was “Jewish” and vice versa. In this article and elsewhere, Bodian skillfully elucidates the complexity and contingency of individual and group identity among the Portuguese conversos and ex-conversos in the

Western Sephardic Diaspora.

Bodian developed these ideas further in a subsequent article, published in Jewish Social

Studies in 2008. Bodian argues that as the conversos had lost any substantive connection to the rabbinical Judaism of the past, they needed to create “an attractive Jewish self-image, to counter the stigma and polemics of Catholic society.”35 Strongly imbued with Biblical imagery and imports from the surrounding Catholic religious landscape (“salvation through the Law of

Moses,” etc.), this new Jewish self-image had little to do with being part of a wider Sephardic

Jewry. As Bodian demonstrates, even when the Portuguese conversos “returned to Judaism” in northern Europe, they never referred to themselves as “Sephardim,” but instead relied on

“awkward constructions,” such as “Hebrews of the Spanish and Portuguese Nation.”36 Once again, Bodian highlights the pre-eminent importance placed on their Iberian (“Portuguese”) background and self-conception, which led to significant tensions within the wider Jewish world.

Points of conflict included the place of rabbinic law and authority, the “almost phobic attitudes” regarding the Ashkenazim, and the relationship between their own communities and older

Sephardic communities in the Mediterranean.37 These tensions were never fully resolved.

Although the Portuguese communities in Amsterdam, London, and elsewhere wanted to present

34 Ibid., 74. 35 Miriam Bodian, “Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: The Ambiguous Boundaries of Self-Definition,” Jewish Social Studies 15 (2008): 71, emphasis in original. 36 Ibid., 72. 37 Ibid., 73-77, quotation on p. 77.

a “rabbinized public face”—and strategic ties with communities in Italy and the Ottoman Empire were quite helpful in this regard—beneath the surface, Bodian argues that the “visceral power” of the Portuguese “Nation” never diminished.38

This more recent article from Bodian was part of a special issue of Jewish Social Studies that examined “Sephardi Identities.” A second major contribution in that special issue was David

Graizbord’s article on “Religion and Ethnicity Among ‘Men of the Nation,’” where he takes aim at two fundamental axioms of the scholarly literature (especially from the Jerusalem School).

First, and following in Bodian’s footsteps, Graizbord criticizes the assumption that converso identity was primarily faith-based, and second, that the integration of the New Christians into

Portuguese Jewish communities in northern Europe constituted a fulfillment of an ever-present

“yearning” to practice their Jewish faith openly.39 One pressing concern in Graizbord’s work is the issue of who defines what constitutes “Judaism.” The use of a term like “crypto-Judaism” is problematic, according to Graizbord, because it tacitly accepts the Inquisition’s authority to define what “Judaism” is. This hidden faith was imagined by the inquisitors as “a sort of dark mirror of Christianity” drawn from “confused sketches, even caricatures, of biblical and rabbinic norms.”40

Since Graizbord firmly rejects the binary framework that defined much of the older historical scholarship (Christian/Jewish, true/false, etc.), it is unsurprising that his approach to inquisitorial documentation would differ quite strongly as well from either the Jerusalem School or its opponents. In his 2008 article, Graizbord outlines five assumptions that guide his reading

38 Ibid., 74-75. 39 David Graizbord, “Religion and Ethnicity Among ‘Men of the Nation’: Toward a Realistic Interpretation,” Jewish Social Studies 15 (2008): 32-33. 40 Ibid., 37.

of these sources: 1) “the basic credibility of a given testimony is distinct from the plausibility of its literal content”; 2) “testimony is probably (though not necessarily) credible if the declarant did not stand to gain any advantage in offering it to his or her questioners”; 3) “testimony is generally trustworthy if those who recorded it had no reason to twist or falsify it in any particular way”; 4) “a deposition is reliable if trustworthy evidence external to the dossiers supports it”; 5)

“identities of declarants did not exist exclusively prior to and independently of the autobiographical testimonies by which the informants gave momentary shape to those identities.”41 On one level, Graizbord shares the skepticism of Netanyahu, N. Roth, Rivkin, and others about the distorted picture that almost inevitably emerges from the many dubious judicial procedures of the Holy Office.42 However, in contrast to these scholars, Graizbord is not interested in trying to figure out the truth about some pre-existing converso identity. Like

Bodian, Graizbord emphasizes the processual nature of any such identity as conversos, “Men of the Nation,” etc. Such identities were formed and shaped by a whole set of encounters—with other Portuguese, with the inquisitors, with Jews outside of Iberia, and so forth. For Graizbord, any notion of a stable, essentialized converso sense of self is inherently fallacious. Taking the example of the converso “return” to Judaism, he suggests that ethnic consciousness rather than religious yearnings could better explain these decisions to move. Possessing a strong sense of ethnic difference, due to discrimination in Iberia, these conversos found in normative Judaism the “means to build dignified and ostensibly integral Jewish identities, to express dissent from a

41 Ibid., 39. 42 For example, Graizbord points to the simple repetition of inquisitorial formulas in the defendants’ testimonies, as well as the common plea (especially when being tortured) to “tell me what I have to say.” Ibid., 40.

society that persecuted them, and to erase the stigma of Jewish descent by transforming it into a badge of honor.”43

In 2011, Graizbord co-edited a special issue of Jewish History on the Portuguese New

Christians. As with the 2008 special issue of Jewish Social Studies, all of the articles provide strong contributions to an ever-growing body of scholarship. For the purposes of this historiographical discussion, it will suffice to examine the article that has been most influential in this present study: Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano’s “Plural Identities: The Portuguese New

Christians.” Arguing against a “singularist view of identity,” which is defined as the idea that

“every individual has a primary and principal affiliation uniting him to a single, specific group to which he (or she) belongs,” Pulido Serrano follows Bodian and Graizbord in arguing for an understanding of identities “as processes of cultural construction, processes which are open and dynamic, and in which individual freewill and liberty play an important role.”44 In addition to religious questions, Pulido Serrano brings into play questions of national affiliation, experiences of migration, membership in other organizations (e.g., cofradías), and occupation, among many other variables. Recognizing the importance of class, although rejecting the simplistic equation of the New Christians with the bourgeoisie, Pulido Serrano places great importance on occupational affiliation in explaining individual behavior and life choices. For example, regarding the Portuguese merchants residing in Madrid, Pulido Serrano argues that “more than their religious condition as New Christians, what accounted for wealthy New Christians’ method of acting was their status as businessmen.”45

43 Ibid., 53. 44 Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano, “Plural Identities: The Portuguese New Christians,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 130-31. 45 Ibid., 139.

Building on this sophisticated work by Pulido Serrano, Graizbord, and Bodian on converso identity, this dissertation investigates the multiplicity of meanings that developed around the related label of “portugués.” While questions of religiosity and genealogy were certainly important, they were nevertheless merely part of a much larger and more complex equation. All straightforward equations involving Portuguese naturaleza (e.g., “Jew,”

“merchant,” “foreigner) fail to account for the complexity and fluidity of this marker of identity.

Furthermore, following these scholars, this study argues that “portugués” was not defined (and re-defined) by the Portuguese alone, but was continually shaped through everyday interactions with the surrounding culture and society—which included, but was not limited to, the

Inquisition. Additionally, as Pulido Serrano emphasizes, these interactions were necessarily conditioned by class. Political officeholding was a possibility only for the wealthy (Chapter 5); however, other strategies of local integration, such as militia service, were open to all (Chapter

3).

In conversation with these historiographical developments, scholars of the Portuguese in colonial Spanish America have also contributed new questions and highly original ways to think about the phenomena of crypto-Judaism. For example, the historical anthropologist, Nathan

Wachtel, has argued for a new understanding of what he terms a “Marrano religiosity.” Instead of trying to fit the conversos into a Christian or Jewish box, Wachtel argues that out of difficult circumstances, the Marranos fashioned a new kind of religiosity—one that foreshadowed many developments of “modernity.” By “religiosity,” Wachtel insists that he does not mean “a religion clearly defined by a theological doctrine but rather a set of concerns, practices, and beliefs, in a configuration made up of changing or even contradictory elements, whose diversity does not exclude a kind of unity, a generic style allowing its identification by a specific term, in this

instance, ‘Marranism.’”46 While previous scholars had noted that the conversos had picked up certain ideas or concepts from the surrounding Catholic milieu, these borrowings were typically seen as accidental to the “religion of the Marranos.” Turning this idea on its head, Wachtel argues that these contradictory dynamics—what he labels as “interferences”—were central to this distinctive “Marrano religiosity.”47 Because Wachtel is not interested in retrieving an authentically Jewish community from the past, incidents of marranos praying to St. Moses or believing in Purgatory do not need to be explained away. For Wachtel, the marranos formed a

“community of memory,” not of faith, still less one of dogma.48

Wachtel’s monograph, The Faith of Remembrance (2001) consists of a series of close readings of various inquisitorial trials from Peru and New Spain. Like his ideas on “Marrano religiosity,” Wachtel’s approach to the inquisitorial sources is also provocative. Arguing that the

“the thousands of trials preserved in Inquisitorial archives offer us as many mirrors reflecting the lives of [those] men and women” who were put on trial. While these mirrors “may sometimes reflect distorted images,” Wachtel argues that through “the richness of their innumerable details, the records plunge us into the heart and the daily life of the Marrano universe.”49 With a strong faith in the wealth to be gathered from the records of the Holy Office, although not credulous about the veracity of everything contained therein, Wachtel is most attuned to the “routes,”

“journeys,” and “destinies” of these individual marranos, in order to observe both the

46 Nathan Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths [2001], trans. Nikki Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 3. 47 Nathan Wachtel, “Marrano Religiosity in Hispanic America in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 150. 48 Ibid., 149. 49 Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance, 15.

idiosyncrasies and the “numerous recurrences” that together constitute a “group portrait.”50

Perhaps most controversially, Wachtel chooses to translate the testimonies from the inquisitorial trials into a first-person “direct speech,” in order for the reader “to hear the voices of our witnesses at particular moments.”51 This is part of Wachtel’s larger goal “to take what once was and try to make it live again,” so that what may emerge is not only “an intelligible history,” but also “a living memory.”52 Unfortunately, this technique serves to sustain the inquisitorial fiction that these testimonies possess a “clean authorship,” by removing any trace of inquisitorial mediation, production, and adulteration, which existed in any number of ways—not least of which was the threat of torture for less-than-forthcoming defendants.53

Regrettably, much of the historiography on the Portuguese conversos in Spanish America has not seriously interrogated the social contexts within which these individuals lived and worked. Reading this historical literature, one could be forgiven for wondering if it made much of a difference whether the conversos lived in Mexico City compared to Quito or Buenos Aires.

One critical difference between Spanish America and the metropole was the demographic landscape. Unfortunately, very few works have sought to connect the lived experiences of the conversos with those of African slaves, free blacks, or indigenous peoples. Given that the

Portuguese were the primary slave traffickers to the Spanish Indies during much of the sixteenth

50 Ibid., 16. 51 Ibid., 17. This technique has been used by other scholars, most notably Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in his Montaillou: village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (1975). 52 Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance, 18. 53 As John Arnold put it: “By ascribing this degree of agency [in the production of “truth”] (via ‘spontaneity’ and ‘authorship’) to the deponents, the foundation of the truth-claims of inquisition is shifted from the inquisitor (although he plays a key role) to the witness; and thus the power relations involved are occluded and displaced.” John Arnold, “Inquisition, Texts and Discourse,” in Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, eds. Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller (York: York Medieval Press, 2003), 65.

and seventeenth centuries, this omission is all the more striking. Seeking to address these important issues, Jonathan Schorsch compiled much fascinating material into his two-volume work, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the

Seventeenth Century (2009). The bulk of this work concerns judeoconversos and Afroiberians, and the interconnections between these groups are highly intriguing, because both “functioned as cultural and political intermediaries, taking advantage of their status for their own benefit but also suffering accordingly.”54 In seeking their own advantage, both groups also engaged in

“racialist thinking” in constructing their identities (over and against various “outsiders”).55

Schorsch’s work is highly original and thought-provoking; however, this study is also scattered and rather undisciplined. It is somewhat difficult to discern broader patterns, to see the proverbial forest for the trees. This can be seen in his approach to the question of converso religiosity, about which Schorsch argues that “it is impossible to generalize. … Only a case-by- case analysis can avoid leaping to conclusions.”56 Schorsch then concludes that the “religious identity of most of the New Christians shows that they were ‘crypto-individualists’ more than anything else.”57 While this is valid as far as it goes, it also completely shuts down the possibility of saying anything substantive about historical patterns concerning converso religious identity.

Schorsch argues that he is reading these sources “against the grain,” in order to pick up “what was produced…by accident: material that touches on relations between individuals of different castes, racial attitudes held by individuals, institutional events or behavior from which one can

54 Jonathan Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians, and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), I.2. 55 Ibid., I.7. 56 Ibid., I.72-73. 57 Ibid., I.73. The term is originally Ellis Rivkin’s.

infer racial attitudes.”58 This is a difficult exercise, but an important one. In a somewhat similar way, this dissertation reads the inquisitorial trials for different purposes than the ones for which they were originally created. For instance, combined with inquisitorial correspondence, these trials can be quite revealing of inquisitors’ attitudes and patterns of decision-making (cf. Chapter

4). These records can also help uncover important social connections between the Portuguese and key groups within the city, such as the Jesuits (Chapter 6).

Legal, Socio-Economic, and Political Questions

Over the past hundred years or so, a second large body of historical scholarship has developed on the Portuguese in colonial Spanish America, focusing on economic, social, or geo- political questions. What is striking is how little substantive engagement there has been (until relatively recently) between these works and those examined in the previous section.

Furthermore, the historical literature discussed in this section does not form a singular “field.”

There are no dominant, overarching questions dictating the scholarly debates, as there have been in the literature on crypto-Judaism and the Inquisition. Instead, there has been a multiplicity of concerns that intersect the various thematic fields of economic, political, and social history. This section will be structured, therefore, according to thematic emphasis, with the obvious caveat that these subsections should not be imagined as wholly distinct or autonomous.

Throughout the colonial era, even during the dynastic union of Castile and Portugal

(1580-1640), the Portuguese were always considered to be “foreigners of the kingdoms of the

[Castilian] Indies.”59 However, what this designation of “extranjero” meant, as well as the

58 Ibid., I.82. 59 Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias [1680], 5 vols. (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1987), IV.15 [Bk. IX, tit. 27, law 28]. It is worth noting that on this point, the two royal decrees cited are both from the period of the Union of the Crowns.

consequences that it entailed, proved to be fiercely contested issues, not only for colonial officials in the New World at the time, but also for many scholars over the past several decades.

In the 1940s and 1950s, a number of important articles were published that examined the issue of foreigners in Spain and Spanish America from a legal perspective.60 Drawing primarily on legal codes and royal decrees, these authors clearly delineated the legal position of foreigners in the

New World, as well as the means by which foreigners could become naturalized or, at least, acquire the same rights and privileges as natives: 1) a royal letter of naturalization; 2) a composition; and 3) a royal license given for a specific office.61 Unfortunately, due to the type of sources utilized in these early studies, the dynamics of how “foreignness” and “nativeness” were assessed and negotiated in towns and cities throughout Spanish America are simply not addressed. By primarily focusing on Spanish legal codes, a much more static picture took shape than doubtlessly existed in the New World.

An indispensable type of source for historians in studying local groups of foreigners is the padrón (census), which was taken as part of periodic investigations into resident foreigners within a given city or region. These padrones vary widely in terms of the amount of detail offered, but most provide basic demographic information. By using the data gathered during these investigations, historians have been able to conduct some very useful quantitative analyses of the foreign populations in key cities and regions throughout Spanish America, such as Quito,

60 José María Ots Capdequí, “Los portugueses y el concepto jurídico de extranjería en los territorios hispanoamericanos durante el periodo colonial,” In Estudios de historia del derecho español en las Indias (Bogota: Minerva, 1940), 364-78; Richard Konetzke, “Legislación sobre inmigración de extranjeros de América durante la época colonial,” Revista internacional de sociología 3 (1945): 269-99; Francisco Domínguez Compañy, “La condición jurídica del extranjero en América (según las Leyes de Indias),” Revista de Historia de América 39 (1955): 107-17; Rafael Gibert, “La condición de los extranjeros en el antiguo derecho español,” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 10 (1958): 151-99 61 Sometimes the royal license was combined with the royal naturalization letter. On naturalization specifically, see: Antonio Domínguez Ortíz, “La concesión de naturalezas para comerciar en Indias durante el siglo XVII,” Revista de Indias 19 (1959): 227-39.

Tucumán, Potosí, Venezuela, and Peru.62 In these studies, detailed statistical breakdowns are given concerning such variables as age, occupation, wealth, place of residence, place of origin, etc. However, due to the lack of additional primary sources, contextualization of the patterns that emerge from this data is often rather thin.63 An exception to this rule is Enriqueta Vila Vilar’s landmark article, “Extranjeros en Cartagena (1593-1630)” (1979), which is based on a 1630 relación of foreigners in the city. This article is organized around two central parts. In the first main section, Vila Vilar follows the example of previous historians and breaks down the census data in a very lucid fashion, analyzing patterns of nationality, means of arrival, length of residence, age, and occupation. The second part concerns “social life,” and to get at this question,

Vila Vilar examines Luis Gómez Barreto and various members of the Gramajo family—all of whom were wealthy Portuguese merchants. Drawing primarily from other sources, most notably contraband and illegal residence trials conducted against many of the Portuguese in Cartagena,

Vila Vilar emphasizes how these elite men established themselves in local society through religious patronage, political officeholding, and conspicuous displays of wealth. To be sure, these men were rather atypical Portuguese individuals; as Vila Vilar notes, “the great majority of

62 Miguel Acosta Saignes, Historia de los portugueses en Venezuela (Caracas: Universidad Central, 1959), 47-55; María Encarnación Rodríguez Vicente, “Los extranjeros en el reino del Perú a fines del siglo XVI,” in Homenaje a Jaime Vicens Vives, 2 vols., ed. Juan Maluquer de Motes Nicolau (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1967), II.533-46; idem., “Los extranjeros y el mar en Perú (fines del siglo XVI y comienzos del XVII),” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 25 (1968): 619-29; Bernard Lavallé, “Les étrangers dans les régions de Tucumán et Potosí (1607-1610),” Bulletin Hispanique 76 (1974): 125-41; Javier Ortíz de la Tabla y Ducasse, “Extranjeros en la Audiencia de Quito (1595-1603),” in América y la España del siglo XVI, 2 vols., eds. Francisco de Solano y Fermin del Pino (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1983), II.93-113. 63 Much more fruitful is comparative work utilizing multiple censuses across a number of different locales. See: Maria da Graça A. Mateus Ventura, Portugueses no Peru ao tempo da união ibérica: mobilidade, cumplicidades e vivências. 3 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 2005), I.84- 106; David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 110-18.

[the Portuguese] were men of little to no wealth.”64 However, since the bulk of the article examines only the very wealthiest Portuguese in Cartagena, it is unclear how far Vila Vilar’s findings apply to the Portuguese population as a whole. This dissertation attempts to shed greater light on how Portuguese of different socio-economic classes attempted to plant themselves in local society.

The most comprehensive look at these legal questions of foreignness and nativeness can be found in Tamar Herzog’s Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (2003). Herzog analyzes the development of two central “categories of belonging,” vecindad and naturaleza, in order to understand how early modern Spaniards

“distinguish[ed] good from bad immigrants.”65 In this case, “good” and “bad” referred to “who could enjoy rights and who could be forced to comply with duties.”66 Although Herzog emphasizes the distinction between the “local community” (vecindad) and the “community of subjects” (naturaleza), there existed much conceptual overlap.67 Generally speaking, many of the mechanisms by which one proved to be a “good immigrant” to one community proved largely the same for the other.68 An important contribution of Defining Nations is the importance it places on the performative aspects of belonging: “Indeed, by enacting the role of citizen or

64 Enriqueta Vila Vilar, “Extranjeros en Cartagena (1593-1630),” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 16 (1979): 163. 65 Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1-3.

66 Ibid., 2.

67 For example: “In the early modern period, vecindad and naturaleza came to be associated with one another. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, vecindad, which originally defined only local immigration policies, influenced nativeness, which designated a relation to the kingdom. During this period, vecindad was instituted as a mechanism of naturalization, allowing foreigners to become natives and inducing the classification of natives who lost their vecindad as foreigners.” Ibid., 9.

68 Cf. ibid., chs. 2-5.

native they created a public image that they were citizens or natives, and this image in turn allowed them to become citizens or natives.”69 Additionally, in a parallel fashion to Bodian,

Graizbord, and Pulido Serrano regarding converso identity, Herzog strongly underscores the processual nature of becoming a member of a given community.70

This dissertation builds on these insights by examining how Portuguese immigrants were perceived by Spaniards, as well as how they tried to establish themselves as rooted members of local communities and faithful subjects of the Crown. Following Herzog, this study emphasizes the local perspective, since “membership in local communities defined the relationship linking individuals to the kingdom.”71 This would prove to be crucially important for the Portuguese in

Cartagena and elsewhere. Additionally, like Herzog, this dissertation stresses the performative and processual dimensions quite strongly. However, emphasis is also placed on the discursive categories that were used by Spaniards and Portuguese alike to make sense of these questions. At times, Herzog seems to be somewhat dismissive of this dimension, arguing that “the question was never who was a Spaniard [or] who was a Frenchman.”72 Yet, as will be shown throughout this study, many Spaniards in Cartagena and across the New World were quite interested in figuring out who was Portuguese and who was Spanish.

As early modern categories, “Spaniard” and “Portuguese” were quite fluid, and their proper meanings were very much disputed at the time.73 In the opinion of many, “Spaniards”

69 Ibid., 4.

70 “[B]elonging to a local community or the community of the kingdom in the early modern period was a process…[which] was contingent upon and constituted by networks of relationships and political idioms.” Ibid., 5-6.

71 Ibid., 11.

72 Ibid., 4. 73 I.A.A. Thompson, “Castile, Spain, and the Monarchy: The Political Community from patria natural to patria nacional,” in Spain, Europe, and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, eds.

was a category that encompassed both Castilians and Portuguese. For the Portuguese cleric,

Lorenzo de Mendoza, the Portuguese were “true Spaniards, as much so as the Castilians.”74

Similarly, the Spanish bishop of Coria argued that the Portuguese were so similar to the

Castilians that to separate them into different nations could only be done out of malice.75 On the ground in the New World, even the basic task of determining where someone was originally from proved quite perplexing at times. For example, charges were brought in a 1620 composición against Juan Calvo, accusing him of being Portuguese and residing illegally in the

Indies. In his confession, Calvo stated that he was not Portuguese, but a “native of the town of

Almonte in the kingdoms of Castile, eight leagues from Sanlúcar de Barrameda.”76 It is impossible to know whether Calvo was telling the truth in his testimony. As Almonte is very close to the border with Portugal, it is entirely possible that Calvo’s accent or dialect sounded

“Portuguese” to some. Alternatively, since it was a very common practice at the time for

Portuguese to lie about their origins, perhaps Calvo was actually from Portugal, but managed to pass as Castilian.77 In any case, Calvo was able to collect multiple witnesses, including a priest

Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 125-159; Pedro Cardim, “Los portugueses frente a la Monarquía hispánica,” in La Monarquía de las naciones: Patria, nación y naturaleza en la Monarquía de España, eds. Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño and Bernardo J. García García (Madrid: Fundación Carlos Amberes, 2004), 355-383; Xavier Gil, “One King, One Faith, Many Nations: Patria and Nation in Spain, 16th-17th Centuries,” in ‘Patria’ und ‘Patrioten’ vor dem Patriotismus: Pflichten, Rechte, Glauben und die Rekonfigurierung europäischer Gemeinwesen im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Robert von Friedeburg (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 105-137.

74 Pedro Cardim, “De la nación a la lealtad al rey: Lourenço de Mondonça y el estatuto de los portugueses en la Monarquía española de la década de 1630,” in Extranjeros y enemigos en Iberoamérica: La visión del otro. Del imperio español a la guerra de la independencia, ed. David González Cruz (Madrid: Sílex, 2010), 67. 75 Tamar Herzog, Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 57. 76 “natural de la villa de Almonte en los reinos de Castilla a ocho leguas de Sanlúcar de Barrameda.” AGI, Escribanía, 589A, pieza 11, f. 7r. 77 Cf. Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century [1992], trans. Carla Rahn Phillips (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 57-60.

and a self-described “hidalgo,” who confirmed that he was born in Almonte, as he had stated previously.78 In the end, the investigator judging the case found that the fiscal had “not proved his accusation,” and declared Calvo to be absolved of all charges.79 In many cases, these judgments concerning naturaleza were decided not by certain seemingly more “objective” criteria of birthplace and ancestry, but by “subjective” factors, such as reputation and public behavior.80

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the most significant impact made by the Portuguese in Spanish America was in the economic sphere, due to their pre-eminent position as long-distance merchants and slave traders. One of the most important works in this regard is

Enriqueta Vila Vilar’s Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos (1977).81 This wide-ranging work delves into a number of important scholarly debates about the slave trade itself—e.g., the

78 AGI, Escribanía, 589A, pieza 11, ff. 16r-18r. 79 “no provó su acusación.” Ibid., f. 23r. Beyond the composiciones, one can easily find further evidence of confusion over whether a person was truly Portuguese or not. For example, in a 1619 letter, the inquisitors at Cartagena reported that “a young man, [either] Galician or Portuguese,” was arrested and put in the inquisitorial jail for showing “little respect during the procession of the Most Holy Sacrament” and for saying “some obscene words” [un mozo gallego o portugués por haber tenido poco respeto en la procesión del Corpus al Santíssimo Sacramento y dicho algunas palabras malsonantes]. AHN, Inq., L.1009, f. 30r. As Herzog has argued, these sorts of classifications were anything but “self-evident,” as Castilians tried to define “Spanishness according to Castilian standards,” which often led to Galicians and Catalans being accused of being Portuguese and French, respectively. Tamar Herzog, “‘A Stranger in a Strange Land’: The Conversion of Foreigners into Members in Colonial Latin America,” in Constructing Collective Identities and Shaping Public Spheres: Latin American Paths, eds. Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998), 49. 80 For example, in seeking a carta de naturaleza, Juan Gutiérrez Román, an alférez in Cartagena, portrayed himself as already being Castilian—due not to birthplace, but to his public image and behavior over many years. For Gutiérrez, the only thing that remained was for the king to ratify an already present reality. To this end, the contador for the Cartagena Inquisition testified that Gutiérrez, being the “son of a Castilian father” [hijo de padre castellano] and connected to the “leading persons” [la gente más principal] of Cartagena, was “commonly reputed among everyone” [comunmente reputado entre todos] to be Castilian himself. According to another witness, part of the reason for this reputation as a Castilian had to do with Gutiérrez’s “speech and good comportment” [su lenguaje y buen trato]. AGI, Contratación, 50A, ff. 28v, 32r. 81 Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos [1977], 2nd ed. (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014).

numbers of slaves transported, the proportion between legal trade and contraband, the numbers of slaves disembarked in Cartagena (as well as the wider Caribbean) compared to New Spain, etc. Also notable is Vila Vilar’s ability to make, in the words of one reviewer, “three dimensional

[sic] figures of the asentistas (monopoly slave contractors) and their factors, or agents, in

America—not an easy task.”82 An important complement to Vila Vilar’s work is Linda Newson and Susie Minchin’s From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South

America in the Early Seventeenth Century (2007).83 Drawing on a rich cache of private papers and accounts belonging to the wealthy slave trader, Manuel Bautista Pérez, this work is largely structured geographically, following Bautista Pérez around the Atlantic, from Spain to the

African coasts, across the ocean to Cartagena, and finally down to Lima. Newson and Minchin shed much-needed light on the methods of slave acquisition in Africa, the role of kinship ties in facilitating this commerce, and the continual challenges in provisioning the basic needs of the slaves, such as food, lodging, and medical care. All in all, Newson and Minchin’s work is strongly illustrative of how the literature on the Portuguese slave trade is rapidly expanding in new and exciting directions.84

One dimension of this history that is unfortunately less well-known is the relationship between the Portuguese New Christian merchants and their Spanish Old Christian counterparts.

82 Vincent C. Peloso, review of Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos, by Enriqueta Vila Vilar, The Journal of Negro History 65 (1980): 270. On this point, see especially: Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos, 106-24. 83 Linda A. Newson and Susie Minchin, From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 84 Tatiana Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade to Manila: 1580-1640,” Itinerario 32 (2008): 19-38; Paul Lokken, “From the ‘Kingdoms of Angola’ to Santiago de Guatemala: The Portuguese Asientos and Spanish Central America, 1595-1640,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 93 (2013): 171-203; Kara D. Schultz, “‘The Kingdom of Angola is not Very Far from Here’: The South Atlantic Slave Port of Buenos Aires, 1585-1640,” Slavery & Abolition 36 (2015): 424-444.

New Christian economic activity is often presented as a rather ethnocentric affair, but as Louisa

Schell Hoberman has argued in her excellent study of elite merchants in Mexico City, the division between Old Christian and New Christian was, in many ways, rather inconsequential:

Most of the merchants studied herein were not identified as conversos… Because there were few arrests [by the Inquisition] between 1601 and 1635, converso merchants active then escaped notice. At least one-fourth of the wholesalers who are the subject of this book shipped to known conversos in Seville even though they themselves were not described as conversos. This points to another aspect of the composition of the merchant community: conversos did assimilate, completely or in part, and one stimulus for this was their business relations with Old Christians. Thus, there were more conversos or semi-conversos among merchant guild members than can be shown. It is also possible that conversos were intentionally excluded from guild office, but the other chief reason for the lack of more conversos on the electoral lists of the consulado is that the Old Christian community was more important than has been realized. … [T]he sources used here indicate the significance of the Old Christians. … Scholarship on the conversos in progress should further clarify their position in the commercial elite.85

If Hoberman seems to be blurring the lines between Old and New Christians, Daviken Studnicki-

Gizbert largely erases the line altogether. In his ambitious monograph, A Nation Upon the Ocean

Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (2007),

Studnicki-Gizbert argues that “in the day-to-day concourse of trade…in the communities of the

Portuguese overseas nation, the division between Old Christian and New was meaningless.”86

Intertwining social and economic history, Studnicki-Gizbert focuses on the shared “experience and social interaction” of this mercantile community.87 Although termed the “Portuguese

Nation” throughout the book, the true subjects of this work are the (elite) merchants who were the most important and conspicuous members of this “nation.” Portuguese in different

85 Louisa Schell Hoberman, Mexico’s Merchant Elite, 1590-1660: Silver, State, and Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 21-22. 86 Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 25. 87 Ibid., 10.

occupations (e.g., farmers, soldiers, priests) or of a lower class (e.g., artisans, shopkeepers) rarely emerge from these pages. Indeed, at one point, Studnicki-Gizbert suggests that this “Portuguese

Nation” was generally equivalent with the “Portuguese bourgeoisie.”88

Within these limits, however, Studnicki-Gizbert expertly illustrates how merchant houses and kinship ties sustained the complex trading operations of this diasporic nation, as well as the essential roles played by socio-cultural institutions, such as confraternities and communal chapels, in perpetuating a “Portuguese” identity overseas. Unfortunately, in this analysis,

Studnicki-Gizbert tends to stress the insular nature of these scattered Portuguese communities, as evidenced by characteristics that appear to have only existed in large cities such as Mexico City and Seville (e.g., segregated neighborhoods, high rates of endogamy).89 This study seeks to complement Studnicki-Gizbert’s excellent work by investigating how being “Portuguese” was a negotiated label, not only among the Portuguese themselves, but also between Portuguese and their Spanish neighbors. While Studnicki-Gizbert emphasizes the structural features that helped to uphold a sense of being “Portuguese,” this study often underscores the discursive strategies that proved critically important as well.90

Intersecting with this literature on Portuguese merchant activity are several works that investigate the social and political dimensions of Portuguese life in Spanish America. A foundational and illuminating, if scattered, study is Lewis Hanke’s “The Portuguese in Spanish

America, with Special Reference to the Villa Imperial de Potosí” (1961). As Hanke himself notes, the “Portuguese contribution to the history of Spanish America has never been properly

88 Ibid., 25. 89 For example: Ibid., 51-53. 90 Cf. Brian Hamm, “Constructing and Contesting Portuguese Difference in Colonial Spanish America, 1500-1650,” Anais de História de Além-Mar (forthcoming).

studied,” and in this nearly fifty-page article, Hanke sets out a more modest goal: “to bring together some notes on the Portuguese in Spanish America, with particular attention to their connection with Potosí.”91 What makes this work from 1961 still valuable for historians is its breadth and bibliographical depth. While briefly mentioning the issue of Portuguese crypto-

Judaism, Hanke’s attention is largely focused on a diverse range of other questions, such as the relations between Spaniards and Portuguese, the social and economic contributions made by the

Portuguese in Spain’s colonies, and the varied occupational presence of Portuguese throughout

Spanish America.92 For instance, Hanke notes that “the single greatest contribution to the development of Potosí made by a Portuguese was undoubtedly the discovery of mercury by the poet Enrique Garces,” who was born in Oporto.93 Although the various issues discussed by

Hanke would be taken up by other historians in rather piecemeal fashion, it would not be until relatively recently that a much more comprehensive examination of the Portuguese in Spanish

America would emerge.

If the Portuguese are erroneously imagined as being almost exclusively part of a mercantile group, another common error is to depict the Portuguese in Spanish America as being almost wholly of New Christian stock. Indeed, the possibility of Old Christian Portuguese is hardly entertained by any scholars until quite recently. The main exception to this rule is

Jonathan Israel’s article, “The Portuguese in Seventeenth-Century Mexico” (1974), which

91 Lewis Hanke, “The Portuguese in Spanish America, with Special Reference to the Villa Imperial de Potosí,” Revista de Historia de América 51 (1961): 3, 5. 92 On this last point, see also: Henry H. Keith, “New World Interlopers: The Portuguese in the Spanish West Indies, from the Discovery to 1640,” The Americas 25 (1969): 360-71.

93 Hanke, “The Portuguese in Spanish America,” 18.

attempts to draw contrasts between Portuguese Old Christians and New Christians based on provenance and occupation:

In the main, it may be fairly said, the Old Christian Portuguese who settled in Mexico came from a peasant, artisan, and small-trading background and, on settling in New Spain, tended to live by farming, craft skills, and small-town trading or else in the arid, undeveloped, frontier areas of the far north as soldiers, explorers, and small-traders. The Cristãos novos,94 on the other hand, who were, contrary to the belief of Palafox and his contemporaries, almost certainly the smaller group, were predominantly from a non-artisan urban background – most of the Portuguese crypto-Jews in seventeenth-century Mexico had been born in Lisbon, Seville (of Portuguese parents), and Castelobranco – and naturally gravitated towards the Mexican commercial rather than silver-mining cities and the ports.95

While these distinctions are suggestive, Israel does not provide enough evidence to make these claims truly convincing. Perhaps they are generally accurate, but from what is given in the article, the reader does not have enough information to render a judgment on this question.

Furthermore, as scholars such as María Elena Martínez and others have argued, a person’s limpieza was always about much more than just ostensibly “objective” facts regarding a person’s

94 Israel further attempts to differentiate among the Portuguese New Christians: “The Portuguese Jews however, though falling into three distinct categories – firstly, the judaizantes; secondly, those who though they were non-judaizing Cristãos novos were unable for various reasons to escape effective inclusion in the New Christian caste in Mexican society; and thirdly, effectively assimilated Cristãos novos – had a quite different occupation structure.” On the one hand, the judaizantes tended “to gravitate…around the handfull [sic] of big Jewish capitalists and import-export merchants.” On the other hand, “the non-judaizing Cristãos novos, it is safe to say, similarly tended to follow the various non- artisan urban pursuits in which they had specialized in Portugal, Spain, and in several cases Italy and France: that is to say they entered commerce and the professions.” It is somewhat confusing that Israel describes this as three distinct categories of “Portuguese Jews,” when “Portuguese New Christians” would have been more appropriate. Judging from a later comment about “either observant or else non-observant Jews,” it is possible that Israel viewed the three groups as being: 1) observant Jews; 2) non-observant Jews; and 3) Christians of Jewish descent. Jonathan Israel, “The Portuguese in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 11 (1974): 23- 25. Cf. J.I. Israel, Race, Class and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610-1670 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 117-31. 95 Israel, “The Portuguese in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” 21-22.

genealogy.96 As Chapters 4 and 5 of this dissertation underscore, questions of behavior, reputation, and social perception were critical in these judgments about blood purity. In a way,

Israel gestures toward this broader social context when he cites the example of Bernardo

Guerrero, a lawyer for the Mexico City audiencia, who was a New Christian arrested by the

Inquisition for his furious denunciation of the inquisitors as “very fine thieves.” According to

Israel, Guerrero was not a judaizante, but he still “figured prominently in the social and psychological tensions between the Old and New Christian groupings in seventeenth-century

Mexican society.”97

In light of these tensions and divisions between Old and New Christians, Israel tackles a further question: how much was this group “consciously Portuguese”? According to the inquisitors, Portuguese Old and New Christians were “prone to co-operate especially at the expense of Spaniards.”98 However, Israel maintains that Portuguese Old Christians tended to see their New Christian counterparts as potential traitors, especially in light of the “Dutch successes in Brazil.”99 All in all, Israel concludes that the rebellion of the Duke of Braganza in 1640 tended to bring all Portuguese closer together in the short term, especially since limpieza was not much of an issue before the inquisitorial crackdown against the Portuguese beginning in 1642.

However, after the violent interventions of the Holy Office, significant fractures between different groups of Portuguese (and even within individual families) became evident.

96 For recent works on the thorny questions surrounding limpieza de sangre, see: María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008); Nikolaus Böttcher, et al., eds., El peso de sangre: limpios, mestizos y nobles en el mundo hispánico (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2011); Max S. Hering Torres, et al., eds., Race and Blood in the Iberian World (Berlin: Lit, 2012). 97 Israel, “The Portuguese in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” 24. 98 Ibid., 29. 99 Ibid., 29.

Relatedly, an important question that has received somwhat piecemeal attention over the past half-century is that of Spanish-Portuguese relations in the New World.100 Some of the strongest treatments of this topic are those by Stuart Schwartz. For instance, in a 1968 article on

Luso-Spanish relations in Brazil during the Union of the Crowns, Schwartz argues that two distinct periods can be observed regarding the partnership between Spain and Portugal: “The first from 1580 to 1622 is characterized by considerable Portuguese profit as a result of the union. …

The year 1622 marks the beginning of a period of loss and disillusion,” due to the reigniting of warfare against the Dutch.101 Continued belligerence with the Dutch would exacerbate tensions between Spain and Portugal, as the Portuguese “wished to open the old lines of commerce, lines that included trade with Holland.”102 However, these desires did not accord with Habsburg foreign policy, leaving the Portuguese feeling increasingly disadvantaged by the Iberian union.

While acknowledging the reality of anti-Castilian sentiment among the Portuguese, Schwartz does not exaggerate it out of proportion, as is often done. Schwartz explicitly argues that this latter period of growing resentment should not obscure the first four decades of Habsburg rule of

100 C.R. Boxer touches upon this question in a brief but balanced way in various places throughout his immense oeuvre. See especially: C.R. Boxer, “Portuguese and Spanish Rivalry in the Far East during the 17th Century,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (1946): 150-64; and idem., “Spaniards and Portuguese in the Iberian Colonial World; Aspects on an Ambivalent Relationship, 1580-1640,” in Liber Amicorum: Salvador de Madariaga, eds. H. Brugmans and R. Martínez Nadal (Bruges: De Tempel, 1966), 239-51. 101 Stuart Schwartz, “Luso-Spanish Relations in Hapsburg Brazil, 1580-1640,” The Americas 25 (1968): 43-44. Similar themes are taken up in a subsequent article by Schwartz, where he compares the Portuguese nobility’s willingness to participate heavily in the re-taking of Bahia in 1625 with their general disinterest in serving in military expeditions during the 1630s, “even in defense of Portuguese territories and interests.” Once again avoiding the simplistic explanation of national hatred of the Spanish, Schwartz argues that a number of factors contributed to this change in attitudes, including a decreasing willingness on the part of nobilities across Europe (including in Spain) to take up arms, the increasing professionalization of the army, and improved technology on the battlefield. Stuart Schwartz, “The Voyage of the Vassals: Royal Power, Noble Obligations, and Merchant Capital before the Portuguese Restoration of Independence, 1624-1640,” The American Historical Review 96 (1991): 735-62; quotation on p. 745. 102 Schwartz, “Luso-Spanish Relations,” 48.

Portugal and her empire. During these years, greater numbers of Spaniards than is typically assumed established themselves in Brazil, and like the Portuguese in Spanish America, “the

Spaniards in Brazil seem to have been well-integrated into society, and Luso-Spanish personal relations were amiable.”103 Unfortunately, what this article does not explore is the impact of geo- political changes (e.g., the resumption of war against the Dutch and worsening relations between

Spain and Portugal) on these personal relationships. Did personal relations remain “amiable,” even when geo-political tensions increased?

In a 1993 article, Schwartz examines the “Portuguese threat” in Spanish America during the 1640s, which he argues caused widespread “panic” among the Spanish. Schwartz contrasts the events of the 1640s with the earlier complicidades in Lima and Cartagena, arguing that “there is no evidence that the original impulse for [the inquisitorial crackdowns] was political.”104 After the revolt of the Duke of Braganza, however, hostilities against the Portuguese would become inseparable from broader political concerns. Of course, Portugal’s rebellion would provoke grave suspicions against the Portuguese in Spanish America, but according to Schwartz, it was local events in the New World that truly transformed Spanish anxieties into a “panic.” Schwartz examines two of these events in detail: the failed plot of the Conde de Castelmelhor to capture

Cartagena for João IV in 1641, and a fire that destroyed a hundred houses in Panama in 1644, which some suspected to be caused by Portuguese arsonists. Schwartz concludes this article by discussing the fears in Lima of a Portuguese alliance with black slaves, in order to attack the

103 Ibid., 36. 104 Stuart B. Schwartz, “Panic in the Indies: The Portuguese Threat to the Spanish Empire, 1640-50,” Colonial Latin American Review 2 (1993): 168.

heart of the viceroyalty, which reveals how the Spanish fears about the Portuguese were “not simply exaggerated, but paranoid.”105

The most in-depth treatment of these tumultuous years surrounding the rebellion of

Portugal is undoubtedly Fernando Serrano Mangas’s La encrucijada portuguesa: Esplendor y quiebra de la unión ibérica en las Indias de Castilla (1600-1668). More than any previous historian, Serrano Mangas underscores how many Portuguese throughout Spanish America remained loyal to Philip IV—and were recognized as such by many local officials, despite the inevitable suspicions that surrounded the resident Portuguese.106 Thus, this work provides a helpful counterbalance to Schwartz’s emphasis on anti-Portuguese “panic” and “hysteria” after

1640. Chapter 6 of this dissertation builds on Serrano Mangas’s insights by analyzing certain local continuities regarding the Portuguese throughout the circum-Caribbean that endured throughout the 1640s and 1650s, despite the geo-political ruptures occasioned by the Braganza revolt. Additionally, Serrano Mangas helpfully discusses the intertwined circumstances of those

Spaniards and Portuguese who lived in border regions, especially the Algarve and western

Andalucía. What becomes clear is how any clear-cut distinction between “Portuguese” and

“Spaniards” inevitably falls apart when discussing the countless thousands of individuals from those regions, who traveled to the Indies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.107

Given the strengths of this work, it is especially disappointing how Serrano Mangas falls into the crudest of stereotypes when discussing “the inescapable Hebrew component” of the

105 Ibid., 182. 106 Fernando Serrano Mangas, La encrucijada portuguesa: Esplendor y quiebra de la unión ibérica en las Indias de Castilla (1600-1668) (Badajoz: Excelentísima Diputación Provincial de Badajoz, 1994), 109- 60, passim. 107 Ibid., 37-47, quotation on p. 46.

Portuguese.108 Quoting approvingly of Julio Caro Baroja’s description of the “international character of the Jew,” Serrano Mangas proceeds to put forward grossly exaggerated claims, such as: “Nothing and no one escaped Sephardic control.”109 Additionally, it is posited that “there was no port or island where the [Dutch West India] Company did not have a spy or informant,” and it soon becomes clear that for Serrano Mangas, these ubiquitous spies were Portuguese: “To eliminate this fifth column seemed an impossible task on account of the increased number of

Portuguese who labored or traded everywhere throughout the Indies.”110 Finally, Serrano

Mangas concludes with the shocking claim that “the repression of the Peruvian Inquisition during the 1630s confirms the opinion of Caro Baroja that the Jews were the faithful allies of the principal enemies of the Habsburgs.”111 Not only are the inquisitorial sources deemed trustworthy, but the inquisitorial motives are reckoned to be, in some sense, justified, as many of the Portuguese were exactly what the inquisitors feared—viz., treasonous Jews looking to subvert

Catholic Spain and her empire. Regrettably, these stereotyped prejudices significantly mar a work that does contribute much to the scholarly literature on the Portuguese in the Spanish

Indies.

Recent Developments

A hallmark of much of the recent literature on the Portuguese in colonial Spanish

America is the move towards a greater integration of these diverse scholarly perspectives. A forerunner in this regard is Nikolaus Böttcher’s Aufstieg und Fall eines atlantischen

Handelsimperiums (1995). With chapters on crypto-Jewish practices, the trans-Atlantic slave

108 Ibid., 73. 109 Ibid., 74. 110 Ibid., 74. 111 Ibid., 80-81.

trade, the Cartagena Inquisition, and the social position of the Portuguese, it is clear that this monograph seeks to transcend the usual historiographical divides. With that being said, not all questions are given equal priority in this book, as Böttcher himself admits: “the leitmotiv remains the investigation of economic activity,” which is nevertheless “to be placed in relation to society and to the religious world.”112 Indeed, it is the investigation of Portuguese economic activity in Cartagena and the surrounding region where the most important contributions of

Aufstieg und Fall are to be found. Although other historians like Vila Vilar have investigated the commercial activities of the Portuguese merchants, Böttcher skillfully utilizes a variety of sources from within the inquisitorial archive to shed new light on the contraband trade, as well as other commercial activities and practices of the Portuguese.113

Expanding in certain ways on Böttcher’s monograph is Antonino Vidal Ortega’s

Cartagena de Indias y la región histórica del Caribe, 1580-1640 (2002), which skillfully examines the interactions between the Portuguese in Cartagena and the political and social environments of the port city. Contrary to some scholars’ assertions of the Portuguese as a rather separate, insular subgroup, Vidal Ortega ably demonstrates that they instead “participated fully in all ambits of Cartagena society.”114 For Vidal Ortega, Portuguese integration into local society was greatly facilitated by the “young” and “cosmopolitan” nature of colonial Cartagena, which was reflected in the “liberal” attitudes of the local officials. Another key dimension of this work is the series of regional networks radiating out from Cartagena towards the Caribbean islands,

112 Nikolaus Böttcher, Aufstieg und Fall eines atlantischen Handelsimperiums: Portugiesische Kaufleute und Sklavenhändler in Cartagena de Indias von 1580 bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag, 1995), 25-26. 113 Ibid., 154-206. Cf. Nikolaus Böttcher, “Negreros portugueses y la Inquisición de Cartagena de Indias, siglo XVII,” Memoria 9 (2003): 38-55. 114 Antonino Vidal Ortega, Cartagena de Indias y la región histórica del Caribe, 1580-1640 (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 2002), 26.

the interior of New Granada, and Central America. Unfortunately, Vidal Ortega’s excellent book also contains a few weaknesses. First, it is stated that the Portuguese merchants were “generally

Jews,” without ever engaging the more recent literature on converso identity and religiosity analyzed earlier.115 Second, Vidal Ortega argues in one place that the Portuguese formed a

“hermetic and impenetrable circle” that excluded all non-Portuguese from their economic activities. Yet, from the work of Julián Ruiz Rivera and others, it is known that the Portuguese had many economic ties with non-Portuguese merchants, such as the Flemish merchant, Andrés

Vanquésel.116 Lastly, Vidal Ortega on occasion uses peculiar phrases like “Caribbean vitality” and “collective soul” to discuss historical phenomena, which tend to obscure his broader arguments.

Without question, Vidal Ortega and the aforementioned Ruiz Rivera are two of the most pre-eminent historians of Cartagena de Indias and the larger region of New Granada. Ruiz

Rivera’s extensive work has shed much valuable light on the elite merchants (both Portuguese and non-Portuguese) of the city, the workings of the Cartagena city council, and the encomiendas of New Granada.117 Of most direct relevance to this study is his excellent 2002 article, “Los portugueses y la trata negrera en Cartagena de Indias,” which highlights (among other things) how elite Portuguese merchants utilized a variety of strategies to protect their often illicit economic activities, including bribes to the governor and other local officials, contributions to

115 Ibid., 104. 116 Julián B. Ruiz Rivera, “Una banca en el mercado de negros de Cartagena de Indias,” Temas americanistas 17 (2004): 3-23; idem., “Vanquésel, casa de préstamos en Cartagena de Indias,” in Estudios sobre América: siglos XVI-XX, eds. Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero and María Luisa Laviana Cuetos (Seville: Asociación Española de Americanistas, 2005), 673-89. 117 A sizeable selection of Ruiz Rivera’s essays on Cartagena have been collected into a single volume: Julián B. Ruiz Rivera, Cartagena de Indias y su provincia: Una mirada a los siglos XVII y XVIII (Bogota: El Áncora Editores, 2005). See also: idem., Encomienda y mita en Nueva Granada en el siglo XVII (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1975).

the city’s defenses, and the purchasing of local political offices, including seats on the city council.118 Although scholars have often pointed to geographic mobility as a key contributor to

Portuguese economic success during this time, Ruiz Rivera demonstrates how rootedness in a given locale, such as Cartagena, was likewise necessary for the Portuguese slave trade to function effectively. This dissertation builds on the work of both Ruiz Rivera and Vidal Ortega by stressing the importance of local politics (both secular and ecclesiastical) as a site of opportunity for Portuguese integration and ascent, as well as the source of many obstacles for the

Holy Office. Specifically, it is argued that what made Cartagena so advantageous for the

Portuguese was its combination of economic centrality and political marginality.

In many ways, Jonathan Israel’s monumental work, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews,

Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540-1740) (2002), marks a historiographical milestone. For the first time, a cohesive, detailed picture was given of the various interconnected commercial networks of the Sephardim, which stretched across “six great seaborne empires of the age.”119 According to Israel, it was this astonishing geographical and cultural breadth that enabled the Sephardim to play “an altogether unique role in the early modern age.”120 The most significant contribution of the two chapters on Spanish America is the foregrounding of the innumerable connections that linked the Portuguese conversos in both viceroyalties to the broader Sephardic diaspora. Although the examples of Ruy Díaz and his son, Diego Díaz Nieto, who come to Mexico City from Ferrara, have been well-studied,121 Israel argues that what “has

118 Julián B. Ruiz Rivera, “Los portugueses y la trata negrera en Cartagena de Indias,” Temas americanistas 15 (2002): 19-41. 119 Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540-1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1. 120 Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora, 2-3. 121 Eva Alexandra Uchmany, La vida entre el judaísmo y el cristianísmo en la Nueva España, 1580-1606 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992). See also: Alvaro Huerga, “Judíos de Ferrara en la

rarely been recognized” is the degree to which crypto-Jews in New Spain “formed part of a constantly interacting dichotomy with the Sephardic diaspora.”122 While men like Ruy Díaz and

Diego Díaz Nieto were exceptional, they were not wholly unique. For example, Jorge de

Almeyda had also lived in Ferrara, while Manuel de Morales was reported to have lived as a Jew in Venice before arriving in New Spain. In other cases, the direction was reversed. Balthasar

Rodríguez and Miguel de Carvajal left New Spain after the inquisitorial crackdown at the end of the sixteenth century, eventually joining the Jewish communities in Pisa and Salonika, respectively.123 Seventeenth-century examples could be given as well: Simón de Montero had lived in the ghettos of Pisa and Livorno, as had Julián de Álvarez. Pedro Fernández de Castro had travelled throughout Italy before coming to New Spain to work as a trader in the mining regions of New Spain. It seems that poor economic prospects combined with a plague epidemic in Pisa encouraged Fernández de Castro to try his luck in the New World.124 Yet, even with all of these Italian examples, Israel suggests that what may have been even more consequential for the success of crypto-Judaism in New Spain was the linkages with southwestern France. Places like Saint Jean de Luz, Bayonne, and Bordeaux were “extremely important in generating the

Judaic content of Mexico converso religiosity.”125

Similar themes are present in Israel’s chapter on the Portuguese conversos along the Río de la Plata. Israel especially underscores the importance of the textile trade in northern Europe for the success enjoyed by Portuguese contrabandists who plied the Río de la Plata route between

Inquisición de México,” Annuario dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per l'età Moderna e Contemporanea 35-36 (1983): 117-57. 122 Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora, 120, emphasis in original. 123 Ibid., 111. 124 Ibid., 118-20. 125 Ibid., 120.

Buenos Aires and Potosí. Reaching its zenith during the years of the Twelve Years’ Truce with

Holland (1609-1621), this commercial traffic between the Viceroyalty of Peru and northern

Europe was almost wholly conducted through Portugal.126 Yet, if Portugal served as the economic bridge, it was southwestern France, according to Israel, that once again functioned as a religious bridge by providing “an appreciable proportion of those arrested for judaizing along the

Río de la Plata and in Potosí” with direct knowledge of (semi-open) Jewish life.127 Examples of

Portuguese individuals who had spent time among the Jews of southwestern France and were arrested by the Lima Inquisition during the 1620s and 1630s include: Enrique Núñez de

Espinosa, Juan Ortega, Bernardo López Serrano, and Garci Méndez de Dueñas.

Directly building on Israel’s 2002 book is the excellent edited volume, Atlantic

Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800 (2009).128

The conversos of Spanish America appear in multiple chapters of this collection, especially those by Wim Klooster, Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, and Ronnie Perelis. Klooster’s chapter, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of the Jewish Settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and

1660s,” is especially worth noting. One of Klooster’s “enterpreneurs” was João de Yllán, who led the first Jewish settlement efforts on Curaçao. Yllán’s family serves as an excellent example of the kind of extended networks that linked Spanish America to the rest of the Sephardic

126 Ibid., 136-45. 127 Ibid., 146. 128 As the editors, Richard Kagan and Philip Morgan, explain in their preface, “As Jonathan Israel points out, no other diaspora ranged as widely, linked so many empires, or cut across so many confessional divides as did that of the Sephardim (the descendants of Jews who left Spain and Portugal after the 1492 expulsion). In fact, their movements were so frequent and varied that it is possible to identify specialized circuits within a broader overall circuit, or, following Israel’s formulation, diasporas within a wider Jewish diaspora—so we have incorporated this concept into the title of this book. Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan, “Preface,” in Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800, eds. Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), vii-viii.

Diaspora both before and after the rebellion of Portugal in 1640 (cf. Chapter 6). Yllán’s cousin,

García de Yllán Barraza, was a prominent financier at the royal court of Philip IV, and Klooster suggests that João sought to follow in his cousin’s footsteps. However, his efforts to serve in lucrative positions within the Spanish Monarchy met with little success, so he turned his energies to commercial endeavors from Dutch Curaçao.129 García’s brothers, Gonzalo Barraza Falcón and

Diego Barraza, both worked in the slave trade during the 1630s, stationed in Cartagena and

Luanda respectively.130 To be sure, the extended networks of the Yllán clan merit much further study.131

In a burgeoning field, the best book on the “judaizantes” in Spanish America is Ricardo

Escobar Quevedo’s Inquisición y judaizantes en América Española (2008). Following Wachtel,

Escobar Quevedo argues that in the New World, “the people of the Book became the people of memory.”132 One of the main connecting threads of this wide-ranging book is the movement of two Portuguese extended families, the Enríquez and the Lucena, from Castelobranco in Portugal to Seville and eventually to both viceroyalties in Spanish America. Since members of these two families were enmeshed in nearly all the major inquisitorial crackdowns in Spanish America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Escobar Quevedo is able to seamlessly

129 Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of Jewish Settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s,” in Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800, eds. Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 41. 130 Ibid., 43. 131 For more on García de Yllán, see: Maurits A. Ebben, “Corona y comerciantes: Garcia de Yllán: Un mercader al servicio de Felipe IV Rey de España, 1621-1665,” in España y Holanda, eds. Jan Lechner and Harm den Boer (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 169-86; idem., “García de Yllán: A Merchant in Silver, Bread and Bullets and a Broker in Art, 1591-1655,” in Double Agents: Cultural and Political Brokerage in Early Modern Europe, eds. Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Vera Noldus (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 125-46. 132 Ricardo Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes en América española (siglos XVI-XVII) (Bogota: Editorial Universidad de Rosario, 2008), 25.

encompass the activities of all three tribunals within his analysis. The brilliance of this work emerges from the numerous illuminating comparisons between Mexico City, Lima, and

Cartagena—e.g., “the emergence of a generation of creole marranos” in Mexico City, but not in

Lima133; the relative “moderation” shown by the Cartagena tribunal compared to the other two tribunals134; the immense gender imbalance in Lima and Cartagena, compared to Mexico

City.135 As mentioned earlier, far too little attention had been paid by historians to the differences between the three tribunals in the New World, as well as the dissimilarities between various Portuguese converso groups scattered throughout Spanish America. Without question,

Inquisición y judaizantes goes far in remedying this deficiency.

As part of this larger comparative project, Escobar Quevedo gives much greater attention to Cartagena than had hitherto been done. Not only is Cartagena’s complicidad de judíos given extended treatment, but Escobar Quevedo devotes six chapters to “the New Christians and the slave trade,” where Cartagena features prominently as “el eje del comercio negrero.” Escobar

Quevedo follows the historians previously discussed in his use of inquisitorial sources for these economic topics, and unsurprisingly, there is a good amount of overlap with previous scholarship. Where Escobar Quevedo is more original is in his delineation of the multitudinous connections between various merchant groups within Spanish America. If Jonathan Israel took a more trans-Atlantic approach in Diasporas within a Diaspora, Escobar Quevedo’s tactic in this work may be termed hemispheric. Both are skillfully executed, and the two works complement each other well.

133 Ibid., 332. 134 Ibid., 168. 135 Ibid., 56.

An even more recent work on the Portuguese conversos in Cartagena is María Cristina

Navarrete’s La diáspora judeoconversa en Colombia, siglos XVI y XVII (2010). In some respects, Navarrete covers similar ground to Böttcher, Escobar Quevedo, and Vila Vilar—viz., analyzing the arrival of the Portuguese, the religious beliefs and practices of the crypto-Jews, and the operations of the Holy Office in Cartagena. Although there is a chapter on the “vicissitudes” of the slave trade, it is largely based on secondary sources. Navarrete’s primary focus instead is on the social and religious lives of the Portuguese, especially those who were arrested by the

Inquisition. Drawing from the same sources, it cannot be said that La diáspora judeoconversa adds much that is new when discussing the Portuguese conversos in Cartagena. However,

Navarrete does make a significant contribution in her discussion of the Portuguese who resided elsewhere in New Granada and their linkages to their better-known compatriots in Cartagena.

Drawing on manuscript sources from the Archivo General de la Nación in Bogotá, as well as local archives in Popayán, Antioquia, and Cali, Navarrete breaks much new ground. In reading the sections where this source material predominates, one gets the sense that there is much more to be uncovered, and it is hoped that future researchers venture beyond Seville (and even Bogotá) to mine the archival riches that no doubt exist throughout Colombia.136

The potential riches to be gained from the perusal of local archives in Latin America can be seen in Gleydi Sullón Barreto’s recent monograph, Extranjeros integrados: Portugueses en la

Lima virreinal, 1570-1680 (2016). Drawing heavily on notarial records from Lima, Sullón

Barreto analyzes in detail religious patronage, cofradía participation, occupational and marriage patterns, as well as relations with both elite and non-elite social groups in the viceregal capital. In

136 María Cristina Navarrete Peláez, La diáspora judeoconversa en Colombia, siglos XVI y XVII: Incertidumbres de su arribo, establecimiento y persecución (Cali: Universidad del Valle, 2010), 60-103, 159-168, passim.

many areas of social life, Sullón Barreto revises and expands our understanding of Portuguese interactions with colonial society. Perhaps most importantly, Extranjeros integrados takes seriously the Catholic performative piety of the Portuguese as something more than just a convenient “mask” for crypto-Jewish practices. Based on wills and other local documentation,

Sullón Barreto is able to map out to a significant degree the Portuguese presence and involvement in Lima’s local religious landscape.

To date, the most comprehensive work on the Portuguese in Spanish America is Maria da

Graça Mateus Ventura’s Portugueses no Peru ao tempo da união ibérica (2005), which constructs a panoramic picture of the resident Portuguese scattered throughout the Viceroyalty of

Peru during the period of the Union of the Crowns.137 In this multi-volume work, one can see the fruitful merging of the various scholarly literatures discussed in this chapter. For instance, excellent comparative use is made of the various censuses taken of the Portuguese in Potosí,

Quito, Tucumán, and Cartagena, in order to construct a general economic and social profile of the Portuguese communities in these cities.138 Additionally, with an in-depth focus on the

Gramajo family in Cartagena and Manuel Bautista Pérez, the patrão of the Portuguese community in Lima, Ventura gives much greater insight into the social and economic strategies utilized by elite Portuguese familial networks than had not been hitherto realized. In large part, this is due to Ventura’s skillful utilization of an enormous range of manuscript sources, drawing from archives not only in Spain and Portugal, but also in Peru and Paraguay. Most relevant to

137 Few scholars have used a viceregal framework for their analysis. In this regard, an interesting precursor to Ventura is the twenty-page essay by Gonçalo de Reparaz, Os portugueses no vice-reinado do Peru (séculos XVI e XVII) (Lisbon, Instituto de Alta Cultura, 1976), which briefly touches upon such diverse subjects as Portuguese participants in the conquest of Peru; the first miners, merchants, and farmers in the viceroyalty; the poet Enrique Garces; the peruleiros, and the complicidad grande in Lima. 138 Ventura, Portugueses no Peru, I.63-130.

this study is Ventura’s exploration of what she terms the “social versatility” of the Portuguese, including a more detailed analysis of the genuine occupational diversity of the Portuguese, as well as the multiple routes of social integration utilized by these immigrants—both points that are strong points of emphasis in this study.

The work of Sullón Barreto and Ventura also signals a much-needed shift towards analyzing the dynamics of integration and social participation on the local level. While some previous historians had touched upon these questions previously, it is only recently that a sustained examination has been given. After this most recent scholarship, it is no longer credible to portray the Portuguese as a series of insular communities of New Christian merchants. This study, too, aims to analyze a much wider cross-section of Portuguese than is typically done.

Indeed, even Ventura’s excellent scholarship has tended to give the lion’s share of attention to the elite merchant class. The same can be said for Studnicki-Gizbert’s A Nation Upon the Ocean

Sea. Although elite Portuguese are certainly not absent from this study, special emphasis has been placed on certain groups of Portuguese who have typically been ignored or mentioned only in passing. For instance, Chapter 3 examines Portuguese pilots and militiamen, who despite their great importance to the Spanish Empire, have tended to be marginalized in favor of Portuguese merchants and slave traders. Likewise, Chapter 4 examines ordinary Portuguese who were arrested by the Inquisition for minor offenses, such as petty blasphemies, heretical propositions, and sorceries. With a couple of rare exceptions, these individuals have received next to no attention whatsoever from scholars. In contrast, much ink continues to be spilt regarding the well-known crypto-Jewish “dogmatistas” who were punished severely by the Inquisition.

Because Cartagena’s notarial records have been lost to the ravages of time and tropical climate, any study on Cartagena (or the Spanish circum-Caribbean, more generally) will

necessarily take on a different shape than those scholarly treatments that can be produced on the

Portuguese in Mexico City or Lima. Nonetheless, certain patterns can be discerned regarding strategies of Portuguese integration and social participation in cartagenero society. Instead of focusing merely on merchants or inquisitorial victims, this study expands these analytical horizons by investigating questions of discourse, patterns of self-presentation, and strategies of social mobility. In turn, these dynamics reveal much about the social landscape of Cartagena, as well as the impact of the Inquisition on the local Portuguese residents. Above all, what emerges from this study is the durability of these local patterns of integration and participation, despite the broader geo-political challenges and threats that arose throughout the Iberian Atlantic world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

CHAPTER 3 RENEGADES AND REDEMPTION IN THE AGE OF DRAKE

From the earliest years of discovery, Iberian hegemony in the New World was fiercely challenged by other nations. Through countless acts of piracy and privateering, France and

England forcefully contested the exclusivist claims of the Iberian powers. The Spanish responded to these threats in manifold fashion, including especially the establishment of a fleet system, in order to transport American bullion to Seville in a more secure and timely manner. As this oceanic struggle developed, skilled and experienced pilots became indispensable resources for both the Spanish and their northern European adversaries. In particular, given the long maritime history of their homeland, pilots from Portugal were regarded as especially skilled and knowledgeable in oceanic navigation. Whatever general concerns existed about the loyalties of

Portuguese residents in the Spanish Caribbean became particularly pressing when it came to

Portuguese pilots (and to a lesser extent, those Portuguese in other occupations). These men had the knowledge and aptitude to be of great benefit to the Spanish Monarchy; however, those same qualities raised threatening possibilities if the Portuguese pilots were to assist Spain’s enemies.

For these reasons, determining the genuine allegiances of the Portuguese in the Spanish Indies and responding accordingly became a major geo-political priority for the Spanish.

Although a number of important works have examined in detail the geo-political contexts of the sixteenth-century Caribbean, as well as the role of piracy in this era, very little attention has been paid to pilots, especially Portuguese pilots, in particular. Overall, the Portuguese have a scattered presence in these works, but they have not been the subject of extended analysis.1

1 Some of the most important works include: I.A. Wright, “Rescates: With Special Reference to Cuba, 1599-1610,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 3 (1920): 337-38, 345-53; Kenneth R. Andrews, The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 1530-1630 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 37- 39, 72-79, 131-32; Paul E. Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585: Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980),

Additionally, there is a sizeable literature on the Spanish imperial mechanisms of training and regulating pilots of whatever nationality.2 Most recently, the relational dynamics between these

Spanish structures and Portuguese pilots have been explored in more detail, especially in the work of Daniel Collins. In a 2014 article, Collins finds that Spanish attitudes towards Portuguese pilots aspiring to work on behalf of the Spanish Crown were thoroughly inconsistent, ranging from rigidly intolerant to readily inviting. Yet, all in all, pragmatic considerations generally prevailed, as Spain’s supply of skilled pilots frequently did not match demand.3 As this chapter will demonstrate, the same dynamics were at work in other marine and military occupations, such as artillerymen, and they almost always worked to the advantage of the Portuguese.

Regarding the social worlds of Iberian pilots during the early modern era, the most detailed examination is Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína’s Spain’s Men of the Sea (1992). According to

Pérez-Mallaína’s analysis, the occupation of pilot allowed for some social mobility, although it

27-35, 63-70, 103-38, passim; Carlos Esteban Deive, Tangomangos: Contrabando y piratería en Santo Domingo, 1522-1606 (Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1996), 51-170, passim; Anne Pérotin-Dumon, “French, English, and Dutch in the Lesser Antilles: From Privateering to Planting, c. 1550-c. 1650,” in General History of the Caribbean, vol. II, New Societies: The Caribbean in the Long Sixteenth Century, eds. Pieter C. Emmer and German Carrera Damas (London: UNESCO Publishing, 1999), 116-17; Alejandro de la Fuente (with the collaboration of César García del Pino and Bernardo Iglesias Delgado), Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 1-2, 93-100; Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, “La estructura económica de Santo Domingo, 1500-1795,” in Historia de las Antillas, vol. II, Historia de la República Dominicana, ed. Frank Moya Pons (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2010), 72-75. 2 Among the most important works on the subject: José Pulido Rubio, El piloto mayor de la Casa de la Contratación de Sevilla: pilotos mayores, catedráticos de cosmografía y cosmográfos (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1950); Luis Navarro García, “La Gente de Mar en Sevilla en el Siglo XVI,” Revista de Historia de América 67-68 (1969): 3-42; Ursula Lamb, Cosmographers and Pilots of the Spanish Maritime Empire (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995). Carla Rahn Phillips gives a helpful summary of the duties and training of pilots in her larger monograph on the construction, preparation, and outfitting of armada ships. Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 129-34. 3 Edward Collins, “Portuguese Pilots at the Casa de la Contratación and the Examenes de Pilotos,” The International Journal of Maritime History 26 (2014): 179-92; cf. idem., “Francisco Faleiro and Scientific Methodology at the Casa de la Contratación in the Sixteenth Century,” Imago Mundi 65 (2013): 25-36.

remained a position of limited prestige. Most pilots were of rather humble origins, including not a small number of mixed-race persons. While the post of pilot was also one of the more financially lucrative positions on board a ship, pilots were, with few exceptions, not particularly wealthy men.4 Beyond a few pages on the question of foreigners as crew members of Spanish ships (including as pilots), Pérez-Mallaína does not devote much space to the question of

Portuguese (or other foreigners) as pilots within the Spanish Empire.5 With the exception of

Collins, the same can largely be said for the other secondary sources cited previously. This lacuna is unfortunate, especially since a greater focus on the Portuguese in the sixteenth century

(especially before 1580) would help correct a traditional overemphasis on the mid-seventeenth century within the historical literature on the Portuguese in Spanish America.

To this end, this chapter focuses primarily on a roughly thirty-year period (1555-1586) that witnessed a significant number of incidents in which Portuguese pilots assisted—or were forced to assist—French and English corsairs in their depredations against the Spanish.

Unsurprisingly, these episodes provoked various condemnations of the Portuguese from Spanish writers and observers. Over time, a range of measures were put forward to remedy the problem—up to and including the complete expulsion of the Portuguese and the confiscation of all their goods. Nonetheless, this chapter argues that, even when tensions were at their worst, blanket condemnations and punitive anti-Portuguese proposals were very much a minority

Spanish position. This was largely due to three reasons: first, because any neat division between

4 Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century [1992], trans. Carla Rahn Phillips (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 27-41, 76-94, 114-23, 230-32, passim. Cf. Navarro García, “La Gente de Mar en Sevilla,” 43-46, 61-64 5 For pilots within the Portuguese Empire, see: Amélia Polónia, “Mestres e pilotos das carreiras ultramarinas (1596-1648): Subsídios para o seu estudo,” Revista da Faculdade de Letras 2nd ser., 12 (1995): 271-353.

loyal Spaniards and duplicitous Portuguese was undermined by countless examples of Spanish traitors and renegades, as well as those Portuguese pilots and mariners who loyally served on the

Spanish fleets; second, because mitigating circumstances of coercion and pragmatic considerations made it difficult to ascertain precisely the loyalties and motivations of individual renegades; and third, because the geo-political conflicts of this period were broadly interpreted by Spanish officials through a Catholic-Protestant paradigm, which greatly benefited the

Portuguese, who hailed from a kingdom that shared the same Iberian religious culture as Castile.

Taken together, these factors encouraged a more measured Spanish response—one that interpreted incidents of treason or disloyalty as manifestations of individual wickedness, rather than reflections of supposedly inherent traits or qualities of the Portuguese.

Starting in the early seventeenth century, it became increasingly common (though never universal) for Spaniards to regard various negative characteristics, including anti-Castilian animus, as being inherent features of Portuguese naturaleza. By contrast, for most of the sixteenth century, anti-Portuguese denunciations more often focused on economic or political arguments rather than religious ones. Tellingly, when religion did enter the picture, the

Portuguese were typically accused of being “luteranos”—co-religionists of the English or

Huguenot French. (For their part, corsairs such as Francis Drake were greatly desirous of having their foreign pilots convert to their faith, and no doubt, some chose to do so.) Overall, early modern anti-Portuguese rhetoric took on a variety of forms, and during the sixteenth century, the variety in widest circulation throughout the Atlantic world had little to do with the Law of Moses or impure blood.

Finally, these Spanish reactions were not unique to the specific issue of pilots. Regarding other sensitive military posts, such as artillerymen, similar attitudes tended to predominate

among Spanish officials—viz., the preference for Spaniards, concerns about the possibility of betrayal at the hands of foreigners, but ultimately, a willingness to employ and to reward skilled and faithful service to the Spanish Monarchy, regardless of national origins. These patterns demonstrate that no matter how strong Spanish anxieties about Portuguese loyalty might have become, they never seriously disrupted the ability of individual Portuguese to demonstrate their fidelity to the Spanish Crown and be rewarded for it.

The Value of Pilots

In early modern Iberian society, maritime occupations generally carried little social prestige. As a group, however, pilots held a vaguely higher position than common sailors and mariners. This ambiguity regarding how much honor the post of pilot actually conferred can be seen in a comment made by the Viceroy of Peru, the Marquis of Montesclaros, who observed that being a pilot or master of a ship is “honorable in that there is no loss of honor from holding it.”6 For those who passed the examinations given by the Casa de Contratación in Seville, it could be judged that they held at least an elementary level of education. Nonetheless, as Pablo

Pérez-Mallaína has pointed out, most authors of sixteenth-century nautical instruction books saw their writings as “a way to lessen the ignorance of pilots, who were generally described as

‘coarse,’ ‘ill-bred’ (tosco), ‘rude,’ ‘lacking in understanding,’ and other pretty phrases of that ilk.”7 Adding to the social stigma was the fact that many pilots on the Spanish fleets were of at least partial African descent. Carla Rahn Phillips suggests that a third contributing factor was geo-cultural:

6 Quoted in David Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 1589-1665: Reconstruction and Defeat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 247. The quotation refers specifically to ship masters, but since the posts of master and pilot often overlapped, the assessment can be understood as applicable to both. 7 Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea, 39.

One suspects that these status distinctions sprang from the natural antagonism between the inland areas [of Spain], which held the bulk of the population, and the coastal zones, which held a small proportion of total population but virtually all the mariners. By and large, early modern Spain identified with the settled agricultural life of inland Castile. Many Spaniards considered sailors to be vile and despised the unsettled lifestyle that characterized seafaring.8

Finally, it should be noted that if a pilot violated the regulations of the Casa, he could be subjected to the same sorts of punishments given to a common sailor—a clear reminder of the comparatively small social distance that existed between the top and bottom rungs of the maritime hierarchy.9 All of these slights served as perpetual reminders of the humble origins of most pilots.10

The pilot of a ship was concerned with guiding the ship along each stage of its journey and protecting it from storms and other hazards. To accomplish these tasks, the pilot relied on a combination of personal experience and nautical science. A certified pilot was expected to be proficient in using a magnetic compass, portolan charts, and an astrolabe, in order to establish latitude and direction. Combined with these scientific instruments was an entire treasury of acquired wisdom: how to read the skies and the waves or what the flight patterns of birds and the

8 Carla Rahn Phillips, “Maritime Labor in Early Modern Spain,” in The Market for Seamen in the Age of Sail, ed. Lewis R. Fischer (St. John’s: International Maritime Economic History Association, 1994), 20- 21. 9 Many complaints from ships’ masters were given on this point. According to one petition: “The instructions assign to the masters penalties of one hundred lashes, and in this we are affronted and aggrieved, given that we are the lords and masters of ships, very honorable and rich and wealthy persons, and that when we do things that we ought not do, our resources will pay for it...and to assign to persons such as we are penalties of blows of the lash is to affront our persons and our reputations.” Quoted in Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea, 41. 10 Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 241-53. For similar social dynamics in Portugal, see: C.R. Boxer, “Introduction,” in The Tragic History of the Sea, 1589-1622, ed. C.R. Boxer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 10-15; Francis A. Dutra, “The Maritime Profession and Membership in the Portuguese Military Orders in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” in Marginated Groups in Spanish and Portuguese History, eds. William D. Phillips, Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips (Minneapolis: Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 1989), 89-100.

shape of the clouds signified.11 Much of this knowledge was passed down orally. Without doubt, there was a great deal of overlap between these two spheres of knowledge, and much guesswork went into both.12 This situation sometimes provoked a great deal of cynicism. One passenger,

Eugenio de Salazar, humorously related his observations, which are worth quoting in full:

Thus we sailed with stormy winds for four days, until even the pilot and the mariners began to sniff the air and conjecture about landfall like asses do when they near a pasture. At such times it is something to see the pilot calculate the Pole star’s position, to see him take the fore-staff, set the timbrel, and point it toward the north, and finally to estimate its distance at 3,000 or 4,000 leagues; to see him afterwards at midday take the astrolabe in his hand, raise his eyes to the sun, try to get the sun to shine through the openings in the astrolabe, and then give up without being able to complete his measurements properly; and to see him look then at his sailing book; and at last, to throw in his minimal judgments as to the altitude of the sun.

At times his estimate rises so high that it is 1,000 degrees over the mark. And other times it falls so low, that one would not arrive there in a thousand years; and above all it made me tired to see how the pilots wanted to keep secret from the passengers the degree or point that they took, and the leagues that it seemed to them the ship had sailed on its course; although afterwards when I understood the cause, which is that they never hit the mark nor understand what they are doing, I had patience seeing that they are correct in not displaying the irregularities of their confused aim-taking; because they take the altitude as a little more or less; and the space of the head of a pin on their instrument will cause them to make more than five hundred leagues of error in their estimate.

Spare me this skill. Oh, how God shows his omnipotence in having put this subtle and so important art of navigating among judgments so dull and hands so coarse as

11 Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea, 84-85. 12 This was as true in the English case as it was in the Spanish. According to the English admiral William Monson, writing in the seventeenth century: “[T]here is no certainty in the art of navigation in our ordinary masters that take charge; for if there were they would not so much vary one from another as usually they do. For proof whereof, let there be four or five masters or pilots in one ship that goes or comes from England to the Terceiras; if they be at any time in traverse at sea you shall have some of them thirty leagues before the ship, and others as many leagues behind the ship. Imagine by this what danger every ship is in that goes from England and comes home again, and it is a wonder to me that more ships do not miscarry considering the danger of our coast. It is not art, but fear and care, that preserves them; for if they should presume upon their art to bear in with any land the rocks would devour ten times more ships than they do. But the masters have so provident a care, and so great a mistrust in their own art that, though they observe the sun and stars never so exactly, they will not presume to bear in with the land which they have not made except the coast be clear or the wind large to claw it off again.” M. Oppenheim, ed., The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson. 5 vols. (London: Navy Record Society, 1902- 14), IV.395.

those of these pilots! … We traveled hearing these vain and various judgments of the pilots and masters and of some mariners who presume to be bachelors in the art of navigation, until, twenty-six days after setting sail, God was served that we saw land.13

As this division between “science” and “experience” was rather artificial, veteran mariners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could climb the ranks to become a pilot, even without formal training. This was true not only in Spain, but also in other maritime countries, such as England.

As historian Ralph Davis bluntly put it, “It was still possible in the sixties [i.e., the 1660s] for illiterates to command ships.”14 What was required of a pilot at this time was not necessarily to be literate or even to be particularly skilled in using the latest nautical technology; instead, to quote from the seventeenth-century English admiral William Monson, “the principal thing in a pilot or coaster…is to know where he is…and to know the land as soon as he shall descry it.”15

Although more of an art than a science, a pilot’s knowledge and experience were truly indispensable assets that were eagerly sought by both the Spanish and their enemies. While more formal knowledge (e.g., the use of the latest nautical instruments) could be useful at times, what was of much greater importance was local knowledge—of coastlines, hidden reefs, secret inlets, and the like. This type of knowledge often proved decisive in the success or failure of the

English and French raiding expeditions. Even Drake admitted as much after returning from his famed voyage around the world. As Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, put it, “Drake asserts that had it not been for two Portuguese pilots, whom he took from one of the ships he plundered

13 Carla Rahn Phillips, ed. and trans., Life at Sea in the Sixteenth Century: The Landlubber’s Lament of Eugenio de Salazar (Minneapolis: The Associates of the James Ford Bell Library, 1987), 20-21; the original Spanish version of Salazar’s letter can be found in an appendix in José Luis Martínez, Pasajeros de Indias: Viajes transatlánticos en el siglo XVI (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1983), 281-96. 14 Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry (London: MacMillan, 1962), 122. 15 Oppenheim, The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, IV.31.

and sunk on the coast of Brazil on his way out, he could never have made the voyage.”16

Another member of Drake’s crew, Francis Fletcher, concurred with Drake’s assessment: “If the

Portugall pilot had not been apointed of God to do us good we had perished without remembrance.” Fletcher went on to state that what was especially valuable about the pilot, Nuño de Silva, was that he “was not ignorant of this part of countrye [i.e., Brazil] .”17

Many negative instances can also be found that testify to this general principle. For example, in explaining why four ships of the 1578 New Spain fleet sunk in the Indies, Cristóbal de Eraso wrote to the Council of the Indies that “although the pilot brought along was the oldest and most experienced on this route and dealt properly with the matters related to charting the course and calculating the latitude, he and all the others were not very experienced in the knowledge of this coast, which is what really mattered.” Eraso went on to insist that before licensing pilots, it should be verified that they possessed “first-hand knowledge of all the coast” to which they are traveling.18 Inexperienced pilots could generate abundant troubles for pirates as well, as John Hawkins discovered in 1565, when he hired a Spanish merchant (and former resident of Jamaica) to pilot his ships to the island, in order to acquire valuable hides and a replenishment of supplies. Unfortunately, as the novice pilot had not been to Jamaica in at least three years, he was unable to recognize the coastline until it was too late. Finding themselves “at the West end of Jamaica before we were aware of it,” Hawkins and his men had no other choice but to rue the missed opportunity and keep following the current. It is little wonder that John

16 Bernardino de Mendoza to Philip II, 16 October 1580, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, 4 vols., ed. Martin A.S. Hume (Nendeln: Kraus, 1971), III.55. 17 W.S. Vaux, ed., The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake, Being His Next Voyage to that to Nombre de Dios, Collated with an Unpublished Manuscript of Francis Fletcher, Chaplain to the Expedition (London: Hakluyt Society, 1854), 35. 18 Quoted in Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea, 86.

Sparke, who wrote an account of the entire voyage, called the inept pilot “a plague not onely to our Captaine, who made him loose by overshooting the place 2000. pounds by hides, which hee might have gotten, but also to himselfe,” since he missed his opportunity to return home “to his wife and friendes.”19 Instead, the luckless merchant-pilot had to content himself with traveling to

England with Hawkins’s company.

The Danger of Renegades

The qualities that made pilots such valuable assets to the Spanish could quickly become a source of much danger and trepidation, if an experienced pilot proved disloyal to Spanish interests. Well aware of the value of their knowledge and skill, pilots sometimes sought to exact revenge on certain individuals or cities by offering their services to French or English corsairs.

The costly consequences of one man’s betrayal were manifested clearly in the 1544 sack of

Cartagena by French Huguenot corsairs, led by Jean-François Roberval (known as Roberto Baal to the Spanish). According to the sixteenth-century Milanese historian Girolamo Benzoni, a year prior to the French raid, the lieutenant governor of Cartagena, Alonso de Bejinés, had ordered a

Spanish pilot, Juan Álvarez, to be flogged publicly as punishment “for a certain slight that [the pilot] had given to him.”20 After enduring this humiliation, Álvarez returned to Spain and proceeded immediately to France, swearing to exact revenge against Bejinés and all of

Cartagena.21 Once there, Álvarez joined Roberval’s band of French corsairs, agreeing to serve as their pilot on a pillaging voyage along the coast of the Spanish Main. As the tale went, while the

19 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation [1598-1600]. 12 vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1904), X.43-44. 20 “per un certo dispetto, che gli haveva fatto.” Girolamo Benzoni, La historia del mondo nuovo [1565] (Venice: Ad instantia di Pietro, & Francesco Tini, fratelli, 1572), 72v. 21 Pedro Simón, Noticias historiales de las conquistas de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales [c. 1623]. 5 vols. (Bogota: Casa Editorial de Medardo Rivas, 1892), IV.219.

French sacked the city, Álvarez hunted down Bejinés and “by repeated stabs killed him.”22 This episode was depicted years later in an engraving by the famous Flemish artist Theodor de Bry.23

By the end of the French assault, Cartagena was left decimated and utterly impoverished, while the French, according to Benzoni, emerged 150,000 ducados wealthier.24

An even greater catastrophe for the Spanish was the 1555 loss of Havana to a band of

French corsairs led by Jacques de Sores. As Kris Lane notes, this was “no mere pirate sortie, but rather a full-scale military assault.”25 For the city, Sores demanded an impossible ransom of

30,000 pesos, combined with several thousand pounds of bread and meat, to which the city leaders responded with an offer of just over 4,000 pesos. The corsair laughingly dismissed this proposal by declaring that “he did not know that there were crazies outside France.”26 Soon a counterattack was planned by Havana’s governor, a lawyer with no experience in military matters. Unfortunately for the city, the governor’s 300-man force, composed mostly of Indians and Africans, failed spectacularly. Completely enraged, Sores executed most of the prisoners that he took from the city’s fortress, only sparing the life of the local commander for a sum of 2,200 pesos. Before leaving, the French burned Havana to the ground, devastating the “town in such a way” that, according to one observer, “the Greeks did not leave Troy worse.”27

22 Girolamo Benzoni, History of the New World [1565], trans. W.H. Smyth (London: Hakluyt Society, 1857), 107. 23 Kris Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 26; Eduardo Lemaitre, Historia general de Cartagena, 4 vols. (Bogota: Banco de la República, 1983), I. 131. 24 Benzoni, History of the New World, 107. 25 Lane, Pillaging the Empire, 25. 26 “no pensaba que había locos sino en Francia.” Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar (Segunda serie) [CODOIN II] (Madrid: Est. Tipográfico “Sucesores de Rivadeneyra,” 1891), VI.369. 27 “todo lo pusieron por el suelo, y dexaron de tal manera el pueblo, que los griegos cuando tomaron a Troya no la dexaron peor.” Ibid., VI.436.

Like Roberval, Sores was a Huguenot corsair who employed a local renegade as a pilot.

Pero Bras, a Portuguese pilot from the Azores, had been a resident in Havana for around a year, although it seems that Bras never stayed in one location for too long. Captured by the French while traveling with other Portuguese from Nombre de Dios to Santo Domingo, Bras offered to pilot Sores and his men to Havana. The French accepted Bras’s offer, and the rest of the

Portuguese on board the captured ship were taken prisoner and forced to accompany the French to Havana.28 With Bras’s knowledge and skill as a pilot, the French were able to enter Havana effortlessly and lay siege to the city’s fortress. Denounced invariably as a “traitor” who “sold out this land,” Bras appeared eager to help out the French in whatever way he could.29 While in

Havana, Sores was considering an attack on Santo Domingo, and he asked the alcaide of Havana about the best entry point into that city. The alcaide protested that Santo Domingo was a heavily armed and well-defended port, which would “not be as easily taken as Havana had been.”30

Completely contradicting the alcaide, Bras told the French that Santo Domingo was actually quite sparsely defended and could be easily taken by Sores and his men.31 It is no wonder that one report decried Bras as a man “who was more cruel and of more evil counsels than the captain

[Sores] himself.”32 From all accounts, Bras seems to have served the French freely, motivated either by monetary rewards or perhaps by an antipathy to Spain or the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, none of the contemporary accounts attempts to explain Bras’s motivations.

28 Ibid., VI.384-85. 29 “el piloto traidor portugués que vendió esta tierra.” Ibid., VI.422. 30 “no pensase que tan fácilmente la había de tomar como a la Habana.” Ibid., VI.422. 31 Ibid., VI.422-23. 32 “el cual era más cruel e de más malos consejos que el mismo capitán.” Ibid., VI.373.

Four years after the sack of Havana, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Cateau-

Cambrésis, which officially ended armed hostilities between the two nations, although it allowed for continued belligerence in the Caribbean.33 Despite peace in Europe, violent conflict between the Spanish and the French continued apace throughout the circum-Caribbean. One interesting relación de las piraterías from 1571 detailed over a dozen separate attacks on Spanish interests since the signing of the 1559 treaty. Each year brought new assaults by corsairs, some of whom were well-known, like Jean Bontemps, while others were more obscure. On more than one occasion, this Spanish report explicitly indicated it was a pilot from Portugal who had guided and assisted the French pirates in assaulting Spanish shipping and colonial holdings.34 Of course, this list was hardly exhaustive. Not included were other notable French predations, including a 1561 attack on San Francisco de Campeche by three French ships that were guided by a Portuguese named Borges. Similarly, three years earlier, four French ships attacked Puerto Caballos in

Guatemala, led by pilots from both Portugal and Vizcaya.35

These general anxieties about the loyalty of Portuguese pilots took on a much sharper political dimension in the early 1580s with the emergence of Dom António as pretender to the

Portuguese throne and ally of the heretical English. Indeed, ever since the Portuguese succession crisis began, the English and French sought to take advantage of the unstable situation for their own benefit, if not necessarily to help Dom António actually become king. As the Spanish

33 As Eliga Gould has pointed out, “In the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), France and Spain agreed— verbally, as opposed to scribally—to allow their subjects in the Americas to remain in a state of belligerence with each other without acknowledging the resulting hostilities as acts of war binding in Europe.” Eliga H. Gould, “Law of Nations,” in The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History, ed. Joseph C. Miller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 292. For the continually unresolved status of the Indies in Franco-Spanish diplomatic negotiations, see Hoffman, The Spanish Crown, 103-107. 34 AGI, Patronato, 267, N.1, R.53. 35 María Justina Sarabia Viejo, Don Luis de Velasco: Virrey de Nueva España, 1550-1564 (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1978), 450.

ambassador to England, Bernardino de Mendoza, observed as early as 1581, “The evident intention of most of the Englishmen is simply to plunder under the name of Don Antonio, as, indeed, they openly state.”36 Nonetheless, Dom António did manage to strike up some friendships of mutual utility with various English privateers—including, most especially, Francis

Drake. The English could provide Dom António with much-needed military and naval support, while the Portuguese pretender promised significant commercial concessions to English merchants, if he were successfully put on the Portuguese throne.37 Dom António’s promises to the English were heavily centered on the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores—two Atlantic archipelagoes that were both commercially lucrative and more politically supportive of the

Portuguese pretender. There were multiple plans and schemes drawn up between Dom António,

Drake, and other English merchants and noblemen (e.g., Francis Walsingham, Robert Dudley, and John Hawkins) on how to capture either the Cape Verde Islands or the Azores, if not

Portugal itself; however, these designs often fell through due to a lack of funds or a lack of royal consent to the proposed expeditions.38 It became clear that in order to acquire the needed funds, intercepting a Spanish treasure fleet or raiding the Spanish Indies would likely be a prerequisite.

Throughout the 1580s, these political and economic circumstances all contributed to the circulation of rumors that Dom António was preparing to sail to the New World with the

36 Bernardino de Mendoza to Philip II, 12 August 1581, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, III.157. 37 Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 242. 38 For example, in 1581, Dom António, Drake, and a few others constructed a plan to capture and fortify the island of Terceira in the Azores, turning it into a base of operations from which Drake could launch attacks on the Spanish treasure fleets and Dom António could continue defending his claims to the Portuguese throne from Portuguese soil. However, the costs of fortifying the island quickly escalated beyond what anyone cared to pay, and the whole plan eventually fell through. John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 164-68; see also, Harry Kelsey, Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth’s Slave Trader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 163.

English. Some accounts claimed that Dom António was headed for Brazil.39 Other reports concerned possible attacks on Spanish America. For example, one consulta from the Council of the Indies in 1582 claimed that Dom António had left from Isla Terceira with 3,500 men, mostly

“Portuguese and Frenchmen.” Although it was suspected that Madeira and Brazil were the main targets, the Council claimed that “with so many men, [Dom António] could be able to carry out another objective,” perhaps an attack on Cartagena. The king was warned that if Dom António’s forces did attack Cartagena, it would cause “much harm, since there were not enough defenses in the city to resist him [Dom António].”40 Despite the nebulous nature of all these rumors, they did eventually move Philip II to respond. As the Venetian ambassador to Spain described it in 1586,

“These rumors...have caused the King to give orders that the West India fleet, that is the fleet for

Peru and New Spain, should not sail. It is known that Drake is in command of the first sixty ships; it is suspected that Don Antonio, of Portugal, commands the other sixty. We hear from

London that these ships have sailed.”41 While the ambassador’s suspicions turned out to be incorrect, it was entirely plausible to all observers at the time that Dom António might indeed sail with Drake on his voyage to the Indies. After all, it was not from lack of trying that Dom

António did not join the expedition, but from the express command of Elizabeth I that he remain in England.42

39 Bernardino de Mendoza to Philip II, 12 August 1581, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, III.157. 40 “lleva tres mil y quinientos hombres franceses y portugueses,” “con tanta gente podría llevar otro intento y que si fuese a Cartagena podría hacer allí mucho daño por no estar aquello con tanta defensa que le pueda resistir.” AGI, Indiferente, 740, N.99. 41 Vincenzo Gradenigo to the Doge and Venetian Senate, 10 January 1586, in Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy, ed. Horatio F. Brown (Nendeln: Kraus, 1970), VIII.129-30. 42 According to Harry Kelsey, “On 7 September the pretender to the Portuguese throne, Dom Antonio, arrived in Plymouth. Drake found room for him at his Buckland estate, along with [Sir Philip] Sidney. Dom Antonio also wanted to go on the voyage [to the West Indies], but some correspondence with the

Of course, the Spanish Indies had been threatened by pirates for decades, but what the

Spanish feared most after 1580 was not simple pillaging, but the capture and transformation of a

Spanish or Portuguese colonial port into a permanent base of operations for the Portuguese pretender and his English allies. Indeed, many residents of Santo Domingo and Cartagena were quick to imagine that it was actually Dom António who was behind the English attacks. Fleeing from their devastated city, some elite residents of Santo Domingo reported that “from certain indications, we suspect that the commanding officer is Don Antonio of Portugal.”43 Likewise, another letter written only days after the attack states that “some say that Don Antonio is in command of these English.”44 In the aftermath of the fall of Cartagena, parallel rumors circulated that Drake’s attack was just a prelude to a much larger force being led by Dom

António: one witness “heard it said that Don Antonio was coming to these parts and that he would bring a great fleet and that he would raise more than thirty thousand men.”45 With such exaggerated rumors as these spreading throughout the region, one might be forgiven for

queen soon convinced him that this was impractical, and he left for London with Sidney.” Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake, 242. From Ambassador Mendoza’s account, Elizabeth I “scoffed greatly” at the idea of Dom António accompanying the fleet to the New World. Bernardino de Mendoza to Philip II, 8 October 1585, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, III.550. 43 Irene A. Wright, ed., Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583-1594 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1951), 23. It is unclear what these “certain indications” were, but it is possible that the English might have been sailing deceptively under a Portuguese flag. The Dominican historian, Cipriano de Utrera, states that “it seems that the English...[upon approaching Santo Domingo] brandished the Portuguese flag, feigning to be a squadron sent by the Prior of Crato.” Utrera bases this on an unnamed “documento.” Similar tactics had been suggested before. In 1584, John Hawkins proposed that English ships be allowed to attack the Spanish fleets under the Portuguese flag, with five or ten percent of the captured treasure going to Dom António. Nothing, however, was made of this proposal. If Drake’s ships did fly the Portuguese flag in 1586, they did it on their own initiative, and I have not found any documents to indicate that they chose to do so. Cipriano de Utrera, Santo Domingo: Dilucidaciones Históricas, tomo I (Santo Domingo: Secretaría de Estado de Educación, 1978), 217; Kelsey, Sir John Hawkins, 174-75. 44 Wright, Further English Voyages, 19. 45 Ibid., 168.

wondering if Dom António did not actually provoke more terror for these Spaniards than Drake did. As Irene Wright aptly expressed it, “Don Antonio haunted the Spanish Indies in these years—reported to be here, there, and everywhere—as restless and intangible as a ghost.”46

Within a short time, however, these ghost tales began to fall apart. As the members of the

Audiencia of Santo Domingo later testified, “At first it was supposed that the commander of these people was Don Antonio, prior of Crato, but later it was learned that this was not true, that he remains in England at the house of this Captain Francis, by whose hand so much damage has been inflicted.”47

Even with Dom António in faraway England, some Spaniards in the Indies thought they saw “Portuguese” at work everywhere. According to one account, when Drake approached

Cartagena, he used his Portuguese “vice-admiral” in an act of trickery to weaken the morale of the city:

The day [Drake] reached [Cartagena] a ship came close to the shore and pretended that the gammoning of the main mast had broken, and the vessel dropped back, near a point. A Portuguese struck out for shore, swimming. They fired heavily on him and sent a boat in pursuit. When he got to land, the people received him and dressed him, and he told them that the English had carried him off by force and that at Santo Domingo they had landed 5000 musketeers and said they would land 1000 at Cartagena and another thousand and still other thousands, until they razed the city ... He so frightened the people that not a man faced the enemy nor raised his head. After the city fell they saw this man with the English, well attired, and he sails with them—the vice-admiral of their fleet, called Don Francisco the Portuguese!48

This story, while amusing, is nonetheless certainly spurious. The so-called “Don Francisco the

Portuguese” was, in fact, a Spaniard, Don Francisco Maldonado. An eyewitness to the carnage at

Santo Domingo, Maldonado sailed to Cartagena three days before Drake arrived, in order to

46 Wright, “Introduction,” in Further English Voyages, xvii. 47 Wright, Further English Voyages, 36. 48 Ibid., 173.

warn the city of how the English had so easily sacked Santo Domingo. Maldonado’s testimony eviscerated whatever hopes the defenders of Cartagena had previously held about defeating

Drake’s forces, and it was left to the Governor Fernández del Busto and Pedro Vique, commander of the galleys, to try and encourage the timorous militia troops, exhorting them “to fight like Spaniards...for Christ’s faith and for our king and homes.” According to Vique’s rather self-serving testimony, the troops were much assured by these exhortations, swearing “to fight and die for God’s religion and their king.”49 Regrettably for Vique and the governor, these vows went largely unfulfilled.

Although Drake certainly had no Portuguese vice-admiral sailing with him, other witnesses claimed to have seen such a figure as well. One Aragonese seaman, Pedro Sánchez, was taken prisoner at Cartagena and eventually escaped his captors in western Cuba, where the

English had stopped to search for firewood and fresh water. Sánchez told royal officials in

Havana that upon being captured, the English had put him aboard the ship of the vice-admiral, who, Sánchez claimed, was “a Portuguese whom the English called Canbra.”50 In actuality,

Drake’s vice-admiral was none other than the famous English captain and explorer, Martin

Frobisher, who would later be knighted by Elizabeth I for his service in defeating the Spanish

Armada. Nevertheless, the peculiarities from Sánchez’s deposition do not end there. According to a later written summary of Sánchez’s testimony in Havana, Sánchez declared that Drake himself was Portuguese: “Their admiral is a Portuguese and is called Don Francisco Dragon

[Draque—i.e., Drake].”51 Of course, this could be a scribal error, confusing the supposed vice- admiral named Don Francisco with Francis Drake, or perhaps, Sánchez actually did believe that

49 Ibid., 104-05. 50 Ibid., 167. 51 Ibid., 212.

both men were Portuguese, although it is somewhat difficult to imagine someone being held captive by Drake who did not know that he was an Englishman.52

Portuguese spies planted by the English were yet another source of anxiety for the

Spanish. Even when a city seemed safe from enemy ships, the danger of informants gathering valuable intelligence about the state of local defenses remained. Captured members of Drake’s fleet seemed to confirm these fears. One prisoner, an Indian named Pedro, claimed to have been with Drake for twelve years and testified in great detail about Drake’s spy network. One spy was said to have been housed in Cartagena at the home of a Portuguese pharmacist named González, while two more Portuguese spies, Don Juan and Francisquito, were left at La Margarita.

According to Pedro, this Don Juan had sailed to England with Dom António and had quickly become a comrade of Drake’s. Yet another of Drake’s Portuguese informants, Francisco, had left

Cartagena for Nombre de Dios, and according to Pedro, he had said that he was going on to

Panama.53

Although little of Pedro’s testimony can be independently verified, it should be noted that there was indeed a Portuguese pharmacist named González who had lived in Cartagena since the early 1570s.54 Furthermore, both Drake and Dom António did use spies to try to further their own agendas. For instance, around the same time as Pedro’s deposition, testimony was received

52 There are other instances of Drake’s nationality being a source of confusion. In a letter to the king, written only a few months after Drake’s attack on Cartagena, the judges of the audiencia at Santa Fe de Bogotá mistakenly refer to Drake as a “corsario francés.” Juan Friede, ed., Fuentes documentales para la historia del Nuevo Reino de Granada, 8 vols. (Bogota: Banco Popular, 1976), VIII.353. Another example comes from a letter from the Spanish general, Miguel de Eraso y Aguilar, who wrote to Philip II that Drake was “a Frenchman who is married in England.” Zelia Nuttall, ed., New Light on Drake: A collection of documents relating to his voyage of circumnavigation, 1577-1580 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1914), 118. 53 AGI, Santa Fe, 37, N.72b. 54 AGI, Escribanía, 589B, pieza 23.

in Jamaica about an Italian pilot who had served Philip II in Portugal, but defected to Dom

António and traveled with him to England. Seeking a foothold in the Indies, Dom António sent this pilot to spy out the land around the Orinoco River, in order to assess the strength of the

Spanish presence in the area. The witness who had spoken with this spy further testified that this man was hoping to come across some Portuguese ship, since he had letters that he wanted to deliver to “a very rich man who was in these parts.”55 The witness suspected that this intended recipient was also Portuguese.56

Spanish Responses

This decades-long history of duplicity, treason, and collusion on the part of numerous

Portuguese pilots and sailors certainly provoked its fair share of Spanish outrage. For some officials, all Portuguese, regardless of occupation, were culpable (or at least, necessarily suspect) for the actions of the renegades. For example, the first Governor-General of the Spanish East

Indies, Miguel López de Legazpi, declared in one letter that

it is best not to allow any Portuguese to come over with the other people. This matter ought to have careful attention, for the Portuguese are not to be trusted, and will profit us little. Many of them, both soldiers and sailors, came on the flagship, and I would be glad to see them far from here. I beseech Your Excellency [the Marqués de Falces] to be pleased to take the necessary measures in this respect.57

Other denunciations were targeted at Portuguese pilots in particular. For example, in June 1586, one leading vecino of Havana, Alonso Suárez de Toledo, wrote a letter to Philip II, warning him that “all these Portuguese pilots have sold out these Indies, and in these ports there are many in

55 “un hombre muy rico que estaba en estas partes.” AGI, México, 22, N.10c, f. 1v. Cf. Joyce Lorimer, “Ralegh’s First Reconnaissance of Guiana? An English Survey of the Orinoco in 1587,” Terrae Incognitae 9 (1977): 7-21. 56 It is likely that this “very rich man” was Rodrigo Manuel Núñez Lobo, the governor of Nueva Andalucía (discussed below). 57 Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, eds., The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, 55 vols. (Cleveland: A.H. Clark Co., 1903-09), III.38.

whom little confidence is placed.”58 A similar complaint was leveled against this conspicuous subgroup of Portuguese by the president of the Council of the Indies, Antonio de Padilla, on the eve of the Union of the Iberian Crowns in 1579: “All the pilots who go in these English and

French armadas are Portuguese. For this and a hundred thousand other reasons, it would be fitting that Your Majesty should become the King and Sovereign of those countries.”59 Still other

Spaniards extended their suspicions to all foreigners, regardless of origin. One official in Mérida

(New Spain) wrote to the king in 1569 complaining about how

there are in these provinces many other foreigners, French, Portuguese, and other nations, and … if perchance some powerful corsair should happen to come and enter the land, these men would not fail to rally to their nation, and it would be very harmful. … Your Majesty should know that on the two occasions that the French have entered the port of Campeche, they were guided by Portuguese.60

On the extreme end of the spectrum was Francisco Carreño, an admiral serving on Spain’s treasure fleets, who in 1574 lamented that “in all of the towns along the coast of Tierra Firme and on the islands of Santo Domingo [sic], Cuba, and Jamaica, half of the citizens and inhabitants are Portuguese, ... so that it seems like this land is nothing else but the coast of

Portugal.”61 Carreño’s proposed solution to this situation was harsh: he argued that the king would be served well “by removing from these Indies and taking the lands of those [Portuguese] who do not have a license from Your Majesty.”62 The admiral humbly offered his own services in this task, if Philip II would promise him a fifth of all of the confiscated property, which, as he

58 Wright, Further English Voyages, 173. 59 Nuttall, New Light on Drake, 402. 60 Quoted in Eleanor Adams, “The Franciscan Inquisition in Yucatán: French Seamen, 1560,” The Americas 25 (1969): 357-58. 61 “en esta costa de Tierra Firme en todos los pueblos de ella y en las islas de Santo Domingo, Cuba y Jamaica la mitad de todos los vecinos y habitantes son portugueses … que no parece sino que esta tierra es la costa de Portugal.” AGI, Santa Fe, 187, f. 170r. 62 “V.M. fuese servido sacarlos de estas Indias y tomarles las haciendas a los que no tuvieren licencia de V.M.” Ibid., f. 170r.

himself admitted, would make him “very rich.” In the end, however, Carreño maintained that it was the king himself who would profit the most, as there would be a “great sum of money” going into the royal coffers, which might otherwise have been drawn out and shipped to foreign lands.63

Given the hostility in these anti-Portuguese missives from the sixteenth century, it is interesting how almost all of them lack any mention of the “Jewishness” of these Portuguese traitors. In contrast, written criticism of the “Portuguese Nation” during the seventeenth century was thoroughly enmeshed with anti-Jewish prejudices and hostility. One famous denunciation written by officials in the Casa de Contratación almost a quarter-century later in 1610 exemplifies this divergence. These officials expressed similar apprehensions about the “very great problems” caused by the Portuguese living in the Spanish Indies—one of the foremost being that “in times of war with England or France or Holland, the pilots who carried these nations to [the Indies] were Portuguese.”64 However, new dimensions were emerging by this point. In particular, the religious infidelities of the Portuguese were described in sharp and immutable terms: “The Portuguese...in Cartagena and other parts of the Indies are more numerous than the Castilians, and most are New Christians, people who by religion and nature

[naturaleza] have so much hatred for Castile.”65 Even the most strident denunciations of the

1570s and 1580s, such as Francisco Carreño’s letter, do not approach this kind of mixture of xenophobia and flagrant anti-Judaism. The admiral’s reasons were strictly economic and

63 “yo seré muy rico,” “grande suma de dinero.” Ibid., f. 170v. 64 “muy grandes los inconvenientes,” “en tiempo que había guerra con Inglaterra o Francia o Holanda los pilotos que aquellas partes llevaran estas naciones eran portugueses.” AGI, Contratación, 5171, f. 181v. 65 “los portugueses que hay en Cartagena y otros partes de las Indias que son más que los castellanos y los más confesos y gente que por religión y naturaleza tienen tanto odio a Castilla.” Ibid., f. 181v.

political—viz., the Portuguese drained money away from Castilians and assisted corsairs in raiding Spanish cities in the New World. One would imagine that if Carreño believed that it would benefit his case, he would have utilized religiously themed arguments concerning the need to defend the Catholic faith against secret Jews. However, nothing of the sort is to be found here.

Similarly, for López de Legazpi, the Portuguese were untrustworthy, not because of their impure blood or because of their Jewish proclivities, but simply because the chances of a few renegades sneaking in among the sizeable population of Portuguese soldiers and sailors posed too great to risk. Especially in the East Indies—always a point of conflict between Portugal and Castile—to employ men of Portuguese origin would be to invite disaster. Like Carreño, López de Legazpi concluded that the only safe alternative was to ban the Portuguese from the Spanish colonies.

For their part, the Spanish were not unaware of the exodus from Portugal of New

Christians seeking to escape the Inquisition and, for some, to practice Judaism in greater freedom than was possible in the Iberian Peninsula. As early as 1569, the Duke of Alba claimed in a letter to Philip II that he had “no doubt [that] many of them [i.e., the Portuguese] would like to go thither [England] to live in the law of Moses.”66 Even more specifically, the Spanish ambassador to England, Diego Guzmán de Silva, reported how those Portuguese who served Pierre-Bertrand de Monluc in the late 1560s were “considered by some to be Jews, as they have fled from the

Inquisition in Portugal.”67 But even here, the suspicions of Judaism derived from specific actions

(e.g., leaving Portugal), not simply their Portuguese nationality. In any case, this belief about the

“Jewishness” of these Portuguese did not seem to have been a universally held opinion, as

Guzmán de Silva claimed that only “some” believed this to be true.

66 The Duke of Alba to Philip II, 8 August 1569, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, II.187. 67 Diego Guzmán de Silva to Philip II, 12 July 1567, in ibid., I.657.

Despite the vivid examples given above, most sixteenth-century Spaniards in the New

World did not exhibit the degree of hostility towards the Portuguese that can be found in the letters of Admiral Carreño or Governor López de Legazpi. Instead, the duplicitous actions of

Portuguese pilots were typically understood as reflective of individual dispositions, not qualities that could be attributed to all Portuguese immigrants or even all pilots from Portugal. To return to the example of Pero Bras and the sack of Havana: in the multiple accounts of the 1555 attack, nowhere was Bras ever condemned for being part of the “Portuguese Nation.” Bras’s actions in assisting the French sack of Havana were always depicted as deriving from his own evil will, and as such, he was described as a man of “more cruel and more evil counsels than [Sores] himself.”68 His Portuguese nationality was simply not a relevant factor, and so this witness, as well as the others, hardly commented on it.

The reasons for this general assessment were, broadly speaking, threefold. First, any framework that contrasted faithful Spaniards with perfidious Portuguese was impossible to maintain, in light of the many instances of Spanish renegades assisting French corsairs, as well as the innumerable Portuguese pilots, soldiers, and mariners who faithfully served the Spanish

Crown. A second cause was the profound difficulty that Spanish officials faced in determining whether a given Portuguese pilot or seaman had served Spain’s enemies freely or whether he was forced to do so against his will. Additionally, the frequency with which many of these

Portuguese switched sides only made it harder to judge their true loyalties. Third, the geo- political struggles between Spain, France, and England were interpreted by all sides as being a fight between Catholics and Protestants, which greatly benefited the Portuguese, as it placed

Portugal on the same side as Catholic Castile. Taken together, these factors led most Spaniards to

68 “el cual era más cruel e de más malos consejos que el mismo capitán.” CODOIN II, VI.373.

avoid rendering “essentialized” judgments against the Portuguese—e.g., that treachery or anti-

Castilian animus was part of the Portuguese naturaleza or that it ran in the blood of the

Portuguese. Instead, Spanish officials during the sixteenth century typically based their judgments on individual and circumstantial factors related to the specific cases at hand, which ultimately served to temper their attitudes toward the Portuguese in the Spanish circum-

Caribbean.

Spanish Traitors, Portuguese Allies

Bras was not the only traitor to betray Havana into the hands of Sores in 1555; a young man named Juan del Plano also participated in the French designs to capture the city. According to one account, Plano claimed to be a Spaniard, and “from his speech, so it seems.”69 Yet, there was some uncertainty on this point, as another witness claims that Plano was a “mozo extranjero.”70 A third source labels Plano as a “navarro,” which would explain the ambiguity in identification.71 Despite their differences in background, both men were equally condemned in the strongest terms: because of these men, “the Frenchman [Sores] came well-informed and advised about how the fortress was worthless, without men or any resistance with which to defend itself. ... Like robbers of a house, these two traitors and spies caused all the harm of this land.”72 None of the eyewitness accounts attempt to draw a broader lesson from this betrayal by castigating the Portuguese or the Navarrese as being a race of traitors or a nation of spies.

69 “dicen que es español, y en la lengua lo parece.” Ibid., VI.373. 70 Ibid., VI.395. 71 Ibid., VI.384. 72 “y de ellos venía el francés bien informado y avisado como la fortaleza no era nada ni tenia resistencia ni gente que la defendiese. ... estos dos traidores y espías fueron todo el daño de esta tierra, como ladrones de casa.” Ibid., VI.395.

Instead, the guilt was always seen to rest individually with these two men, not collectively with their respective nations.

Additionally, Portuguese pilots and mariners were common on Spanish fleets, and many served honorably and with distinction, benefiting Spain’s imperial goals tremendously. The need for maritime labor led many Spanish ship captains to recruit widely without much concern for nationality. This indifference permeated all the way to the top echelons of the Casa de

Contratación. Complaints were frequent that the piloto mayor and other officials were accepting bribes and disregarding the regulations that had been put into place. For example, one Castilian pilot, Alonso de Zapata, complained to the Council of the Indies that the piloto mayor, Diego

Sánchez Colchero, and various cosmographers of the Casa had certified thirty or forty persons as pilots, many of them foreigners, who did not meet the stated requirements.73 This widespread disregard for official quotas reflected the basic reality that throughout the Habsburg era, the

Spanish fleets almost always lacked sufficient numbers of men in both skilled and unskilled positions.74 Nevertheless, especially for those Portuguese sailors and pilots who volunteered to serve in Spanish fleets, their capabilities did not go unnoticed by the Spanish. Some officials even believed that restrictions against the Portuguese in particular should be eased. For instance, the piloto mayor, Rodrigo Zamorano, argued in a 1593 letter that “because [Portugal] is Your

Majesty’s kingdom and having seen on this [Indies] route many good seamen from there, I do not think it inconvenient to admit such types to the aforesaid examination, having seen the lack

73 Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea, 57-58; Collins, “Portuguese Pilots,” 182-83. 74 In response to this situation, coercive measures were regularly used to impress men into maritime service throughout Andalucía, Galicia, and Portugal. Indeed, one reason why such efforts were not always so successful in Portugal was that the Portuguese had their own galleons to supply. These policies of impressment, of course, did not produce quality labor. One Galician commander, Francisco Feixó, observed how the numerous coerced Galicians, “none of whom had ever embarked, …were so miserable and so inept that they were useless.” Quoted in Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 197.

of pilots that there are.”75 Paralleling the judgments made about Portuguese renegades,

Zamorano emphasized the specific actions—in this case, beneficial to Spain—of Portuguese sailors and pilots, rather than generalized ideas about the Portuguese “nation” as a whole.

Similar patterns can be found regarding Portuguese in other sensitive occupations, especially within local militias or aboard Spanish armadas. For instance, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the position of artilleryman (artillero) was one that was frequently filled by Portuguese and other foreigners. Although the Spanish Crown preferred not to have foreigners serving in such critical military positions, the circumstances of the moment often dictated otherwise. As with pilots and ordinary sailors, Portuguese artillerymen easily found passage on Spanish ships, due to a lack of available Spaniards. The situation regarding

Portuguese artillerymen became distressing enough to the Crown that a royal cédula was sent to the Casa de Contratación in 1575, asking if there was an artilleryman in Seville who could train other Spaniards to serve as artillerymen on the fleets, given the “many problems” that had arisen due to the number of artillerymen who are “foreigners, especially Portuguese.”76 For their part,

Portuguese artillerymen continued to serve on Spanish fleets and in Caribbean port cities throughout the rest of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century.77 Censuses taken of foreigners in the Spanish Indies attest to this fact quite clearly. For example, in Cartagena in

1630, it was reported that there were no fewer than three foreign artillerymen serving in the

75 Quoted in Collins, “Portuguese Pilots,” 191. 76 “muchos inconveniente [sic],” “extranjeros especialmente portugueses.” AGI, Indiferente, 1956, L.1, f. 302v. 77 AGI, Indiferente, 1957, L.5, ff. 113r-113v.

city’s presidio, two Portuguese and a Sicilian.78 A fourth foreign artilleryman, a Genoese named

Bartolomé de Codar, was investigated in 1620, but does not appear in the 1630 census.79

It should not be assumed that this hesitancy on the part of the Spanish Crown to employ

Portuguese artillerymen or mariners was simply due to fears of betrayal, much less questions of blood purity. Of much greater concern than either of these was the potential for maritime or military service to become a conduit of illegal entry and settlement in the New World, and judging from the evidence collected in early seventeenth-century royal investigations, these concerns were entirely justified. Portuguese residents without a license often testified that they arrived in the city through some sort of licit military or maritime service, but then fell ill and were forced to remain in the Indies, despite not having a license. The story told by one of the

Portuguese artillerymen in Cartagena, Francisco Rodríguez Palma, is typical. Rodríguez Palma testified that he had served as contramaestre on a patache de aviso in 1619, when he fell ill while docked in Cartagena. He stayed in the city until he recovered, at which time, he found employment as an artilleryman in the local presidio. Despite not having a license to reside in the

Indies, Rodríguez Palma established himself as a vecino in Cartagena, marrying a criolla named

Maria Fernández.80 Falling ill in Cartagena was, of course, an all too common experience, but for those Portuguese without a license, such as soldiers and mariners, it also became a highly convenient pretext to justify their presence in the city.81

78 AGI, Santa Fe, 56B, N.73a. 79 AGI, Escribanía, 589B, pieza 18. 80 AGI, Santa Fe, 56B, N.73a, f. 13r. 81 See, for example, the numerous testimonies given in the 1630 census of foreigners in Cartagena, particularly Antonio Jacome (marinero), Baltasar Díaz (grumete), Domingo Ferrera (escribano de registro), Domingo Cardoso (capitán), Domingo Antúnez (soldado), Fernando de Amaya (soldado), Francisco Rodríguez (marinero), Geronimo Méndez de la Barbuda (soldado), Gonzalo López (grumete), Juan de Silva (marinero), Juan González de la Cruz (criado), Joseph Hernández (marinero), Miguel de Chávez (soldado), and Manuel de Acosta (grumete). AGI, Santa Fe, 56B, N.73a.

Other individuals found soldiering to be a convenient means for journeying to the New

World, even if they were not interested in a lifelong military career. For example, Nuño de

Acosta, a native from Lisbon, was too poor to afford passage to the Indies, despite having graduated with a licentiate in law. It was only serving as a common soldado aboard the galleons that enabled Acosta to go to the New World, where he eventually found employment as a lawyer in Cartagena. Well into the seventeenth century, some Portuguese reported serving the king in various military conquests. Francisco de Andrada declared that he had been an alférez in the conquest of Marañon in 1625. Four years earlier, Pedro de Alonso joined the ongoing struggle to pacify the Darién, and in 1595, Juan Báez had similarly served as a soldier in the “conquest of El

Dorado.” An additional commonality among all three of these Portuguese was a subsequent change in occupations in the Indies: Báez became a tailor, Alonso opened a pulpería, and

Andrada struggled to make ends meet as a small-scale trader. Although none of these men continued in the military profession, their service in various roles was nevertheless crucial both in providing the means by which to immigrate to the Indies and in demonstrating their loyalties to the Spanish Monarchy.

In addition to illegal residence, another primary concern of Spanish officials was

Portuguese involvement in contraband trade. This can be clearly seen in one of the most striking examples of Portuguese social and political ascent in the sixteenth-century Caribbean: Rodrigo

Manuel Núñez Lobo, who served as the governor of Nueva Andalucía for two years (1588-90).

Born of a Portuguese hidalgo in Lisbon, Núñez Lobo was a longtime resident in Santo Domingo, where he had amassed a sizeable fortune. His advocacy for the governorship of Nueva Andalucía clearly revealed the divide among Spaniards regarding Portuguese individuals in positions of real economic and political power. As part of his petition, Núñez Lobo gathered testimony from

leading citizens in Santo Domingo, including the prior of the Dominican monastery, a cathedral canon, three lawyers from the local audiencia, and the general of the galleys stationed in the city.

He even managed to gain the support of the cabildo in Cumaná, in large part by promising much- needed economic investment from his own plentiful resources.82 Indeed, soon after taking up the post in 1588, Núñez Lobo brought a sizeable quantity of slaves to the province. His prior business connections also attracted many Portuguese merchants to the area, contributing to the local economy in both licit and illicit ways.83

Without question, it was this dimension of Núñez Lobo’s governorship that elicited the objections of many. One Spanish official complained that Cumaná had become “a bin of foreigners, traitors, and other delinquents, all of whom are sheltered and provided for by the

Governor.”84 Further complaints were forwarded by Pedro de Angulo, the governor of Jamaica, who argued against Núñez Lobo or any other Portuguese serving as governor of Nueva

Andalucía, due to the machinations of the French and English to turn the area into a base for piracy.85 The Crown seems to have found merit to these arguments, as Núñez Lobo’s tenure as governor was rather quickly cut short due to an investigation into his illicit economic activities.

Nevertheless, it is telling that for the Crown and many Spanish officials, including a majority of the audiencia judges in Santo Domingo who approved Núñez Lobo’s nomination, Portuguese naturaleza was not an insurmountable obstacle to high-ranking political or military posts.

82 Pablo Ojer, La formación del oriente venezolano, Vol. 1: Creación de las gobernaciones (Caracas: Universidad Católica “Andrés Bello,” 1966), 422-25. 83 Ricardo Ignacio Castillo Hidalgo, Asentamiento español y articulación interétnica en Cumaná (1560- 1620) (Caracas: Academia Nacional de Historia, 2005), 660, 676. 84 Quoted in Marcy Norton and Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, “The Multinational Commodification of Tobacco, 1492-1650,” in The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624, ed. Peter C. Mancall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 261. 85 AGI, México, 22, N.10a, ff. 1r-1v.

Despite Spanish anxieties about illegal residence and contraband trade, Portuguese immigrants, especially those in military occupations, could quickly transform themselves into highly coveted members of the local community. Some men like Manuel Téllez possessed valuable skills that were in short supply. In his 1611 composición trial, Téllez emphasized how his occupation as a boilermaker (calderero) was “very useful and necessary in this republic,” and how he had offered frequent services to the Spanish Crown in defense of the city of Cartagena.86

To back up his claims, Téllez collected testimonies from some of the leading military and political officials of the city. These men collectively painted a portrait of Téllez as an indispensable and steadfast part of the city’s defenses. Underscored on more than one occasion was the fact that Téllez was the only calderero in the city. Moreover, these witnesses insisted that Téllez had repeatedly demonstrated his personal character as a “valiant” soldier, an

“honorable man,” and a “good Christian.”87 These qualities and habits of behavior, enacted over many years, allowed Téllez to deflect charges of being a foreigner in the Indies, as well as to guard against any suspicions of disloyalty to either the Spanish king or the Catholic faith.

From the earliest days of overseas discovery, Spaniards and Portuguese had recruited each other for their various explorations, voyages, and conquests to the West and East Indies.88

One notable example of a Spaniard who served in the Portuguese Indies was Martín Fernández de Figueroa, a gentilhombre from Salamanca “anxious to see lands,” who spent two years in

Sofala, “helping to erect and defend the Portuguese fort there.” Fernández also visited

Mozambique and traveled to India with Alfonso de Albuquerque in 1508. Assisting in the

86 “muy útil y necesario en esta república.” AGI, Escribanía 589B, pieza 35, f. 77r. 87 “muy buen soldado y valiente,” “hombre honrado [y] buen cristiano temeroso de Dios.” Ibid., ff. 78r- 79v. 88 A.H. de Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal [1972]. 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 229.

conquest of Goa in 1510, he finally returned home to Spain in 1511. His exploits were published in Salamanca the following year.89 Spain’s reliance on foreign captains and sailors, however, was not without some controversy, as evidenced by the preparations leading up to Magellan’s famous circumnavigational voyage (1519-22). As “a true Portuguese in the undertaking if not in allegiance” (Camões), Magellan drew a large number of his fellow countrymen to serve on his ships.90 This provoked a wave of complaints from local officials, leading the Council of the

Indies to order the number of Portuguese seamen to be sharply curtailed.91 Magellan responded by claiming that he could not find enough Spaniards for the voyage:

I ordered a public announcement made throughout the city of Seville and in the plazas and markets and customary gathering places, and along the banks of the river of this city, saying that all persons, including sailors, apprentices, carpenters, and caulkers and other workmen who wanted to go on the said armada, should come to me, the said captain. ... [But] even with all of these efforts, and with many others that were made, I could not crew the ships of the said armada with the natives of these kingdoms, and not finding them, I ordered the said masters to receive foreigners who seemed to be qualified for the said armada.92

Despite the protests of the Council of the Indies, Magellan sailed under the flag of Castile with an enormously cosmopolitan crew, including not only Spaniards and Portuguese, but also

Italians, Greeks, and Germans.93

Far from increasing antagonism between Spain and Portugal, pirating activities by the

French and English often fostered greater collaboration between the two Iberian powers. This

89 James B. McKenna, ed., A Spaniard in the Portuguese Indies: The Narrative of Martín Fernández de Figueroa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), quotation is on p. 6. 90 Luís Vaz de Camões, The Lusiads [1572], trans. William C. Atkinson (London: Penguin, 1952), 246. The original reads: “O Magalhães, no feito, com verdade, / Português, porém não na lealdade.” 91 Collins, “Portuguese Pilots,” 181. 92 Quoted in Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea, 55. 93 The same sorts of complaints and conflicts surrounded the 1526 voyage of Sebastian Cabot to the Spice Islands, which sailed with a crew that was split fairly equally between Castilians and non-Castilians. Ibid., 55-56.

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can be seen in the example of Bartolomé Bayon, one of the most notorious Portuguese renegades of the era. Bayon was a pilot who was arrested in Puerto Rico and taken to Seville. After escaping from prison, Bayon made his way to England, where, according to the Spanish ambassador, he was “received by the English merchants with great rejoicing.”94 Unsurprisingly, the Spanish feared that, in the words of one resident Spanish merchant, Bayon “will do us some grave injury if means are not quickly devised to prevent it.”95 Nevertheless, Bayon did not cause

Spanish officials to increase their resentment and suspicions towards the Portuguese as a group.

Indeed, the defection of Bayon seems to have been a point of cooperation between the Spanish and Portuguese, according to a 1571 letter written by Philip II to his ambassador in England: “It was well to report the sailing of the pilot Bartolomé Bayon, as I at once had the necessary steps taken to catch him, and advised my nephew, the king of Portugal, to capture him when he called in to take the negroes, that being the place where he can be most easily taken. We do not doubt that the Portuguese will do their best, as they are much offended with him.”96 French and

English corsairs were never just a Spanish problem, but pirates plagued merchant ships across the Atlantic, not only in Spanish America, but also off the coastlines of Brazil and western

Africa. In assisting the French or the English, Portuguese pilots often proved to be adversaries not only of the Spanish, but of their own countrymen as well.

Portuguese cooperation with Spain went far beyond just hunting down renegade pilots. It also included the crucial task of providing naval defenses for the fleets returning from the New

World. As early as the 1530s, the Portuguese royal navy periodically served as escorts for

94 Guerau de Spes to Philip II, 20 March 1570, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, II.239. 95 Antonio de Guaras to Gabriel de Zayas, 1 August 1570, in ibid., II.263. 96 Philip II to Guerau de Spes, 30 August 1571, in ibid., II.334.

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Spanish shipping between the Azores and Spain. By the 1560s and 1570s, this had become a regular pattern. In some instances, agreements were worked out by local commanders when their squadrons met on the high seas. At other times, diplomatic means were used to ensure a safe passage through the treacherous eastern Atlantic. In the winter of 1570-71, for example, the

Portuguese and Spanish agreed to have a Portuguese squadron stationed off the Azores, while a

Spanish one was located off the Algarve.97 In the shared task of defending their empires against

French and English interlopers, the Spanish and Portuguese were close partners with strong mutual interests.

For their part, corsairs generally paid little attention to whether a merchant ship sailed under a Spanish or a Portuguese flag; both were frequent targets. In 1545, Charles V’s ambassador to France, Jean de Saint-Mauris, wrote back to Spain informing the Emperor that

“the French seize every Portuguese vessel they encounter, and their judges invariably declare them good prizes. The men on board are sent to the galleys and those who are worth it are held to ransom.”98 Throughout the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese were routinely forced to suffer both robbery and imprisonment at the hands of the French, as was seen in the example of Jacques de Sores. Unfortunately, for those Portuguese prisoners held by Sores in Havana, the governor’s reckless counter-attack, while failing in its larger aim, did succeed in killing Sores’s uncle. This predictably enraged the French pirate, who sought immediate retribution. Taking his Portuguese prisoners, as well as those Spaniards captured during the taking of the Havana fortress, Sores

97 Hoffman, The Spanish Crown, 29, 136-38. 98 Jean de Saint-Mauris to Francisco de los Cobos, 31 March 1545, in Calendar of Letters, Dispatches, and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain preserved in the Archives of Simancas, Vienna, Brussels, and Elsewhere, ed. Martin A.S. Hume (London: Mackie and Co., 1904), VIII.81.

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ordered his men to stab them all to death (except the military commander, who was ransomed for

2,200 pesos). The total number who died were eighteen Spaniards and ten Portuguese.99

In the 1550s and 1560s, as the English started to increase their participation in the rapidly expanding Atlantic slave trade, conflicts with the Portuguese were inevitable. Nowhere was this truer than in West Africa, which was traditionally a Portuguese zone of influence. From the beginning, the English made plundering Portuguese ships a frequent strategy of enrichment, as each of Hawkins’s three voyages to Africa and the New World demonstrate. As one English sailor testified later, Hawkins and the rest of his company sought “to make war on any

Portuguese they might come across.”100 In part, this strategy was due to the fact that the English had far fewer contacts along the African coast, and their attempts to ally with local African rulers met with rather mixed success.101 In contrast, stealing from the Portuguese, who usually did not carry heavy guns on their merchant ships, proved highly successful. For example, in December

1564, according to Portuguese accounts, Hawkins’s men “inflicted a great and bloody slaughter on [the Portuguese],” stealing more than 600 slaves and more than 50,000 ducats of merchandise, which left the Portuguese traders in “direst poverty” and “utter destitution.”102

Even accounting for exaggeration on the part of the aggrieved Portuguese, there is no doubt that the English inflicted significant losses for many Portuguese merchants operating in West

99 CODOIN II, VI.374, 383. 100 “hacer guerra a los portugueses que topasen.” AGI, Patronato, 265, R.12, 3r. 101 For example, during his ill-fated third voyage, Hawkins allied with an African ruler who claimed that he was being “oppressed by other Kings his neighbours.” According to Hawkins’s own account, “[B]y our friend the king of our side, there were taken 600 prisoners, whereof we hoped to have had our choise: but the Negro (in which nation is seldome or never found truth) meant nothing lesse: for that night he remooved his campe and prisoners, so that we were faine to content us with those few which we had gotten our selves.” Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, X.65-66. 102 Quoted in Nick Hazlewood, The Queen’s Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls (New York: William Morrow, 2004), 106.

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Africa.103 In many ways, Hawkins’s third voyage (1567-68) marked the nadir, as the English not only took to robbing vulnerable Portuguese caravels, but also used torture as a means of extracting information from the Portuguese. According to the testimony of one English sailor before the Inquisition in New Spain, the English “tortur[ed] six [Portuguese] with ropes until they confessed that the negroes were concealed in a ravine, and each of the six offered 50 negroes...to John Hawkyns, who gave them in return some merchandise in the shape of tinware and other things of little value.”104 Because of the damages done to Portuguese interests throughout the Atlantic world by English and French corsairs, Spanish officials and observers generally recognized that the actions of individual Portuguese renegades could not be interpreted as reflective of all Portuguese. Portugal, just as much as Castile, had a great deal to lose at the hands of the English and French pirates.

Ambiguous Motivations

The Spanish rightly recognized that Portuguese pilots and mariners were often

“compelled to [serve the corsairs] by force or by fear.”105 For example, in 1579, Drake took a

Portuguese pilot captive off the coast of Peru, and ordered the man to guide them into Callao.

While he was doing so, Drake’s ship hit a sand bar, prompting the English captain to accuse the pilot of “maliciously” leading them off course. After Drake threatened to cut off the man’s head,

“there were no more problems with the pilot.”106 About a month later, after reluctantly agreeing to help Drake across the Pacific Ocean to the Moluccas Islands, another conscripted pilot,

103 For more details about the specific damages claimed by the Portuguese on Hawkins’s voyages, see Kelsey, Sir John Hawkins, 23-24, 62-65. 104 Quoted in Hazlewood, The Queen’s Slave Trader, 206. 105 Letter from the Mexican inquisitors to the Suprema (c. 1582), quoted in Nuttall, New Light on Drake, 393. 106 Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake, 151.

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Alonso Sánchez Colchero, refused to steer the English into the Nicaraguan port of Realejo, a town which Drake wanted to burn. After “uttering many threats and promises” to Sánchez, Drake put “a rope around [the pilot’s] neck and raised him from the ground.”107 Drake repeated this twice, stopping only when the pilot started to lose consciousness. While sparing the man’s life,

Drake put his stubborn pilot “in [an] iron cage.”108 In judging individual cases such as these,

Spanish officials paid close attention to the question of coercion. Of course, this dimension necessarily raises some suspicion concerning the veracity of the testimonies given by Drake’s prisoners. For instance, in his deposition given before a judge from the Guatemala audiencia,

Sánchez testified that after refusing Drake’s offers, the English captain had marveled at the

Spaniard’s loyalty, declaring, “You must be a devoted subject of your King Don Felipe, and a great captain!”109 These words are rather suspicious, to say the least, and it is unlikely that they proved very convincing to the investigating judge. Regardless, Sánchez’s protests against helping the English were confirmed by other witnesses, even if the pilot may not have been quite as stubborn as he subsequently portrayed himself to be.110

The importance of renegades and ex-renegades in the intelligence-gathering operations of both the Spanish and their enemies is hard to overestimate.111 Renegade sailors and pilots who

107 Nuttall, New Light on Drake, 196. 108 Ibid., 196. 109 Ibid., 195-96. 110 Additionally, Sánchez carefully omitted any mention of having accepted payment from Drake for his services. After seeing that there was no escaping his imprisonment, Sánchez accepted a payment of fifty pesos, which was sent to the pilot’s wife to help cover expenses while Sánchez was away. Drake promised the pilot much more once he finished guiding the English across the Pacific. Two witnesses (Giusepe de Parraces and Diego de Mesa) testified that the amount was fifty pesos, while a third witness (Cornieles Lambert) declared it to be one hundred pesos. Ibid., 183, 187, 192. Cf. John G. Cummins, Francis Drake: The Lives of a Hero (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 107-10; Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, 129. 111 In fairness, it should be noted that impressment of enemy sailors and other captured prisoners was a common practice on all sides during this period. For many Spanish fleets, foreign prisoners proved to be

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were eager to share information did manifest damage to Spanish interests throughout the region.

For instance, in 1591, the governor of Santo Domingo wrote to the king, informing him that “a

Portuguese fled to the English ships,” a development which had the governor “worried...because of the information he will have furnished them concerning the fleet. He was a seaman and will have told them of the course to be followed. Last year another one did the same thing and the enemy took three vessels of the fleet.”112 Although these renegades were often “persons of little account,” this did not stop them from potentially causing a great deal of injury to highest levels of Spanish commerce in the Caribbean. Especially for poorer mariners, the prospect of being financially rewarded for their knowledge about the Spanish fleets and sailing plans must have been a powerful enticement.

Adding further complications, many sailors found it necessary to switch sides as circumstances changed. For example, in 1588, one Portuguese pilot was captured by the English, and had apparently won their confidence enough for them to reveal to him “what they intended to do” in the coming months. However, he fell seriously ill, and the English corsairs took the

“half-dead” pilot and threw him “into a small boat” near Havana.113 Providentially for the

Spanish, the pilot survived and struck up a friendship with Pedro de Araña, a royal official in

indispensable. For example, Fadrique de Toledo’s famous expedition to recapture Bahia from the Dutch in 1625 would not have been able to return to Europe had they not utilized Dutch prisoners as sailors. Of course, this strategy inevitably brought the possibility for mutinies and sedition while at sea. As one commander complained in 1601, “When the action came, I had more need to protect myself from the enemy I was carrying with the armada than from the enemy without … [and] once in Ireland, many of them left me for the enemy.” Despite the dangers, this practice remained widespread. In the 1640s, Philip IV explicitly approved the use of English, French, and Dutch prisoners held in Seville as sailors on the Atlantic fleets; the king’s councilors added only a small note of caution: “Do not trust them with the night watch.” Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 207. 112 Wright, Further English Voyages, 263. 113 David Beers Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590. 2 vols. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1955), II.784.

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Havana. The pilot told his new friend everything that he knew about the English and their plans, allowing the Spanish to made the necessary preparations. As Araña put it in his report, thanks to the intelligence given by the Portuguese pilot, “God has been pleased to save the Santo Domingo ships from these robbers this time.”114 For colonial officials such as Araña, even pilots who had served the English or French for years could be potential allies, if they could be persuaded to betray their former associates. Even an ostensibly clear-cut case, such as that of Bartolomé

Bayon, was not without some ambiguity in the beginning. Despite the “rejoicing” of the English merchants upon his arrival in England, Bayon had initially declared that he “wishe[d] to serve

Your Majesty [i.e., Philip II].”115 As a rule, therefore, Spanish officials were obliged to try and befriend those Portuguese pilots who had previously assisted corsairs in one capacity or another, in order to obtain valuable intelligence on Spain’s enemies.

Nuño de Silva provides the paradigmatic case of this sort of ambiguity. According to the chaplain of the expedition, Francis Fletcher, far from being a coerced pilot, Silva was a willing participant: “when [Silva] heard that our travel was into Mare del Zur, that is, the South Sea, was most willing to go with us.”116 Unsurprisingly, Silva denied such charges, claiming that Drake

“by force...took him out of his ship.”117 However, what the Spanish were most concerned about was whether Silva, out of his own free will, participated in “Lutheran” ceremonies, thus apostatizing from the Catholic Church. During Silva’s 1579 trial before the Mexico City

Inquisition, many testimonies were gathered from various individuals who had been taken

114 Ibid., II.784. 115 Guerau de Spes to Philip II, 20 March 1570, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, II.239. 116 Vaux, The World Encompassed, 26. 117 Nuttall, New Light on Drake, 257.

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prisoner by Drake at different points throughout the voyage. One witness, a priest from

Guatulco, gave the most damning testimony:

A certain Nuno da Silva, a Portuguese whom the said Francis Drake carried with him, held much intimate intercourse with the said Englishman, who caressed him, treated him very well, and had him seated at his table. Both spoke in the English language and thus one could not understand what they were saying. When they prayed, the Portuguese prayed with them and it appeared as though he sang and made responses with them, for there was no apparent difference between them, and he seemed to be one of them. The only difference was in his person and aspect, for he was small and the said Englishmen were tall and ruddy complexioned.118

In the end, however, Silva denied all charges, even under torture. The Portuguese pilot only confessed to receiving communion “according to the English mode of administering it” on two occasions when Drake had commanded all the company to receive the sacrament.119 This action by Drake is confirmed by other witnesses. Nevertheless, Silva’s pleas were to no avail, and he was condemned to abjure de vehementi in a 1582 auto de fe in Mexico City.

Condemned to perpetual exile from the Indies, Silva was sent to Spain, where he experienced a radical change in fortune. Invited by Philip II to the royal court in 1583, the

Spanish king showed many favors to the Portuguese pilot, bestowing a small gift of money and granting him a license of safe travel to Portugal, in order for Silva to visit his family. In a royal cédula dated to 7 October 1583, Philip II declares that the Portuguese pilot “is not to be arrested or to be annoyed or molested in any way,” since “he was seized by force by the corsair Francis

Drake.”120 Despite the evidence collected by the Inquisition and the guilty verdict that was rendered against Silva, Philip II seems to have believed Silva’s own version of events that he gave during his time at court. The king even trusted the ex-renegade with the delivery of a

118 Ibid., 348-49. 119 Ibid., 393. 120 Ibid., 393-99, quotation on 398.

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dispatch to Seville, which he was supposed to carry out after visiting his family in Portugal.

These actions by the king reveal that Spanish perceptions of loyalty and allegiance on the part of the Portuguese were always quite fluid and changeable. Despite many substantial grounds for distrust, in this case, Philip II was more than willing to employ a Portuguese ex-renegade in his service.

A Catholic/Protestant Paradigm

For both the Spanish and their corsair antagonists, their fight was a religious struggle, pitting the servants of Christ against those of the Antichrist. Accordingly, it was very common for the Spanish to consider renegade Portuguese pilots to be heretical Protestants—or, in the parlance of the day, “luteranos.” One Spanish report in 1588 related a small group of English ships that had committed multiple “robberies” led by “a Portuguese mulatto pilot...named

Domingo Díaz. He is a Lutheran, according to what this seaman tells me, and a native of

Aveiro.”121 Díaz had served as a pilot of a “packing-boat which the Marquis of Santa Cruz dispatched in 1586 to Santo Domingo,” when he was conscripted by Drake.122 It is unknown whether Díaz was truly a Protestant or if “Lutheran” here simply indicated that the pilot was a willing accomplice of the English, independent of religious persuasion. A more famous luterano from Portugal was Simón Fernández, who was described in various Spanish reports as a “great pilot” and a “Lutheran Portuguese” who had “married in England” some time before.123 Trained as a pilot in Seville, Fernández became an ally of the arch-Protestant “spymaster,” Francis

Walsingham, who had helped the Portuguese pilot avoid charges of piracy in England.124

121 Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages, II.783; cf. Wright, Further English Voyages, 233-35. 122 Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages, II.783. 123 Wright, Further English Voyages, 15, 240; cf. Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages, II.742. 124 Lee Miller, Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony (New York: Arcade, 2001), 64, 171.

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Throughout the late 1570s and 1580s, Fernández entered into the service of some of the leading

English explorers of the era. He was appointed as a pilot to Humphrey Gilbert in 1578, and later served on both Ralph Lane’s 1585 colonizing expedition to Roanoke Island and John White’s voyage back to the ill-fated island two years later.125

Despite his expertise and service, it seems that Fernández did not always get along with his English superiors. On his 1587 voyage to Virginia, John White continually “blamed every mistake and unfortunate circumstance on Fernandez.”126 Likewise, on a 1582-83 English voyage to the Moluccas, the chaplain of the ship, Richard Madox, could hardly find enough words to express his disgust at the Portuguese pilot. At various points in his diary, Madox excoriates

Fernández as “a ravenows theef,” “the foulest glutton and the greatest coward of all who live,” and “the head and source of all evil.”127 Using historical allusions, Madox nicknamed Fernández

“Verres” after the corrupt governor of Sicily, who was famously denounced by Cicero. The name also carried the meaning of “swine” or “boar.”128 Madox also played on the words “pilot” and

“Pilate,” thus indicating what he thought of Fernández’s character.129 Regarding the pilot’s loyalties, Madox significantly quoted Fernández as declaring himself to be a naturalized

Englishman, who was given a license “by five privy councillors to wage war against the

Spaniards.”130 All in all, judging from Madox’s account, Fernández appears to consistently

125 Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages, I.79, 199-204; II.515-43. 126 Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony [1984], 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 172. 127 Richard Madox, An Elizabethan in 1582: The Diary of Richard Madox, Fellow of All Souls (London: Hakluyt Society, 1976), 261-262, 269. 128 Edward Fenton, The Troublesome Voyage of Captain Edward Fenton, 1582-1583: Narratives and Documents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 321. 129 Madox, An Elizabethan in 1582, 148; cf. p. 298. 130 Ibid., 274.

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prioritize pirating over religious piety and devotion, which suggests that Fernández became a

Protestant chiefly because it helped to facilitate his connections with the highest echelons of political power in Elizabethan England.131 Even taking into account Madox’s blatant prejudices against the pilot, the example of Fernández serves as a good reminder that so-called “Lutheran”

Portuguese were not necessarily much concerned with religion at all, much less about various theological particulars that ripped Europe apart during the sixteenth century. As was so often the case, the lure of profit and social advancement often took highest precedence.

In marked contrast to the seventeenth century, when Portuguese converso allies of the

Dutch were hardly ever deemed “Protestant” or “Calvinist,” for most of the sixteenth century, the

Portuguese allies of the English were assumed to have converted to the English religion as well.

On all sides, the geo-political and economic battles waged across the Atlantic were understood as manifestations of a larger religious conflict that pitted Catholic Spain against the Protestant corsairs. Thus, according to a consulta from the Council of the Indies, Drake was not only a

“corsair,” but a “dogmatizer” as well.132 Of course, the profanations of the English corsairs against Catholic churches and monasteries were legion; yet, Drake took it further, according to this report, by instructing the maroons of Panama in the “many heresies from the sect of

Luther.”133 For his part, in launching attack after attack against Spain, Drake saw his mission as the vanquishing of Spain, that chief promoter of the Antichrist on earth. In a letter to

Walsingham, Drake declared that his men were prepared “to stand for our gracious Queen and country against Antichrist and his members.” The Spanish were, for Drake, “enemies to the truth

131 Cf. Ibid., 220. 132 “que iban con ellos dogmatizandoles y enseñandoles su falsa y dañada secta y herejías.” AGI, Indiferente, 739, N.271, f. 1r. 133 “muchas herejías de la secta de Lutero.” Ibid., f. 1r.

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and upholders of Baal or Dagon’s image,” and as Nicholas Beasley has noted, “at least rhetorically, Drake seemed to place iconoclasm at the center of his mission in the Caribbean.”134

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that in official investigations of the robberies committed by French or English corsairs, Spanish investigators would almost always comment explicitly on how “all of these corsairs were Lutherans.” Sometimes this also extended to

Spanish or Portuguese prisoners on board. According to one deposition, “The said Corsair

[Drake], and all his company, the Portuguese pilot, and negroes were all Lutherans, because this witness saw them perform their Lutheran ceremonies.”135 In the same vein, corsairs like Francis

Drake sought to establish a religious solidarity with the pilots he had captured. One captured pilot later testified that Drake had “tempted [him] with many promises of silver and gold, to go with him to England and to become a Lutheran, saying that as soon as he would reach his native country, he would confer great mercies upon him.”136 For the corsairs, as well as for the Spanish, religious divides were an integral dimension to these geo-political conflicts. It must be noted this confessional prism through which these battles were interpreted greatly benefited the Portuguese as a whole, who—despite the apostasy of certain individuals—came from an indubitably

Catholic nation and shared in the same Iberian religious culture as their Castilian neighbors. In contrast to the seventeenth century, no “Portuguese” Jewish expatriate communities existed in sixteenth-century Europe. Portugal had no more succumbed to the temptations of Protestantism than Castile had, and the defections of a tiny number of Portuguese were comparable to the handfuls of Spanish Protestants tried by the various Inquisition tribunals throughout Spain.

134 All quotations taken from Nicholas M. Beasley, “Wars of Religion in the Circum-Caribbean: English Iconoclasm in Spanish America, 1570-1702,” in Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World, ed. Margaret Cormack (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 161. 135 Nuttall, New Light on Drake, 188. 136 Ibid., 195.

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Conclusion

As Drake was readying his attack on Cartagena in 1586, Blas de Herrera, a captain of artillery in the city for many years, urged the governor to give him more men, in order to move the artillery pieces into the necessary positions. According to one witness, “[Herrera] begged the governor to give him what he needed for the artillery,” but the governor, Pedro Fernández del

Busto, “would not provide or do anything.” Thoroughly incensed, the Portuguese captain “swore to God that he did not know what to do or say in the face of so great remissness.”137 The dedication with which Herrera carried out his duties was seconded by the testimony of the subsequent governor of Cartagena, Pedro de Lodeña, with whom Herrera enjoyed a better working relationship. Declaring that Herrera had served his post with “attentiveness and care,”

Lodeña even went so far as to suspend Herrera’s composición on account of the “fidelity” that the Portuguese captain had demonstrated on numerous occasions.138

Herrera was one of a countless number of Portuguese who benefited from Spain’s ongoing military conflicts with France and England. The general status quo of trans-Atlantic belligerence gave ample opportunity for Portuguese like Herrera to demonstrate his loyalty to the

Spanish Crown, for which he was rewarded. Because these military conflicts had a marked religious dimension to them, acts of loyalty to the Crown simultaneously served as acts of fidelity to the Catholic faith. For those Portuguese who assisted the French and English, their actions were similarly interpreted as acts of religious infidelity—not as Jews, but as luteranos.

This Catholic/Protestant paradigm, combined with mitigating circumstances of coercion as well as the reality of Spanish renegades and traitors, influenced Spanish attitudes away from

137 Wright, Further English Voyages, 124. 138 “solicitud y cuidado,” “fidelidad.” AGI, Santa Fe, 37, N.107, f. 1v.

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wholesale judgments against the Portuguese, and instead, strengthened the conviction that treasonous actions were reflective of either individual malice or the untrustworthiness of certain subgroups, such as pilots. Although some Spaniards proved to be stubbornly anti-Portuguese across the board, the majority recognized that many Portuguese contributed positively to the local communities in which they resided.

Despite most Portuguese not having proper permission to live in the Spanish Indies, as well as perennial consternation at the unceasing flow of contraband trade, individual actions of loyalty and rootedness on a local level tended to outweigh other considerations. To return to the example of Herrera: despite being previously investigated for trading illicitly, as well as not possessing a royal license permitting him to reside in the Indies, his public behavior and reputation on the local level allowed him to overcome any legal obstacles that he might encounter.139 Furthermore, local officials throughout the Spanish Caribbean were well aware of the pressing needs of their communities. Not only did the Portuguese frequently assist in the defense of the local community, but they also promoted economic growth, especially through the burgeoning slave trade.140 Pragmatic considerations thus also played a significant role in permitting the Portuguese to integrate easily into local society.

However, by the end of the century, darker clouds were on the horizon. Fears of Jewish threats to the economic and spiritual health of the Spanish Monarchy were growing in the minds of many Spaniards. With a large Portuguese New Christian population, Cartagena was certainly a focal point for many observers in Spain. Officials at the Casa de Contratación complained how

“the Portuguese ... in Cartagena and other parts of the Indies are more numerous than the

139 For the investigation into Herrera’s commercial activities, see: AGI, Justicia, 878, N.2. 140 Cf. Maria da Graça A. Mateus Ventura, Negreiros portugueses na rota das Índias de Castela, 1541- 1556 (Lisbon: Instituto de Cultura Ibero-Atlântica, 1999).

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Castilians, and most are New Christians, people who by religion and nature have so much hatred for Castile.”141 Nonetheless, as the next chapter will demonstrate, local conditions and behavior would prove to be of far greater consequence than these imperial anxieties and anti-Jewish stereotypes.

141 “los portugueses que hay en Cartagena y otros partes de las Indias que son más que los castellanos y los más confesos y gente que por religión y naturaleza tienen tanto odio a Castilla.” AGI, Contratación, 5171, f. 181v.

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CHAPTER 4 PORTUGUESE BEFORE THE CARTAGENA INQUISITION, 1610-1635

At the turn of the seventeenth century, Spanish fears of Jewish malevolence were growing stronger and more pronounced. Both at the royal court in Madrid and on the empire’s peripheries, the Portuguese began to be targeted with virulent anti-Jewish invectives, in sharp contrast to the types of anti-Portuguese rhetoric that circulated throughout most of the sixteenth century (Chapter 3). For example, in the mid-1590s, officials in Santo Domingo received word that certain Portuguese residents on the island held passports signed by an English admiral.

According to a denunciation made by a Portuguese merchant named Tomé Rodríguez, these

Portuguese were Jews, who desired to go to England, in order to practice their religion in greater safety. Three Portuguese were eventually arrested, and the king wrote to the Audiencia of Santo

Domingo, ordering them to be vigilant against the “many Jews who lived in their Law [of

Moses]” on the island of Hispaniola, as well as in “other parts of the Indies.”1

Ultimately, however, it was the Lusitanian homens de negócio in Madrid who were seen by many as the most dangerous threat to the Spanish Monarchy’s prosperity and stability— especially after 1595, when Philip II granted them the asiento for the slave trade to Spanish

America.2 A few years later, the new king, Philip III, was openly derided as “Philippus Tertius

Rex Judæorum” by those who loathed the increasing royal favor shown to the Portuguese New

1 “en esa isla como en otras partes de las Indias había muchos judíos que vivían en su ley.” AGI, Santo Domingo, 868, L.3, f. 154r. For more on the Portuguese in Santo Domingo, see: Marcel Bataillon, “Santo Domingo ‘era Portugal,’” in Historia y sociedad en el mundo de habla español: Homenaje a José Miranda, ed. Bernardo García Martínez (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1970), 113-20; Carlos Esteban Deive, “Los judíos en Santo Domingo y América durante el siglo XVI,” in Presencia judía en Santo Domingo, ed. Alfonso Lockward (Santo Domingo: Taller, 1994), 175-92; Francesco D’Esposito, “Portuguese Settlers in Santo Domingo in the Sixteenth Century (1492-1580),” The Journal of European Economic History 27 (1998): 315-30. 2 For more on the asientos, see: Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos [1977], 2nd ed. (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014), 33-124.

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Christians.3 These sentiments of fear and resentment grew to unprecedented heights after Pope

Clement VIII granted a general pardon to the Portuguese New Christians in 1604 (in exchange for over 1,800,000 cruzados), signaling to many observers that the power of the Jews had grown to frightening levels.4 The Old Christian Portuguese poet, Pero Roiz Soares, captured the feelings of many when he declared, “May God…pardon these pardons.”5 Beginning in the first decade of the seventeenth century, Spanish writers and memorialists penned strident critiques of the Portuguese merchants and lobbyists at court, emphasizing the economic and spiritual dangers they posed to the Spanish Monarchy.6 Complaints were heard on the other side of the Atlantic as well. For instance, the governor of Panamá reported to the Crown that “today the traders of the

Indies are the Portuguese because they have the asientos for supplying slaves…and of this nation, there have been many Jewish merchants around here who live within their Law, and they,

3 Ottaviano Bon and Simon Contarini to the Doge and Venetian Senate, 21 March 1602, in Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy, ed. Horatio F. Brown (Nendeln: Kraus, 1970), IX.499. For similar reasons, the archpriest of Lisbon, Antonio Carvalho de Parada labeled Philip IV the “king of the Jews” in 1643, due to his pro-converso policies. Within a larger tract justifying Portugal’s separation from Castile, Carvalho Parada accused the Habsburg king of “elaborating plans for introducing Judaism into Portugal, creating Jewish quarters in the cities and synagogues throughout his dominions.” Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano, “Political Aspects of the Converso Problem: On the Portuguese Restauraçao of 1640,” in The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond, Volume Two: The Morisco Issue, ed. Kevin Ingram (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 229. 4 Regarding the complex negotiations surrounding these pardons, see: Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 15, Resettlement and Exploration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 181-88; Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Los judeoconversos en la España moderna (Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992), 76-80. 5 Quoted in Baron, A Social and Religious History, 184. 6 Among the earliest works were Pedro de Avendaño Villela’s Memorial sobre el comercio y administración de las Indias (1608) and Gregorio de Palma Hurtado’s Primer memorial de advertencias dado al Licenciado San Juan de la Corte sobre la falta de observación de las cédulas de S.M. y perjuicios que resultaban a las Indias… (1611). Later works would follow by Pedro Hurtado de Alcocer, Alonso de Ciança, and Manuel de Frías. For a discussion of these authors and their pro-Portuguese opponents, see Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chs. 5-6.

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upon getting rich, go to other kingdoms before they fall into the hands of the Inquisition.”7 Some scholars have argued that it was precisely these fears of a Jewish infiltration into the Spanish

Indies that led to the establishment of a third Inquisition tribunal in Cartagena de Indias in 1610, although it is more plausible that crypto-Judaism was only one of multiple motivations that induced the Crown to invest in a new tribunal in Spanish America. Additional concerns included the importation of banned books, as well as the threat of Protestantism from French and English pirates and contrabandists.

Without question, the Cartagena Inquisition is the least studied of the New World tribunals, especially regarding these foundational decades of the 1610s and 1620s. José Toríbio

Medina gives the most thorough discussion regarding the struggles of establishing a new tribunal, as well as providing some details regarding nearly all the trials during this period.8

While not much attention is given to the broader social contexts within which the tribunal was situated, Medina excels at elucidating the interminable political conflicts that raged between the inquisitors and Cartagena’s governors and bishops. In large part, this emphasis is simply reflective of Medina’s utilization of inquisitorial correspondence as his principal source base

(along with the trial summaries). In their letters, the inquisitors were never at a loss for words

7 Quoted in Eva Alexandra Uchmany, “The Participation of New Christians and Crypto-Jews in the Conquest, Colonization, and Trade of Spanish America, 1521-1660,” in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 197. 8 José Toríbio Medina, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicón de Cartagena de Indias (Santiago: Imprenta Elzeviriana, 1899), chs. 1-7. Manuel Tejado Fernández wrote two short pieces on the early years of the Cartagena tribunal in the first volume of the massive compilation, Historia de la Inquisición en España y América (1984). However, these pieces are little more than distillations from Medina. Manuel Tejado Fernández, “La ampliación del dispositivo: Fundación del Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias,” in Historia de la Inquisición en España y América, eds. Joaquín Pérez Villanueva and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet. 3 vols. (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Inquisitoriales, 1984), I.984-95; idem., “El tribunal de Cartagena de Indias: La primera mitad del siglo XVII (1621-1650),” in Historia de la Inquisición de España y América, I.1141-45.

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about the failings of the local leadership of the city. Fermina Álvarez Alonso gives the best analysis of inquisitorial personnel, including the enormous difficulties that the tribunal had in finding willing and qualified individuals to serve in various inquisitorial posts.9 Additionally, in their respective works, both Álvarez Alonso and Anna María Splendiani give a general discussion and overview of the various judaizante trials tried before the tribunal in the seventeenth century.10 Much fuller analyses of crypto-Judaism in Cartagena (and the surrounding regions of New Granada and the circum-Caribbean) are given by Ricardo Escobar

Quevedo and María Cristina Navarrete, as discussed in Chapter 2.

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of this scholarly literature concerns the complicidad de judíos of the 1630s with much less discussion about earlier cases. Regarding other trials involving

Portuguese defendants, whether for blasphemy, propositions, bigamy, or witchcraft, almost nothing is said by any author other than Medina, who sticks quite closely to the trial summaries

(relaciones de causas de fe). This chapter relies heavily on the relaciones as well, albeit for a different purpose. It should be noted upfront that these summaries are neither neutral nor uniform documents. Their length varies from just a few sentences to several pages. Most fundamentally, what these sources reveal are the priorities of the inquisitors themselves—what they found to be significant about each case. In addition to the bare facts of the trial, one can often draw from the relaciones a solid idea of how serious the inquisitors believed an individual case to be, as well as what evidence they found to be most convincing. Because this chapter is, in part, concerned with

9 Fermina Álvarez Alonso, La Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias durante el siglo XVII (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1999), 27-86. 10 Anna María Splendiani, De la Roma Medieval a la Cartagena Colonial: El Santo Oficio de la Inquisición, vol. 1 of Cincuenta Años de Inquisición en el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias, 1610-1660, ed. Anna María Splendiani, et al. (Bogotá: Centro Editorial Javeriano, 1997), 153-73; Álvarez Alonso, La Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias, 115-41.

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inquisitorial perceptions of Portuguese defendants, the relaciones thus prove to be extremely valuable documents (even if they can never match the procesos for sheer detail).

This chapter argues that the establishment of an Inquisition tribunal in Cartagena was a rather experimental move on the part of Spanish officials, since tribunals were usually founded in cities with an array of Spanish political institutions, such as a university, audiencia, or archbishopric. Nonetheless, Cartagena was selected for its geographical promise, as a gateway that could block the entry of dangerous persons, books, and ideas. Needless to say, the tribunal never became an effective blockade against these perils. However, in trying to establish itself in this politically peripheral port city, the Cartagena Inquisition faced a similar situation as the resident Portuguese: they were situated between the foreign and the familiar. Although the city had been under the jurisdiction of the Lima tribunal since 1570, there was never a strong inquisitorial presence. When the inquisitors arrived in 1610, they were seen by local residents as undesirable outsiders. In many ways, the history of the early decades of the Cartagena Inquisition is a story of continual efforts by inquisitorial officials from the metropole to become intimate insiders within the local sociopolitical landscape. However, as this chapter will argue, the

Inquisition continued to be regarded as a meddlesome, outside presence with which comparatively few residents wanted to cooperate. In contrast, as will be demonstrated throughout this dissertation, the Portuguese in Cartagena managed to integrate into local society quite quickly, and they established innumerable partnerships and friendships with local residents. Even with increased apprehension across the Atlantic world regarding the power of the New Christian bankers in Madrid and Lisbon, there was very little desire among cartageneros to denounce the resident factors and business partners of these Portuguese asientistas.

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The exception that proves this rule is Cartagena’s earliest convicted judaizer, Francisco

Gómez de León, who was the “nephew of Alfonso Gómez, procurador general of that court of the Portuguese of the Hebrew Nation that gained a pardon with His Holiness [Clement VIII].”11

A slave trader who resided in Havana, Gómez de León seemed to fit the inquisitorial typecast of the “pertinacious Jew” quite well.12 In 1613, he was accused by one scandalized witness of whipping a crucifix, while calling Christ a “dog.” On the basis of this initial report and the testimony of other witnesses, the comisario soon had Gómez de León arrested and sent to

Cartagena. At the beginning of his trial, Gómez de León admitted in a vague manner to having said “I renounce God” to certain people during an unhappy time seven or eight years previously.

Since he confessed nothing about his suspected judaizing practices, Gómez de León was soon put to the “question of torture,” during which he quickly confessed that he was, in fact, a Jew, having been taught to live and die in the Law of Moses.13 Although admitting that he was a Jew,

Gómez de León refused to repent or accept reconciliation into the Catholic Church. The inquisitors judged Gómez de León to be an “obstinate heretic, remaining in his errors and defending them,” and therefore, they voted to condemn the defendant to death.14

Before the sentence was carried out, however, Inquisitor Salcedo revoked his vote, concerned about certain “indications and evidence that the torture [administered to the defendant] was not as legitimate and appropriate as the law requires.” If the torture was found to

11 “un portugués llamado Francisco Gómez sobrino de un Alfonso Gómez procurador general que fue en esa corte de los portugueses de la nación hebrea que alcanzaron el breve de su santidad.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 176r. 12 “judío pertinaz.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 258r. 13 Anna María Splendiani, et al., eds., Cincuenta años de Inquisición en el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias, 1610-1660. 4 vols. (Bogota: Centro Editorial Javeriano, 1997), II.170. 14 “siempre estuvo hereje obstinado, quedándose en sus errores y defendiéndolos.” Ibid., II.170.

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be illicit, then the confession would be of “no effect and value.”15 While Gómez de León languished in prison, various theologians visited the prisoner, seeking to convince him of the truth of the Catholic faith. Whether it was the skill of the friars, the dismal conditions of the inquisitorial prisons, or the prospect of certain death if he obstinately maintained his Jewish faith,

Gómez de León eventually recanted and agreed to convert. Gómez de León himself naturally credited “the arguments given by the theologians” for moving him to realize that he “had erred in guarding the Law of Moses.”16 He insisted that his conversion to the Catholic faith was done

“from a pure heart and was not feigned,” and he pleaded with the Inquisition for “penance with mercy.”17 Gómez de León was spared the death penalty, but he was given a very harsh sentence of reconciliation: confiscation of all his goods, together with “irremissible perpetual imprisonment,” the first eight years of which was to be served on the galleys.18 It is unknown whether this sentence was carried out; many similar sentences proved to be much lighter and more lenient in practice.

Gómez de León’s conviction profited the Holy Office in Cartagena to the tune of 149,000 pesos—a much-needed infusion into the tribunal’s penurious coffers.19 Although Gómez de

León’s case appears to embody the supposedly perpetual confrontation between the Inquisition

15 “los indicios y probanzas que previnieron al tormento no fueron tan legítimos y bastantes, como el derecho requiere,” “ningún efecto y valor.” Ibid., II.170-71. This would hardly be the last time that questions of correct procedure regarding torture would arise in Cartagena. As discussed in Chapter 5, the inquisitors found it perennially difficult to find a licensed torturer, and thus, they had to rely on ad hoc substitutes, including blacks and even the lieutenant governor of the city. For Inquisitor Martín de Cortázar’s letter to the Suprema that discusses these difficulties, see: AHN, Inq., L.1012, f. 149v. 16 “las razones que las personas teólogas le habían dicho, conoció que había errado en guardar la ley de Moisés.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.172. 17 “se convierte a nuestra santa fe católica de buen corazón y no fingídamente y pide a Dios perdón de lo que ha errado y a este Santo Oficio penitencia con misericordia.” Ibid., II.172. 18 “cárcel perpetua irremisible.” Ibid., II.172. 19 Medina, Historia del Tribunal … de Cartagena de las Indias, 157.

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and wealthy crypto-Jews, what must be recognized is that cases like Gómez de León’s were the glaring exception in Cartagena rather than the rule. Indeed, during the thirteen-year term (1610-

1623) of Cartagena’s first inquisitor, Juan de Mañozca—a man who would later gain great notoriety for his fearsomeness as an inquisitor—Gómez de León was the only person convicted of following the Law of Moses. Even after Mañozca’s departure in 1623, the next decade brought little noticeable improvement in the suppression of Portuguese crypto-Judaism in

Cartagena. Between 1623 and 1634, only four minor judaizante cases emerged from Cartagena, while a few additional (and somewhat more substantive) cases arrived from the interior of New

Granada. The low numbers of judaizing cases in a city full of Portuguese conversos—especially during a quarter-century when anxieties about the “hombres de nación hebrea” were rapidly growing—demands some sort of explanation.

This chapter argues that this widespread inertia on the part of the inquisitors arose from both external and internal variables. On the external front, the Cartagena Inquisition lacked the necessary cooperation from local residents, especially the governing elites. As other scholars have shown, fostering cooperative alliances was crucial for the success of the Holy Office.20 The example of Cartagena demonstrates the truth of this claim, albeit in a negative way. The perennial inability of the inquisitors to forge lasting alliances with the local elite in Cartagena was due to a variety of interrelated factors, including the factional splits within the governing elite and the low numbers of even theoretically qualified local candidates for inquisitorial office.

(Of course, given the inquisitors’ continual inquests into witchcraft and sorcery, the lower classes were not particularly eager to assist the Inquisition either.) In addition, anti-Inquisition

20 Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 178-79; James E. Wadsworth, Agents of Orthodoxy: Honor, Status, and the Inquisition in Colonial Pernambuco, Brazil (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 33-34, 46, 232.

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sentiments among the upper classes were also fueled by the city’s economic reliance on the

Portuguese. In light of the fierce protests raised by local elites against royal investigations into

Portuguese economic activities during this time, it may be concluded that there was very little desire to help the Inquisition investigate the Portuguese for crimes against the faith.

Most of these external factors plagued Inquisition tribunals across the Spanish Empire, and to a greater or lesser extent, they have been studied by historians of the Inquisition going back to Medina and Lea. However, in the case of the Cartagena Inquisition, there were also significant—and almost wholly ignored—internal aspects that contributed to a dearth of judaizing cases during this initial quarter-century of inquisitorial activity. Perhaps the most remarkable was the inquisitors’ consistent refusal to use a defendant’s Portuguese nationality as a pretext for pursuing charges of judaizing. Unfortunately, since most historians of the Cartagena

Inquisition have given the more mundane inquisitorial cases, especially those involving blasphemy and heretical propositions, rather cursory treatment, very little is known about these cases involving numerous Portuguese defendants, who in many ways were more typical of the average Portuguese resident in Cartagena than the elite merchants that were targeted in the

1630s.21 In any case, although the stereotypical equation of “Portuguese” with “Jew” was rapidly gaining currency during this period, the inquisitors always declined to act upon such notions.

Blasphemy or sorcery cases involving Portuguese defendants never were turned into more

21 Álvarez Alonso gives the best thematic discussion in her chapter on “propositions and blasphemies,” where the emphasis is on larger statistical patterns across dozens of cases regarding ethnic backgrounds of the defendants, types of blasphemies, trial procedures, and sentences rendered. Unfortunately, not much detail can emerge about individual cases through such an approach. Álvarez Alonso, La Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias, 171-96. In Anna María Splendiani’s work, the question of blasphemy/propositions only appears as part of a broader discussion of crimes committed by priests—a category that also includes such crimes as solicitation and giving false testimony. Splendiani, De la Roma Medieval, 189-208. Cf. idem., “El clero frente a la Inquisición, 1610-1636,” in Inquisición, muerte y sexualidad en el Nuevo Reino de Granada, eds. Jaime Humberto Borja Gómez, et al. (Bogota: Editorial Ariel, 1996), 69-114.

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serious (and potentially more lucrative) investigations of judaizing. Indeed, as will be seen, several cases involving defendants of Portuguese background contained rather suspicious circumstantial evidence concerning their religious beliefs or practices; yet, even in these cases, the inquisitors refused to conduct independent investigations into the possibility of crypto-

Judaism. Without explicit testimony from outside witnesses about the defendant’s crypto-Jewish beliefs or behavior, the inquisitors eschewed further action. Furthermore, even in those cases involving accused judaizers, the inquisitors handed down a wide variety of sentences, many of which were relatively lenient. Despite involving the Jewish “heresy,” it seems that the inquisitors viewed many of these cases as being much more trivial in nature. Unlike the judaizing trials of the late 1630s, no investigations seem to have been pursued on local family members or associates. All in all, despite the occasional missive railing against the “judaizantes” that plagued the city and region, the inquisitors seem not to have taken the Portuguese “Jewish” threat all that seriously during these early years (1610-1635).22

An Inquisitorial Experiment

In many ways, Cartagena was an unlikely choice for an Inquisition tribunal. Unlike Santo

Domingo or Santa Fe de Bogotá, the city did not possess an audiencia or a university, nor did it commnd an archdiocese. While important economically due to the slave trade and the imperial fleet system, Cartagena was hardly a political center within the Spanish Monarchy. Men with any sort of political aspirations (whether secular or ecclesiastical) sought to be elsewhere—if possible, in Lima or Mexico City, the centers of Spanish dominion in the New World. Why then was Cartagena selected as the site for a new Inquisition tribunal? Although it had neither an audiencia nor a university nor an archbishop’s palace, the city did serve as the gateway to

22 Cf. AHN, Inq., L.1010, f. 79r.

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Peru—“the key to all the Indies,” in the contemporary parlance23—and thus, it was the portal through which unknown numbers of heretical ideas and dangerous persons arrived to the vast provinces of Peru. Officials in Spain hoped that a tribunal in Cartagena would serve as an effective gatekeeper to stop both heretics and their books from penetrating any further into

Spanish America. In the end, geography proved to be the deciding factor.

As with most port cities, Cartagena was hardly a beacon of Christian virtue. The irreligiosity of so many of Cartagena’s residents was a frequent point of comment for observers.

A revealing example comes from a 1574 letter written by two of the local cathedral canons: “In all of the kingdoms of Your Majesty, there is neither a church more despondent nor ministers more harassed and mistreated than in Cartagena.”24 According to many critics, this problem was greatly exacerbated by the large number of conversos who took up residence in the city and the surrounding region. In 1535, only two years after the city’s founding, the bishop of Cartagena,

Tomás de Toro, complained to the king about “the many conversos and bad Christians that there are in these parts,” who were responsible for “many errors and heresies” throughout the land.25

Before the establishment of Inquisition tribunals in the New World, each bishop served as the

“ordinary inquisitor” in his diocese and, as such, was responsible for guarding against any outbreak of heresy. Therefore, Toro informed the king that he had “begun to arrest and punish some of the delinquents.”26 Yet, despite the efforts of the bishops in the Indies, it was clear to

23 “la llave de todas las Indias.” For example, the first inquisitors in Cartagena, Juan de Mañozca and Pedro Mateo de Salcedo, use this phrase in a letter dated 22 December 1610. AHN Inq., L.1008, f. 24r. 24 “En todos los Reinos de Vuestra Majestad no está la iglesia más abatida ni sus ministros más perseguidos ni malratados que en esta de Cartagena.” Juan Friede, ed., Fuentes documentales para la historia del Nuevo Reino de Granada, 8 vols. (Bogota: Banco Popular, 1975), VI.318. 25 “los muchos conversos que hay en estas partes y mlos cristianos. Y así no faltan muchos errores y herejías.” Juan Friede, ed., Documentos inéditos para la historia de Colombia. 10 vols. (Bogota: Academia de Historia, 1955), III.284. 26 “encomenzado a prender y castigar algunos delincuentes.” Friede, Documentos inéditos, III.284.

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everyone that such measures were woefully insufficient. Eight years before the arrival of the

Inquisition in Peru, one Dominican friar in Tunja wrote to the king declaring that there would be no remedy for the dismal religious state of affairs, unless “ministers of the Holy Inquisition come to defend the Catholic faith against its enemies with fire and blood.”27 Similar sentiments were expressed by other prelates throughout the region.

In 1569, Philip II attempted to address these evils by establishing two Inquisition tribunals in the New World, one at Lima and the other at Mexico City. During the forty years before the Cartagena tribunal was established, the Holy Office in Lima only received a small number of judaizante cases from New Granada. One unfortunate defendant, Juan de Herrera, hailed from the aforementioned town of Tunja. A Spaniard from Extremadura, Herrera was denounced by a witness in 1592, who said that he had heard that Herrera had lived openly as a

Jew in Rome. On the strength of this testimony, Herrera was arrested by the local comisario and sent to Lima for trial. After steadfastly refusing to confess any wrongdoing, even under torture,

Herrera was absolved in 1595.28 A similar case involved Manuel de Fonseca, a Portuguese doctor who lived in Tolú. Fonseca was denounced for purportedly worshiping in a synagogue while in Italy and for judaizing while in Tolú. Put on trial in 1608, Fonseca was released two years later, after abjuring de levi of his errors and hearing Mass as a penitent.29 At least two other cases involved accused Portuguese judaizers from Cartagena, both of whom were merchants.

The first, Luis Díaz de Lucena, was sentenced to three years imprisonment and subsequent

27 “ni se puede tampoco de ora suerte remediar hasta que vengan ministros de la Santa Inquisición, que a fuego y a sangre defiendan la Fe Cathólica de sus enemigos.” Friede, Fuentes documentales, IV.324. 28 Medina, Historia del Tribunal … de Cartagena de las Indias, 29. 29 Ibid., 33-34.

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expulsion from the Indies.30 The second prisoner, Domingo López, was eventually absolved of all charges after he successfully “defeated torture,” of which he endured several extended rounds.31 All of these men undoubtedly suffered much at the hands of the Holy Office, but their experiences were more the exception than the rule.

Due to a combination of severe geographical obstacles and perennial local resistance against the comisarios sent by Lima, relatively few cases from New Granada ever proceeded to trial. Indeed, the discrepancy between the general scarcity of judaizante cases remitted to Lima and the enormity of the perceived problem of Portuguese judaizers in early seventeenth-century

New Granada was not lost on concerned Spanish officials. One Peruvian inquisitor complained about the “great quantity of foreigners and Portuguese [who] enter in” through ports in New

Granada, where they threaten the spiritual well-being of the local population, since “the

Portuguese are all Jews” and the local people are all “simple-minded and excited by novelties.”32

Inquisitorial officials in Lima could only bemoan the number of heretics and Jews that inevitably escaped the rather weak grasp of the Holy Office.

These circumstances led to repeated calls for additional tribunals to be set up throughout the Viceroyalty of Peru. Indeed, not long after the establishment of the Lima tribunal, the famed viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, advised Philip II to create other tribunals in Quito and La

Plata.33 In 1594, the Suprema recommended that another tribunal be established at Santo

Domingo, in order to provide greater supervision over the Caribbean, an especially

30 Ibid., 32. 31 “Venció el tormento” was a commonly used phrase in inquisitorial records. Quoted in ibid., 33. 32 Quoted in ibid., 37. 33 Tejado Fernández, “La ampliación del dispositivo,” I.985.

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unmanageable region that was long neglected by Lima.34 Similar calls for a tribunal in Santo

Domingo were repeated in 1606 by the bishop of Puerto Rico.35 For his part, the archbishop of

Santa Fe de Bogotá called for an Inquisition tribunal to be established in that city in 1594.36

Even the inquisitors themselves hoped for a reduction of their jurisdiction to more practicable proportions. For example, Antonio Ordóñez, an inquisitor at Lima, wrote to the Suprema in 1600 requesting the establishment of at least two more tribunals. One tribunal, Ordóñez argued, should be located at La Plata, because careful scrutiny had to be given to the city of Potosí, a place

“where all the wicked men of bad habits that there are in these kingdoms join together with the

Portuguese.”37

Despite suggesting different locations for these new tribunals, all of these requests reveal a common assumption: Inquisition tribunals should be located in politically important cities. This was why La Plata was suggested, not Potosí, and why Santo Domingo was the clear favorite over

Cartagena. Despite being economically more significant, Cartagena and Potosí were not as politically dominant within the Spanish imperial system, and thus, it was assumed by most that they were not as deserving of the honor of being the seat of a tribunal of the Holy Office. To this end, Inquisitor Ordóñez purposefully built up the credentials of the cities he hoped would receive new tribunals, stressing that La Plata was the seat both for an audiencia tribunal and the bishopric of Charcas, while Santa Fe de Bogotá served as the “head of the archbishopric of the

34 José Enrique Sánchez Bohórquez, “La Inquisición en América durante los siglos XVI-XVII: Los dominicos y el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias,” in Praedicatores inquisitores, vol. 2, La Orden Dominicana y la Inquisición en el mundo ibérico e hispanoamericano (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 2006), 795-96. 35 Ibid., 796. 36 Tejado Fernandez, “La ampliación del dispositivo,” I.985. 37 Quoted in Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 38. Ordóñez suggested Santa Fe de Bogotá as a potential site for the second tribunal.

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New Kingdom [of Granada], where the governor and Audiencia Real reside.”38 It seems that

Philip III followed this logic as well at first, for when he decreed a new tribunal to be established in the Indies in 1608, the king initially selected Santo Domingo as the location. It was only after the question was reconsidered during the subsequent two years that it was finally decided to locate the new tribunal in Cartagena instead.39

In the final analysis, Cartagena’s strategic geography outweighed its political deficiencies. According to one account, written by Hernando de Villagómez, a member of the

Council of the Indies, Cartagena was favorably considered because of its advantageous location with respect to both Santa Fe de Bogotá and the Windward Islands (las Islas de Barlovento):

After the Council [of the Indies] returned to treat this matter and considered the problems that result from the New Kingdom of Granada being such a distance from the Inquisition in Lima, in whose district it is, and that by placing the new tribunal in the city of Cartagena in Tierra Firme, the tribunal will be able to turn to [the audiencia of] the New Kingdom of Granada with greater ease, being within its district. As regards the Windward Islands, it will not be a significant difficulty for the tribunal since Cartagena … [is a] port from where there are many continuous embarkations for all parts.40

Although it still retained the oldest audiencia and university in Spanish America, Santo Domingo had long been in decline, suffering from both depopulation and decreasing levels of commerce.

Due to both the fleets and the booming slave trade, the level of commerce that passed through

Cartagena far exceeded that of Santo Domingo. By locating the new tribunal in the pre-eminent entry port for the Viceroyalty of Peru, it was hoped that greater oversight could be directed

38 Quoted in ibid., 38. 39 Sánchez Bohórquez, “La Inquisición en América,” 796. 40 “y porque después se volvió a tratar en el Consejo de la materia y se consideraron los inconvenientes que resultan de estar el Nuevo Reino de Granada tan distante de la Inquisición de Lima, en cuyo distrito está, y que residiendo del dicho nuevo tribunal en la ciudad de Cartagena en Tierra Firme, y siendo de su distrito el Nuevo Reino de Granada, podrá acudir a ello mejor y con más comodidad: y que para lo que toca a las Islas de Barlovento, no se allá en ello inconveniente considerable, por estar Cartagena … [es un] puerto, de donde hay muy continuas embarcaciones para todas partes.” AHN, Inq., L.305, f. 19r.

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towards both incoming persons and merchandise headed not only towards Lima, but also to

Venezuela, the interior of New Granada, and the various islands of the Caribbean basin. If both heretical books and those who carried them could be apprehended upon entry at Cartagena, then the new Inquisition tribunal would provide an additional and much-needed line of defense for the rest of the viceroyalty.

Early Failures

It has sometimes been argued that the Cartagena Inquisition was founded, in large part, to confront the problem of Portuguese judaizantes living and traveling through the city.41 As has been seen, some high-ranking officials, such as Inquisitor Ordoñez in Lima, sharply criticized the arrival of so many foreigners to the port city, especially the Portuguese, whom he claimed “were all Jews.”42 Similarly, officials at the Casa de Contratación in Seville decried how “the

Portuguese ... in Cartagena and other parts of the Indies are more numerous than the Castilians, and most are New Christians, people who by religion and nature have so much hatred for

Castile.”43 There likely existed multiple motivations for the planting of a third tribunal in the

New World, including but not limited to the desire to suppress any crypto-Jewish practices that might be occurring in the circum-Caribbean. Nevertheless, regardless of their initial desires or expectations, the first inquisitors in Cartagena, Juan de Mañozca and Pedro Mateo de Salcedo, ended their lengthy tenures in Cartagena with hardly any judaizante convictions to show for their

41 Seymour B. Liebman, “The Great Conspiracy in Peru,” The Americas 28 (1971): 178; Mario Javier Saban, Judíos Conversos: Los antepasados judíos de las familias tradicionales argentinas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Distal, 1990), 100; Joseph M. Walker, Historia de la Inquisición española (Madrid: Edimat Libros, 2001), 475. 42 Quoted in Medina, Historia del Tribunal … de Cartagena de las Indias, 37. 43 “los portugueses que hay en Cartagena y otros partes de las Indias que son más que los castellanos y los más confesos y gente que por religión y naturaleza tienen tanto odio a Castilla.” AGI, Contratación, 5171, f. 181v.

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efforts. As they themselves confessed from very early on, denunciations “concerning heresy or

Judaism are few.”44 Despite the fearsome reputation that Mañozca would later gain as an unrelenting pursuer of judaizing apostates in Lima and Mexico City, what stands out most about his tenure as inquisitor in Cartagena (1610-1623) is the glaring absence of judaizante cases in a city filled with Portuguese conversos.45

This section will explore three interconnected local circumstances that made Cartagena a difficult place for the Inquisition to operate, especially concerning the crime of judaizing. First, the local elite, whom the inquisitors depended on greatly to assist in the pursuit of heresy, was thoroughly divided into competing factions. The inquisitors had little choice but to enter into the contentious world of local Cartagena politics, thereby inevitably alienating certain sections of the local elite in the process. Second, the inquisitors themselves further complicated an already delicate situation by acting in a thoroughly disdainful and arrogant manner, especially towards members of the local city council. With an enormous sensitivity for slights against their honor and that of the Holy Office, the inquisitors managed to estrange city elites still further. Third, the inquisitors were forced to contend with the demographics of the city, especially the small numbers of educated Spaniards of acceptable limpieza, who could serve in various inquisitorial posts. Always short-staffed, the inquisitors continually complained to their superiors in Spain about not only the lack of qualified candidates in the city, but also the profound apathy that even those who were genuinely qualified showed towards the Holy Office.46

44 “en materia de herejía o judaísmo pocas son.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 3v. 45 For an excellent discussion on the career of Inquisitor Mañozca, see: Kimberly Lynn, Between Court and Confessional: The Politics of Spanish Inquisitors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 238-93. Unfortunately, Lynn gives little indication as to why Mañozca’s tenure in Cartagena was so dissimilar to his time in Lima and Mexico City, where he was a driving force behind the prosecution of hundreds of cases of judaizing. 46 AHN, Inq., L.1008, ff. 37r, 49r.

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Shortly after arriving in Cartagena, the inquisitors read the lengthy edicto de fe to an assembled crowd in the city’s cathedral. As they tried to deliver the edict with all “possible solemnity,” a major disturbance broke out outside:

The governor, the commander of the galeras, and many others with them all left the cathedral in order to pacify the quarrel that was the cause of the disturbance between the soldiers of the presidio and those of the galeras. Although involving individual soldiers, it is a matter not unworthy of much concern, due to the animosity and displeasure that exists among the leaders of the two militias.47

After the governor and other officials returned, the inquisitors “resumed the reading of the edict, which had not been possible up until that point, due to the commotion outside.”48 These disruptions of the Inquisition’s solemn duties were but a foretaste of how local political and economic rivalries would often impede the proper functioning of the tribunal. In their report to the Suprema, the inquisitors noted how the leader of the presidio, Francisco de Santander, and the commander of the galeras, Francisco Vanegas, were “declared enemies,” and that their rivalry put the city—and by extension, the Inquisition tribunal itself—in “great danger,” due to the “poorly disciplined soldiers” on both sides.49 Another pressing issue was that the tribunal was obliged to draw men from the city’s ranks who could serve as inquisitorial officials; however, given the fractious nature of the political landscape, the inquisitors realized that this would require them “to placate fights and quarrels and to thwart grievances and extortions...that

47 “con la solemnidad posible,” “el gobernador y cabo de las galeras y otros muchos con ellos a apaciguar una pendencia que fue causa del alboroto entre los soldados del presidio y los de las galeras que aunque por ser de soldados particulares no fuera de mucha consideración por el encono y poco gusto que entre las cabezas de ellos hay.” Ibid., f. 23r. 48 “entraron el gobernador y cabo de las galeras...con que se prosiguió adelante con la lectura del edicto que hasta allí por el ruido de las dichas cajas no se podía leer.” Ibid., f. 23v. 49 “enemigos declarados,” “el peligro grande,” “gente libre y mal disciplinada como de ordinario son soldados de presidios y galeras y así pues en esta ciudad.” Ibid., ff. 23v-24r.

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were not related to matters concerning the Holy Office.”50 Whatever hopes the inquisitors had of being, in their own words, a source of “peacefulness, calm, and tranquility” in the city, the subsequent years and decades proved the exact opposite to be the case.51 Almost by necessity, inquisitorial officials took sides in the various political rivalries that they initially claimed to want to transcend. For his part, the infamous inquisitor, Juan de Mañozca, had become by the

1620s the “capital enemy” of the aforementioned Santander, and gathered around him such men as Dr. Echevarría and Melchor de Morales, who were also sworn enemies of the sargento mayor.

These men met together in the inquisitor’s house and plotted to “destroy” Santander.52

Grievances from city residents and local leaders soon found their way to Spain. Many conflicts pertained to questions of jurisdiction. This was perhaps nowhere truer than in the perpetually fraught relationship between the Holy Office and the various bishops within its district. The boundaries between the respective jurisdictions were perennially disputed, and sometimes bishops actively resisted the commands of the inquisitors. The most extreme case was undoubtedly the bishopric of Cuba, whose occupants openly defied the inquisitors in Cartagena.

In 1611, Bishop Juan de las Cabezas “read the edicts of faith as the inquisidor ordinario, conceding a plenary indulgence for all [crimes] that had hitherto been committed.”53 According to Mañozca and Salcedo, these actions left “the entire town scandalized.”54 The bishop’s successor, Alonso Enríquez de Toledo, followed in much the same manner, seizing prerogatives

50 “lo que vemos habrá de hacer en componer riñas y pendencias de ellos y estorbar agravios y extorsiones...no en las causas tocantes al Santo Oficio.” Ibid., f. 24r. 51 “quietud, sosiego y tranquilidad.” Ibid., f. 24r. 52 “enemigo capital,” “destruir.” AGI, Santa Fe, 228, N.81, f. 1r; N.81b, f. 3r. 53 “leyó edictos de la fe como inquisidor ordinario y como haciendo indulgencia plenaria de todo lo hasta allí cometido.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 34v. 54 “dejando escandalizado todo el pueblo.” Ibid., f. 34v.

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that indubitably belonged to the Inquisition.55 This sort of episcopal resistance was not some sudden manifestation in the aftermath of the founding of the Cartagena tribunal. Instead, it reflected a much older pattern of affairs: even four decades after the establishment of the

Peruvian tribunal, “the Holy Office had still not finished conquering its own space within [this] section of the ecclesiastical hierarchy” in the New World.56 In this respect, the newly arrived inquisitors at Cartagena were forced to confront the unfinished work of their counterparts in

Lima.

The Inquisition’s political battles were further compounded by the haughty arrogance and undisguised disdain that the inquisitors displayed towards secular and ecclesiastical officials within their jurisdiction. Of course, bishops, cathedral canons, and inquisitors alike deplored the countless “idiotic and insolent friars,” who, according to the bishop of Popayán, were “filled with ignorance.”57 However, from the perspective of the inquisitors, even certain bishops were not much better. Indeed, the very same bishop of Popayán was himself a striking example of the kind of ignorance that continually irritated the inquisitors. In a 1611 letter to the Suprema,

Mañozca and Salcedo reported that:

Fray Juan González de Mendoza, bishop of Popayán, from when he disembarked in this city until he arrived in Popayán, practiced divination with rods, claiming to discern hidden things by them, saying that they were well accepted, since even the king and queen and the Duke of Lerma used them and that they were also approved by the señores inquisidores [in Spain]. In this manner, as is notorious and well- known, everyone in his diocese and region, including the Indians of the land, takes advantage of these rods.58

55 Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 77. 56 Sánchez Bohórquez, “La Inquisición en América,” 800. 57 “frailes idiotas y atrevidos,” “llenas de ignorancia.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 155r. 58 Quoted in Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 80.

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Although Lea is certainly correct to say that it would be “unjust” to judge all clergymen by this bishop’s example, nonetheless, this instance does provide a striking picture of how far these sorts of “supersticiones” permeated colonial Spanish society.59

In contrast to the leading prelate in Popayán, the bishop of Cartagena, Juan de Ladrada, seems to have gained—at least, initially—the respect of the inquisitors, who reported soon after arriving in Cartagena that Ladrada was “a Dominican friar, reputed to be a person of good habits and morals.”60 Mañozca and Salcedo went on to lament how the holy bishop had to oversee a church in Cartagena that suffered not only from “attenuated incomes,” but also from the minimal

“capacity of all those in learned positions.”61 Capturing the situation in a nutshell, the inquisitors reported that Cartagena possessed “a most miserable city council and a bishop who has only four slaves who serve him.”62 All in all, the social and ecclesiastical landscape in Cartagena struck the inquisitors as being comparable to “the most miserable village in Castile.”63

Unsurprisingly, the inquisitors never missed an opportunity to assert their social superiority. Mañozca and Salcedo had especially harsh words for the local city council: “In this city council are some men of quality, honored hidalgos, who are recognized as such; as for the rest, some are foreigners and others are Portuguese. ... There are commoners who are part of the

59 Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1908), 473. Cf. Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250- 1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 60 “es un fraile dominico llamada de fray Juan de Ladrada persona según fama de buena vida y costumbre.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 21r. Unfortunately, Ladrada’s fellow Dominican and successor, Pedro de Vega, was not as successful in maintaining good relations with the city’s inquisitors. Gabriel Martínez Reyes, ed., Cartas de los obispos de Cartagena de Indias durante el período hispánico, 1534-1820 (Medellín: Editorial Zuluaga, 1986), 201. 61 “su renta es tan tenue que para poderse sustentar es menester hagan oficio de curas acudiendo a todo lo necesario como el mas triste de los más miserable aldea de Castilla la capacidad de todos ellos en materia de letras están corta.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 21r. 62 Quoted in Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 74. 63 “los más miserable aldea de Castilla.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 21r.

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cabildo, because greater quality is not required in order to be accepted for those who have money.”64 As is evident, the inquisitors’ language was infused with rhetoric about honor and quality. These pervasive concerns often became manifest during civic ceremonies and religious processions. Conflict even erupted over the minutest matters of etiquette and privilege. For example, in the first months of being in the city, Mañozca and Salcedo complained about the order in which various city elites were blessed with holy water during a Mass in the cathedral, as certain persons of a lower station received the blessing before the inquisitors. This was interpreted as a sign of disrespect to the Holy Office. This absurd predicament was eventually resolved by having two priests bless the inquisitors and the city councilors with holy water at the same time.65 Nonetheless, disputes about the proper protocol for receiving the holy water arose a few years later in 1616, when the bishop wrote to the king with great irritation about the recent usurpations of the inquisitors.66 It is unlikely that these difficulties were ever truly resolved.

At the end of Mañozca’s tenure in Cartagena, his opponents put together a relación of all of his “excesses,” detailing the many grievances that had built up over the years. This document sheds further light on the points of tension and ill-will, beyond those already elaborated. The inquisitor’s greed and illegal usurpations were the focus of one complaint. Mañozca was accused of coercing the wealthy Portuguese merchant, Jorge Fernández Gramajo, to hand over forty of his slaves. The report explicitly stated that this action was done “against [Fernández Gramajo’s] will” and that the merchant was motivated “by the fear that he has of [Mañozca], since he is a

64 “en este cabildo...son hombres de calidad hidalgos honrados y conocidos por tales, los demás unos son extranjeros y otros portugueses ... el cabildo entran son personas muy comunes porque no se requiere más calidad para ser admitidos en ellos que tener dinero.” Ibid., f. 21v. 65 Álvarez Alonso, La Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias, 36. 66 Martínez Reyes, Cartas de los obispos de Cartagena de Indias, 201.

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tyrannical man.”67 An essential, but unspoken, dimension to this affair was that, as a Portuguese converso, Fernández Gramajo was in a much more vulnerable position, at risk for being arrested and tried for judaizing. Given the relación’s emphasis on the inquisitor’s abuses through his band of loyal associates, it cannot have seemed to be much of a stretch for Fernández Gramajo to imagine that Mañozca could concoct some denunciations about the Portuguese’s supposed crypto-Jewish practices. Although nothing of the sort actually transpired, the threat of these sorts of machinations must have been taken seriously by Fernández Gramajo and other Portuguese conversos. These sorts of inquisitorial strong-arm tactics were said to be “public and notorious” among the residents of Cartagena, and they undoubtedly fostered much resentment from early on.68

Nepotism and clannishness were particularly acute with Mañozca, a Basque by birth. For example, Mañozca was said to have gotten his countryman, Diego de Otasla, named as prior of the Dominican monastery in Cartagena, despite the fact that the friar did not “even know how to read Latin and [was a man] of wicked and scandalous character.” Otasla was chosen, the report continued, “only because he was a vizcaíno and a friend [of Mañozca].”69 As mentioned above,

Mañozca was a capital enemy of Francisco de Santander, the sargento mayor of the city, and the actions of the inquisitor were said to be greatly contributory to the political discord that permeated the city. Nevertheless, despite the claims of the report that “the said bishop and all of the rest of the principal persons of the city rendered such little esteem” for Mañozca, the

67 “contra su voluntad,” “por temor que le tiene por ser hombre tirano.” AGI, Santa Fe, 228, N.81b, f. 5r. 68 “público y notorio.” Ibid., f. 5r; cf. AGI, Santa Fe, 228, N.63e. 69 “nombrar por prior del convento de Santo Domingo de la ciudad de Cartagena a Diego de Otasla fraile que aun leer latín no sabe y de mal ejemplo y escandaloso solo por ser vizcaíno y amigo suyo.” AGI, Santa Fe, 228, N.81b, f. 4v.

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inquisitor was not without allies in Cartagena, which included the rector of the Jesuit college in

Cartagena.70

Certain friendships notwithstanding, however, the vices and general arrogance of the inquisitors thoroughly embittered most of the city’s elite. Because Cartagena was a politically marginal city with a very small Spanish elite population, the inquisitors only had a limited pool of potential allies from which to form strategic alliances, in order to increase oversight on the city’s heterogeneous population. Few vecinos of the city possessed the required genealogy, education, or marriage for service in the newly established tribunal of the Holy Office. As a result, the Cartagena Inquisition suffered from a marked shortage of both salaried and unsalaried officials throughout this period, hindering its productivity and efficiency. Limpieza requirements, in particular, were a major obstacle to be overcome, and in many cases, the inquisitors had to petition the Suprema for permission to overlook a candidate’s tainted genealogy or questionable marriage, but many times the inquisitors simply bypassed the Suprema altogether. Some foreigners, such as the Genoese Cipión Faia, were granted an exemption to be a familiar.71

Additionally, some aspiring candidates proved problematic, due to their marriage to a foreigner.

For example, Francisco de Valdés had to petition the Suprema for an exemption, due to his marriage to a woman of German descent. Other men were married to mestizas, which added further difficulties. In response to a request from the Cartagena tribunal to allow these men to hold positions within the tribunal, the Suprema accepted a compromise position, which granted a

70 “Ytem a echo tan poca estima del dicho obispo y de todas las demás personas principales de la ciudad.” Ibid., f. 2r. For Mañozca’s friendship with the Jesuit rector, Baltasar Mas Burgués, see: Lynn, Between Court and Confessional, 254. 71 AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 61r.

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dispensation to those men married to a woman who was one-quarter Indian, but not to those married to a mestiza who was fully half-Indian.72

Even with all of these exemptions and dispensations, the Cartagena Inquisition still operated with an understaffed network of officials. Early on, the tribunal employed merely two consultores, both of whom lived great distances from Cartagena, one in Santo Domingo and one in Santa Fe de Bogotá. There were also six calificadores, but only two of these actually lived in the city. Finally, of the twelve familiaturas granted to Cartagena, only five had been filled by this point, and the situation was hardly better in other cities. Two of the six familiaturas went unfilled in Bogotá, and there was no more than one familiar to be found in each of the districts of

Panama, Popayán, Santa Marta, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Venezuela.73 By 1633, there were still only two consultores, as well as eleven calificadores, only one of which lived in the city. Throughout the entire jurisdiction of the Cartagena tribunal, which counted at least ninety cities and towns, no more than thirty-nine familiares and ten comisarios were employed to keep a vigilant watch over the spiritual health of the region.74 Even decades after the tribunal’s establishment, there simply were not enough officials to carry out the mission of the Holy Office.

Exasperated at trying to fill vacant posts, the inquisitors complained that even those who might have been qualified sometimes “did not seek the position or desire it,” worsening still further the tribunal’s personnel shortages.75 In another letter, the inquisitors note how few persons sought

72 Álvarez Alonso, La Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias, 50-51. 73 Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 114-15. 74 Ibid., 231; cf. Álvarez Alonso, La Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias, 48-54. 75 “Es cosa lastimosa, decían, cuan pocos ministros se hallan en todas partes, que lo causa las pocas personas que en ellas hay de momento, y si hay alguno, no trata de serlo ni lo apetece.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 37r.

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the privilege of being a familiar of the Holy Office.76 It seems that for many elite residents of

Cartagena, there were compelling enough reasons for refusing a familiatura that even an inquisitorial fuero failed to persuade.77 It is little wonder that the inquisitors complained to the

Suprema that “there is no Inquisition in any Catholic kingdom more ill-served than the one here

[in Cartagena].”78

Inquisitorial Perceptions of Portuguese Nationality

Many historians have taken the early modern stereotype equating Portuguese nationality with Jewish ancestry at face value, leading to unwarranted conclusions based only on a person’s

Portuguese background. Notwithstanding the silences of the surviving inquisitorial record, many historians have reasoned that a defendant’s blood purity status can be inferred from their nationality: if they were considered to be “portugués,” then they must have been, in fact, conversos, or even secretly practicing Jews. Building one faulty assumption upon another, this present-day judgment is sometimes projected back onto early modern inquisitors, so that it is assumed that the inquisitors themselves must have always believed that any Portuguese defendant was also a crypto-Jew, even if he (or she) were on trial for bigamy or witchcraft or some other crime.

One recent example of this can be found in Nicole von Germeten’s analysis of the motivations behind the sentence given to Isabel Noble, who was accused by several witnesses of conducting petty sorceries and teaching others how to perform them. A portuguesa from Lisbon,

Noble was the wife of Manuel Cuaresma, a Portuguese merchant who was “absent” at the time

76 Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 81. 77 For the importance of the fuero, as well as the bitter debates engendered by these special privileges, see: Stephen Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 24-42. 78 Quoted in Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 231.

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of his wife’s trial.79 It seems that Noble’s marriage to her absent husband was an unhappy one, and like many women in Cartagena (and throughout the Iberian Atlantic), she turned to spells, conjurations, and other forms of “love magic” to help improve her unfortunate domestic situation.80 Noble confessed to using scissors, a mirror, water, and other objects to discover whether absent husbands would return and whether there would be peace at home. Without much income from her absent husband, Noble used her knowledge of love magic to help earn what little money she could. For her offenses, she was sentenced to perpetual banishment from the

Indies, although this was later revoked by the Suprema.81 Admittedly, Noble’s sentence was on the harsher end of the spectrum of punishments given to convicted practitioners of hechicería, but this is hardly evidence of Noble’s “Jewish” proclivities. Nonetheless, von Germeten argues that the inquisitors “did not bother to fine her but instead sentenced her to perpetual banishment from the Indies, because they undoubtedly suspected that, together with being a diviner, she also was a New Christian or a practicing Jew.”82 No evidence is given here about why the inquisitors would suspect Noble of being a New Christian (which was certainly not synonymous with being a crypto-Jew), other than Noble’s Portuguese background. Yet, this fact alone leads von

Germeten to conclude that it is “undoubtedly” true that Noble was suspected of judaizing.

While banishment was a common punishment for such offenses, the term of exile typically ranged from a few months to several years.83 Nevertheless, lifelong exile was not

79 “ausente.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.77. 80 Nicole von Germeten, Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race, & Honor in Colonial Cartagena de Indias (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013), 31-53. 81 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.77-78. 82 Von Germeten, Violent Delights, Violent Ends, 40. 83 For example, in the same 1614 auto de fe, María Ramirez was convicted of similar transgressions as Isabel Noble, but was only sentenced to exile from the district for three years (in addition to a hundred lashes). Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.74-77.

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completely unheard of for sorcery. In the same 1614 auto de fe that penanced Isabel Noble,

Francisca Mejía, a mulata from Extremadura, was given two hundred lashes and “desterrada perpetuamente” from the Indies for nearly identical offenses as Noble’s.84 It should not be assumed, however, that such punishments were reserved only for mulatas and impoverished foreigners; even Spanish doñas were not exempt from the possibility of such a sentence, as the example of Doña Isabel de Carvajal demonstrates. Despite receiving preferential treatment as an elite española by not having to abjure her errors in the public auto de fe, Carvajal was still fined two hundred reales and sentenced to be “perpetually exiled from these Indies.”85 It is impossible to know the precise reasons why these women received harsher sentences than other practitioners of hechicería, but there is simply no evidence to support the theory that Noble’s sentence was given as a punishment for both the offenses of which she was convicted and the supposedly

“suspected” crimes of judaizing. Indeed, as the examples of Mejía and Carvajal illustrate, hechicería itself was more than enough to earn someone a sentence of perpetual exile from the

Indies.

Further evidence against the idea that inquisitors were always quick to associate

Portuguese defendants with crypto-Judaism can be found in the case of Juan Rodríguez Coronel, a native of Lisbon and resident of the town of Barquisimeto (Venezuela). In his uncoerced confession in 1613, Rodríguez Coronel declared that about twenty-five years earlier, when he was around thirteen or fourteen years old, he traveled to Guinea to search for his father. On the

84 Ibid., II.78-79. 85 “desterrada perpetuamente de estas Indias.” It should be noted that according to a marginal note in the relación, Carvajal’s exile was not carried out (as was not infrequently the case). Ibid., II.89 (including footnote n.184). By way of comparison, the other elite española to be put on trial for hechicería in 1614, Doña Ana María de Olarriaga, was sentenced to two years exile from Cartagena, as well as a fine of one thousand reales. Ibid., II.88.

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way, he was captured and taken prisoner by an English ship, which took him to England. Almost immediately, he was given a passport and traveled with a group of Frenchmen to Bordeaux. At the house of one of the Frenchman, Rodríguez Coronel met a fellow Portuguese, who told him that he did not believe “in the Mother of God nor in her blessed Son.”86 Soon after, the teenager was told similar things by a Frenchman in the group. It is unclear from Rodríguez Coronel’s testimony whether these men were Jews or Socinians (or some other sort of radical Protestants), but these sorts of denials were obviously consonant with Jewish polemics against Catholicism.

Rodríguez Coronel never tried to categorize these men into one religious group or another, and if the inquisitors asked any clarificatory questions, they did not make it into the trial summary. Upon returning to Portugal, Rodríguez Coronel disclosed the heresies that he had heard to his mother, who upbraided him for repeating such blasphemies. Although he admitted that he “was confused” by some of the arguments he heard in France, Rodríguez Coronel maintained that he “always remained firm in the Catholic faith,” never doubting the verity of the

Holy Trinity.87 Still, the conscience of Rodríguez Coronel was troubled. He confessed his situation to a priest, who absolved him; however, the defendant was later informed that this absolution was “null” and that he needed to confess to the Holy Office.88 Rodríguez Coronel did so, pleading for mercy. The Inquisition believed the defendant’s story, and absolved him of all wrongdoing. In view of the young age at which Rodríguez Coronel had been exposed to these false teachings, the inquisitors also added a light penance of fasting every Friday and sacramental confession every month for a year, in case the defendant had unknowingly picked up

86 “no creía en la madre de Dios, ni en su Hijo bendito.” Ibid., II.100. 87 “estuvo confuso por haberle oído las dichas razones, pero que siempre estuvo firme en la fe católica, creyendo, como ha creído y cree, que hay un solo Dios todopoderoso y que son tres personas, Padre, Hijo y Espíritu Santo.” Ibid., II.100. 88 “nulas.” Ibid., II.101.

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“some belief” from the heretics in France. It is clear that this additional penance was not conceived of as some sort of punishment, since the inquisitors stipulated that “if a Friday fast is forgotten, [the penitent] can fast some other day during the week.”89 The inquisitors felt that these obligations would be of the most benefit to Rodríguez Coronel’s soul.

Far from turning every trifle involving a Portuguese defendant into a grand case of judaizing, the actions taken by the inquisitors in this case were quite proportional to the evidence at hand. The age of Rodríguez Coronel and his willingness to confess (multiple times) were the relevant factors, not his Portuguese nationality. To be sure, the inquisitors had more circumstantial evidence for Rodríguez Coronel being a crypto-Jew than Isabel Noble. If they had so desired, the inquisitors could have easily tortured the defendant, demanding his “confession” of judaizing in France. Inquisition officials were well-aware that France was a place where some

Portuguese went to practice the Law of Moses in greater freedom. Indeed, only a couple of decades later, the Suprema deemed it expedient to send the secretary of the Seville Inquisition,

Juan Bautista Villadiego, to France, in order to report on the judaizing activities of the

Portuguese communities there.90 Nonetheless, as was the case with most Portuguese put on trial in Cartagena during this period, the inquisitors appeared not to have suspected any judaizing activities, nor did they worry about Rodríguez Coronel becoming a source of heresy by remaining in Cartagena. All in all, Rodríguez Coronel’s case suggests that the inquisitors were not quick to jump to assumptions about whether Portuguese defendants were secret judaizers, even when they had spent time in foreign countries.

89 “si acaso ha incurrido y tuvo alguna creencia siendo muchacho de trece a catorce años y que por tiempo de un año confiese cada mes sacramentalmente y que ayune todos los viernes del dicho año y si se le olvidare algún viernes, le pueda ayunar otro cualquier día de la semana.” Ibid., II.101. 90 Ricardo Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes en América Española (Siglos XVI-XVII) (Bogotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario, 2008), 137-42.

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As scholars of crypto-Judaism have shown, many crypto-Jews were especially critical of the Catholic practices of adoring the Eucharistic host and venerating images and statues of saints.91 It might seem plausible, therefore, that inquisitors would have been especially attentive to signs of irreverence or blasphemy coming from Portuguese individuals. Yet, many examples can be found in the Cartagena records that seem to indicate that simple irreverence or even more firmly rooted convictions of an iconoclastic nature were not enough to warrant suspicions of crypto-Judaism. For example, Pedro de Abreu, a Portuguese from Santarém, was convicted in

1626 of saying “some words in dishonor of the most holy Cross and images of Christ and of His mother.”92 Drawing on these statements, some historians have concluded that Abreu was, in fact, tried for judaizing.93 However, this was not the case, as evidenced by the omission of any mention of Abreu’s limpieza in the relación de causa. Every convicted judaizante in the 1626 auto de fe was explicitly labeled as a “cristiano nuevo” (and sometimes additionally as a

“descendiente de hebreos”). However, in all other cases involving a Portuguese defendant— whether regarding blasphemy or bigamy or some other crime—the blood purity status of the accused was not deemed important enough to record. Even in the blasphemy case of Domingo da

Costa, who (as will be seen) was strongly suspected of being a Jew, he was never labeled in the trial summary as being a New Christian or a “descendent of Hebrews.” Therefore, despite

Abreu’s strong theological agreements with crypto-Judaism, it appears that there were not sufficient enough grounds for the inquisitors to put Abreu on trial as a judaizante. Instead, he

91 David Gitlitz collects a number of examples of crypto-Jewish denunciations and blasphemies directed against the Eucharist in his Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996), ch. 5. 92 “dijo algunas palabras en dishonor de la cruz santísima e imágenes de Cristo y de su madre.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.247. 93 Splendiani, De la Roma Medieval, 157; Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes, 365.

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was simply forced to abjure his errors, fined 200 pesos, and exiled from the district of Cartagena for three years.

Another interesting blasphemy case occurred the following year, when Andrés González, a farmer from the Azores, was said to have compared an Indian woman to the “Santísimo

Sacramento,” with the former being deemed worthy of greater reverence. This was judged to be a “heretical blasphemy,” and González was sentenced to a three-year exile from the archdiocese of Santa Fe.94 Like Abreu, it seems that González did not give the inquisitors any compelling reason to suspect anything more than impious anger.95 Judging from the sentences rendered, the inquisitors interpreted the actions of Abreu and González not within the paradigm of secret

Judaism, but within the much more common religious landscape of Catholic Iberia, where irreverent and blasphemous words and actions were frequently employed, either out of anger, drunkenness, impiety, or genuine unbelief.96

There were occasional instances, however, in which a Portuguese defendant charged with blasphemous utterances was also suspected of being a crypto-Jew. For example, in the case of

Domingo da Costa, a shoemaker from Picanzos (near Coimbra), the inquisitors minced no words when they reported that they were “given to understand that [da Costa] was a Jew and that he would have enjoyed finding himself present when Jesus Christ was crucified.”97 Nonetheless, these suspicions appear to have arisen not from da Costa’s Portuguese nationality—of which

94 “Calificóse por blasfemia heretical.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II. 263. 95 The trial summary notes that González’s words had been said “con mucha cólera.” Ibid., II.263. 96 Regarding this Iberian religious landscape, see: William A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth- Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Sara T. Nalle, God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500-1650 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 97 “daba a entender que era judío y que se hubiera holgado de hallarse presente cuando crucificaron a Jesucristo.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.248.

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nothing is said besides noting his place of origin—but instead, from his repeated vituperative impieties. On one occasion, the Portuguese shoemaker derisively played a trumpet in mockery of the procession held every year on Holy Thursday. Another time, during a public procession of the Eucharist, da Costa was heard saying, “There goes God to the house of all the devils.”98

Despite suspecting da Costa of being a Jew due to these incidents and “many other similar words of contempt,” the inquisitors opted simply to sentence him to a 100-peso fine and a five-year exile.99 It appears that a separate investigation was not carried out regarding possible Jewish practices on the part of da Costa. One can only speculate as to the reasons for the inquisitors’ relative inaction. Perhaps as a humble artisan, da Costa was not a profitable enough target, although given the tribunal’s pursuit of dozens of suspected witches from the casta ranks during this period, this seems to be a rather unconvincing explanation. In any case, the inquisitors proved rather loath to take any action without first receiving evidence from outside denunciations. Unless someone denounced da Costa explicitly for judaizing, the inquisitors demonstrated a consistent unwillingness to pursue the question further. Thus, given the widespread averseness of Cartagena’s populace to cooperate with the Holy Office, this refusal to act independently of external denunciations proved to be a fundamental reason why there were not more judaizante cases during this early period.

The Cartagena tribunal also periodically received testimonies against previously convicted judaizers for failing to abide by the sartorial or occupational restrictions placed on them for their previous apostasies (or for those of their parents). Like da Costa, however, these defendants received light sentences and were not interrogated about whether they had continued

98 “Allá va Dios en casa de todos los diablos.” Ibid., II.248. 99 “otros muchos desacatos y palabras que dijo a este modo.” Ibid., II.248.

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to practice the Law of Moses behind closed doors. For example, Diego Rodríguez Núñez, a native of Viseo, disregarded the penance imposed on him by the Coimbra Inquisition for judaizing. Exiled to Angola and forbidden to wear silk clothing or to carry a sword, at some point, Rodríguez Núñez traveled to Jamaica, where the governor subsequently sent a petition to

Cartagena, denouncing the Portuguese for failing to follow the restrictions placed on him as a convicted judaizer. The defendant was eventually sentenced by the Cartagena inquisitors to perpetual exile from the Indies, and ordered to carry out his original penance at all times.100 No additional fines, imprisonment, or galley service was imposed on the defendant, which is somewhat unexpected given that a disregard for these restrictions was simultaneously a disregard for the authority of the institution that issued them—the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

Other instances of sartorial disobediences confirm that these sorts of light sentences were very much the norm in these types of cases, rather than the exception, at least in Cartagena. One interesting case is that of Baltasar de los Reyes, a Portuguese vecino of Cartagena and native of

Évora. Reyes was the son of Simón Rodríguez, who was condemned to death for judaizing by the Évora Inquisition two decades earlier. Witnesses accused Reyes of continually defying the sartorial and occupational restrictions placed on sons and daughters of convicted judaizers. Not only did Reyes wear expensive clothes made of silk and other luxurious materials, he also worked for many years as a cirujano, a position theoretically prohibited to Jewish apostates and their descendants. Furthermore, Reyes regularly rode a horse, violating yet another proscription.

Reyes confessed to all of these charges, and as punishment, he was fined two hundred pesos and strictly warned to observe all the prohibitions placed on him, both in terms of his occupation and his clothing. This sentence ultimately amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist. Because

100 Ibid., II.248.

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only a trial summary remains, it is unclear what political or economic leverage the defendant might have been able to utilize. Nevertheless, it remains clear from these two cases that sartorial violations did not provoke a forceful response from the Holy Office in Cartagena during these early years.101

Few Judaizante Cases

Before the start of the complicidad grande in the mid-1630s, the tribunal only managed to unearth four cases of judaizing from among the residents of Cartagena—a quite low figure given the size and importance of the Portuguese population in the city. Although many

Portuguese conversos in Cartagena were thoroughly interconnected economically and socially, those few judaizante cases that did arise out of Cartagena during this early period failed to provoke any further inquisitorial action against family members or associates. In this way, this small handful of trials proved doubly unsuccessful. Not only did they fail to lead to additional trials, but they also were hardly lucrative sources of revenue themselves. None of the four

Portuguese who were tried by the Cartagena tribunal possessed great wealth or commercial importance. In sum, these four cases provide further testimony to the failures of the Cartagena tribunal in establishing reliable local informant networks against the wealthy and conspicuous

Portuguese converso merchant population of the city.

Ordering these four trials chronologically, it must be admitted that very little can be said about either the first or last of these cases. The earliest one was that of Francisco de Luna, who was accused, among other offenses, “of having whipped a crucifix and another abominable

101 A third case involving sartorial violations that resulted in a similar outcome was that of María de la O., a Spanish woman convicted of judaizing in Toledo, who was in 1613 a resident of Tunja. Ibid., II.145-47.

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crime.”102 The historian, Ricardo Escobar Quevedo, has suggested not unconvincingly that this defendant was the same Francisco de Luna who appeared in a Lisbon Inquisition proceso as the husband of a woman named Blanca Rodríguez and was said to have “observed the Law of Moses in Cartagena.”103 The inquisitors ended their cursory summary by reporting that Luna died in prison, having shown signs of repentance, and was thus reconciled in effigy. Of almost equal brevity was the trial summary of the last of the four cases, involving a Portuguese man named

Antonio Suárez, who denounced himself in 1632 for having “observed the Law of Moses for forty days.” After this brief period, Suárez repented for having separated himself from the

Catholic faith, “in which he had been instructed and taught by Catholic parents.”104 Perhaps

Suárez included this detail to try and persuade the inquisitors that his dalliances with the Law of

Moses were simply the result of foolish judgment and not reflective of a more deeply ingrained disposition towards Judaism arising out of a tainted genealogy. Regardless, the inquisitors admitted that they had not uncovered any additional evidence against Suárez, and so they give him a very light sentence of hearing one Mass as a penitent and some other “spiritual penances for the good of his soul.”105

102 “fue acusado, entre otras cosas graves, de haber azotado un Cristo y otra nefandísima maldad.” Ibid., II.248. 103 Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes, 119 n.87. 104 “Antonio Suárez, de nación portugués que espontáneamente se delató de sí propio de haber sido judío judaizante, observante de la ley de Moisés por tiempo de cuarenta días, pasados los cuales le abrió Dios los ojos, reparando en lo mal que había hecho en apartarse de la ley de nuestro redentor Jesucristo en que había sido instruido y enseñado por padres católicos.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.293. 105 “se votó su causa en definitiva a que oyese su sentencia en la sala de este tribunal y una misa en la capilla con hábito de reconciliado y una vela en las manos y fuse admitido en dicha sala a reconciliación, donde luego se le quitase y se le impusiesen algunas penitencias espirituales para el bien de su alma.” Ibid., II. 293.

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The final two cases of judaizante that originated from Cartagena involved two brothers,

Sebastián and Luis Rodríguez, who were both put on trial in 1627. Judging from the trial summaries, both cases seemed to be rather typical. Sebastián, the older brother by six years, had taught Luis about the Law of Moses and how “it alone was good for his salvation.”106 According to the testimonies, Luis was an eager student, celebrating the crypto-Jewish holy days, praying

“Hebrew prayers,” wearing clean clothes on the Sabbath, and entrusting himself to God alone, instead of seeking the aid of the saints. Both men also seemed determined at first to remain as

Jews, but eventually—and in the case of Luis, after being tortured—both men were reconciled to the Catholic Church, albeit under varying degrees of punishment. Sebastián, despite being the teacher of Luis, received the lighter sentence: confiscation of goods, the sambenito and incarceration for two years, and compulsory service in attending to the poor who were seeking medical care at the Hospital de San Sebastián. In contrast, the inquisitors sentenced Luis to

“perpetual” imprisonment, confiscation of goods, the sambenito, three years of galley service, and a hundred lashes given publicly.107 Although one witness testified that Sebastián had been an “accomplice” of certain heretics in Murcia and despite Luis himself denouncing several other individuals for judaizing, it appears that these two cases did not lead to any further trials against potential Portuguese judaizers.108

During this early period, a few additional judaizante cases were brought before the

Cartagena tribunal from other towns and cities. For example, Antonio Rodríguez, a Portuguese vecino of Guatemala, was convicted in 1626 of being a “judaizing heretic” and “accomplice to

106 “era solo la buena para su salvación.” Ibid., II.265. 107 “oraciones hebreas.” Ibid., II.265-67, quotation on p. 266. 108 “fautor.” Ibid., II.265-67, quotation on p. 265.

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heretics.”109 Nonetheless, Rodríguez was sentenced to wear the sambenito and work in

Cartagena’s hospital for only one year. It is notable that despite being convicted of judaizing— and thus, a spiritual threat to the rest of the city—Rodríguez was not even sentenced to a period of exile. This is quite surprising, given how frequently the inquisitors lamented the gross ignorance and love of “novelties” on the part of the local population.110 It stands to reason, therefore, that the inquisitors did not believe Rodríguez was much of a risk either to recidivate or to judaize others. One further explanation for this decision is that Rodríguez might have had some sort of aptitude in medicine, thus motivating the inquisitors to sentence him to service in the city’s hospital. Cartagena was perpetually in need of competent medical personnel, and it is intriguing to imagine whether the inquisitors would be loath to exile even a convicted judaizer from the city, if he possessed real medical skill.

Perhaps the most traveled judaizante put on trial was Baltasar de Araújo, a native of

Galicia and a resident of Zaragoza (Antioquia), who had been taught various crypto-Jewish practices by his mother. Eventually escaping to Flanders with her, Araújo then traveled to

Venice, where he studied Hebrew, was circumcised, and took the name Abraham Senior. A devout Jew by all appearances, Araújo carried a small, dual-language prayer book, with prayers in Spanish and Hebrew on facing pages. On the road once again, Araújo made his way to

Salonika and finally to Constantinople. Partaking in the commercial trade of the eastern

Mediterranean, Araújo continued to Alexandria, before returning to Spain and, from there, sailing to the New World.111 Araújo was not the only resident in New Granada who had previously lived in a Jewish community in Europe. For example, Manuel Díaz Arráez had spent

109 “hereje judaizante, encubridor de herejes.” Ibid., II.247. 110 Cf. Medina, Historia del Tribunal ... de Cartagena de las Indias, 37. 111 AHN, Inq., L.1010, ff. 2r-9v.

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many years in Amsterdam, before moving to the New World to seek profitable economic ventures in Spanish America. Some made the reverse journey, like Antonio Hernández, who left

New Granada for Holland, in order to live openly as a Jew.112

Those few individuals in New Granada, like Araújo and Díaz Arráez, who had previously lived as Jews in Europe were sources of hope and fascination for those few individuals in New

Granada who fervently sought to live according to the Law of Moses. Araújo’s friend, Luis

Franco, was one such person. A man of great intelligence, Franco was keenly interested in theology and the practices and rituals of the Jewish communities in Europe. Franco’s deep knowledge of the Scriptures was even reputed to have made the local friars look ignorant and foolish by comparison. Although his father and two sisters lived in France, where they migrated some time earlier, Franco remained in the New World, like Díaz Arráez, in order to pursue the lucrative economic opportunities that were available.113 Franco was far from the only Portuguese in New Granada who was interested in the Jewish communities in Europe. Juan Rodríguez

Pardo, a trader living in Pamplona, was accused by at least one witness of having asked about

“the synagogues in Turkey [Turquía] and the manner of living of the judaizantes there according to their rites and ceremonies.”114 It seems that Rodríguez’s own practices did not go much beyond keeping the Sabbath by wearing clean shirts and not working as much as possible. The inquisitors sentenced him to reconciliation, which included the confiscation of his goods and one year in prison with the sambenito—overall, a rather light sentence.115

112 Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes, 125. 113 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 5. 114 “le había preguntado por cosas de las sinagogas de Turquía y modo de vivir de los judaizantes de allá por sus ritos y ceremonias.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.265. 115 Ibid., II.265.

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Of all the Portuguese defendants ever to be tried before the Cartagena tribunal, the most luckless of them all was Juan Vicente, a shoemaker from Campomayor, who was the only convicted judaizante to be executed in Cartagena.116 Vicente’s unfortunate encounters with the

Holy Office began when he denounced himself before the Évora Inquisition in 1582 for judaizing. Vicente later admitted that he did this out of fear, hoping for more lenient treatment.

Seeking to escape the opprobrium and poverty which characterized his life in Portugal, Vicente and his wife traveled to Brazil in 1588 and, after a few years, to Lima via Buenos Aires and

Potosí. Vicente’s troubles with the Lima tribunal began in earnest in late 1601, when his friend,

Diego de Silva—who also admitted to sleeping with Vicente’s wife—confessed to practicing the

Law of Moses with Vicente. Facing the possibility of being burnt at the stake as a relapsed judaizer, Vicente begged for mercy, insisting on the corrupting influence of Silva. His trial in

Lima was a long and convoluted affair, but due to some clever assistance from Vicente’s defense attorney, the inquisitors remained divided about how to sentence this possible recidivist.117

Finally, after ten years in prison, Vicente was sentenced for a second time to reconciliation, which was carried out during a 1612 auto de fe in Lima.

116 Nathan Wachtel has analyzed the case of Juan Vicente in great detail in The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths, trans. Nikki Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 19-27. See also: Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes, 118-22. 117 Wachtel recounts this episode as follows: “Another year elapsed, and in July 1609, the long-awaited response from the Evora Tribunal arrived in Lima. Juan Vicente found material in the transcripts of the first trial for new arguments in his defense. The court record in fact confirmed that at the time he had voluntarily come before the Tribunal to confess. Hence the subtle argumentation his counsel now offered. In the first place, because Juan confessed on his own, without being ‘convinced’ by other witnesses, the second trial could not be a case of recidivism. Second, it would seem that at Evora the accused, then a minor (under twenty-five) had not had his lawyer’s assistance at each phase of the procedure; thus Juan now pled that his first sentence was null and void, and as such he could not be considered as relapsed. Whether they were swayed by these arguments or by the apparently sincere confessions of the defendant, the judges were still divided in their opinion. The issue eventually went all the way to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid—and finally, after ten years’ imprisonment, Juan Vicente benefited from a second sentence of ‘reconciliation,’ pronounced during the auto-da-fé of June 17, 1612.” Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance, 25.

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Penniless and forced to wear the humiliating sambenito, Vicente spent the next ten years as a vagrant in Lima. It was at this point that Vicente was, in the words of historian Nathan

Wachtel, the “victim of an absurd mistake.”118 Arrested with a group of Portuguese who were sentenced to be exiled, Vicente was forcibly put on a ship bound for Panama. When he arrived in

Cartagena, still wearing his sambenito, Vicente demanded to have his banishment overturned.

The inquisitors were in a difficult situation, and at some point, a third trial was opened against

Vicente. As a convicted judaizante who had already been reconciled twice, the stake was all but inevitable. Cartagena’s inquisitors summed up their decision in the following terms: “Relapsed and feigning repentance, [Vicente’s] transgressions were very serious, to such a point that we did not enumerate most of them on the platform, in order not to shock pious Christians, for having fallen back into these errors, he was delivered to the secular authorities.”119 Such was the tragic finale to a life marked by abundant suffering and anguish.

Tragic though it was, Vicente’s case was certainly the exception rather than the rule in terms of the sentence rendered. Although the fiery stake is one of the most iconic images associated with the Inquisition, the Cartagena tribunal rarely consigned anyone, even judaizing apostates, to the flames. Vicente represents a most exceptional case. Twice reconciled, the punishment given by the inquisitors was due not so much to Vicente’s “crimes,” but to his extraordinary bad luck of having two previous trials before the Inquisition. Countless other

“judaizers” had done far worse and escaped with much lighter sentences. The fact that Vicente was the only judaizer put to death by the Cartagena Holy Office is striking, and it is a testimony to the relative leniency with which the Cartagena tribunal judged the Portuguese judaizers. Even

118 Ibid., 26. 119 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.249. I have used the translation in Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance, 27.

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at the high point of inquisitorial activity in the late 1630s, not a single Portuguese was executed, in great contrast to Lima and especially Mexico City.120

Besides Vicente, the only other person ever “relaxed to the secular arm” in Cartagena was Adam Edon, an English Protestant, who, in Lea’s words, “was not chained as usual to the stake, but...calmly sat on a faggot and remained motionless till life was extinct, a veritable martyr to his convictions.”121 In its own way, Edon’s case is as peculiar as Vicente’s. Together, these two cases reveal that only in cases of recidivism or flagrant unrepentance would the inquisitors sentence a person to death. (As discussed above, a third defendant, Francisco Gómez de León, was almost executed, but due to his last-minute recantation of the Law of Moses, he was spared the death penalty.)122 If possible, the inquisitors always strove to reconcile heretics to the

Church. As Miriam Bodian has noted, to execute an unrepentant heretic was, in some ways, an admission of defeat for the inquisitors: “From a propaganda point of view, achieving the heretic’s humble admission of error was a far more desirable outcome than burning him or her at the stake.”123 To this end, the fact that Gómez de León’s original sentence of relajación was commuted on the basis of a confession, which must have been somewhat suspect given the circumstances, gives strong testimony to the reality that reconciliation with the Church was the ultimate goal of the Holy Office, not maximizing the number of corpses at the stake.

120 One Portuguese, Manuel Álvarez Prieto, was posthumously burned in effigy in 1651. Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.387-88. 121 Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, 466. 122 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.169-72. 123 Miriam Bodian, Dying the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 29.

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The Revealing Case of Diego de Mesa

By way of conclusion, it is worth examining the fascinating case of Diego de Mesa, which captures many of the key patterns analyzed in this chapter. A Spanish encomendero from

Tolú, Mesa raised suspicions due to his theological ideas about the salvific efficacy of the Law of Moses. Mesa was denounced in 1608 by multiple witnesses who testified that they had heard the encomendero declare how “during the time when the Law of Moses was followed, it was as good as the Law that we follow and that men were saved in it.”124 Another witness said that

Mesa had said that “the Law of Moses is as good as that Law [of Christ] that we profess now,” although he later clarified his statement, agreeing with the other witnesses that Mesa was discussing the “Law of Moses” in the Old Testament era, not contemporary Judaism.125

Suspicions were further raised when testimony came forth about Mesa’s father, who was reputed to be a Jew.126 Perhaps sensing that he was increasingly in danger, Mesa went to the comisario in Tolú and confessed “of his own will” that he had indeed argued that men were saved in the

Law of Moses “in that time,” but that certain witnesses had “interpreted it in another manner.”127

Despite his best efforts, Mesa’s statement was judged to be heretical by the theological experts

(calificadores) of the Lima Inquisition, although by 1612, when his arrest was finally ordered, the trial was under the jurisdiction of the newly established tribunal in Cartagena.

124 “en el tiempo que se guardaba la ley de Moisés, era tan buena como la ley que guardamos y que los hombres se salvaban en ella.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.104. 125 “Y el tercer testigo le testifica que en la dicha ocasión oyó el testigo después de ésto con uno de los testigos arriba referidos, diciéndole lo que había dicho que se acordase bien que no había dicho el dicho reo, en la dicha ocasión, sino que la ley de Moisés fue en aquel tiempo tan buena como la de ahora.” Ibid., II.104. 126 “este testigo oído decir que el padre del dicho reo era judío.” Ibid., II.105. 127 “confesó de su voluntad,” “en aquel tiempo,” “lo interpretaban de otra manera.” Ibid., II.105.

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After his arrest, Mesa further elaborated his confession. He maintained that “the Law of

Moses was as good as the Law of Grace for those who in that time believed in it, since by means of [the Law of Moses], men were saved.” Importantly, Mesa added that he believed that the Law of Moses “ceased after Our Lord Jesus Christ died and began the Law of the Gospel, which is of grace.” Finally, Mesa sought to strengthen his defense even further, by claiming that he did not come up with such ideas on his own, but he had instead “heard [such opinions] from learned persons.”128 It might be assumed that the Inquisition would reflexively seek to punish any statements that evaluated the Law of Moses in a positive manner; however, this popular image of a blindly bigoted Inquisition is strongly challenged by the case of Diego de Mesa. Recognizing that Mesa’s statements were “able to have a Catholic meaning,” the inquisitors referred the matter to their own calificadores, one Augustinian and two Jesuits.129 This perhaps surprising decision can only be convincingly explained by the basic fact that the inquisitors sought to defend and promote the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and in order to do this, they repeatedly enlisted theological experts to help determine whether Mesa’s statements could be deemed properly Catholic or not.

After some deliberation, the friars concluded that although the statement from Mesa

“sound[ed] heretical,” nevertheless, it was “able to have Catholic meanings.”130 In order to flesh out the proper understanding of this subject, the calificadores cited St. Thomas Aquinas, specifically the article in his Summa Theologica concerning, “Whether the New Law is distinct

128 “lo dijo por haberlo oído a personas doctas, que la ley de Moisés fue tan buena como ésta de gracia para aquellos que en aquel tiempo la creyeron, pues mediante ella se salvaban. La cual cesó después que Cristo Nuestro Señor murió y empezó la ley del evangelio, qué es la de gracia.” Ibid., II.105. 129 “puede tener sentido católico.” Ibid., II.106. 130 “aunque así como suena es herética como la tiene calificada, pero tiene sentidos católicos la dicha proposición.” Ibid., II.106.

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from the Old Law?” (ST, II-I, Q.107, A.1). In answering this question, the Angelic Doctor gave a characteristically multi-part response. According to Aquinas, from the perspective of the end to which each Law is directed, the two Laws are not distinct: “The New Law is not distinct from the Old Law: because they both have the same end, namely, man’s subjection to God; and there is but one God of the New and of the Old Testament.” On the other hand, when considering the means by which this singular end is accomplished, Aquinas, following St. Paul, argued that there is a profound difference between the two Laws, since “the New Law is distinct from the Old

Law: because the Old Law is like a pedagogue of children, as the Apostle says (Gal. 3:24), whereas the New Law is the law of perfection, since it is the law of charity.”131 The theologians of the Cartagena tribunal followed St. Thomas’s arguments to the letter. After briefly summarizing the Scholastic legal principle that “the truth and goodness” of any law is to be judged based “on the end to which it is ordered,” the calificadores stressed the importance of affirming that salvation did indeed come through the Law of Moses, yet “not through any

[intrinsic] virtue of that law, but only...from the merits of Christ”—a point that Mesa never denied or explicitly disputed.132 The theologians concluded that as long as both parts of this

Thomistic answer were affirmed, Mesa’s statement could be rightly judged as orthodox.

What the inquisitors had to decide was whether Mesa actually held the Catholic position in its entirety. On this point, the tribunal was divided. Inquisitor Salcedo and the ordinario felt that “the proposition for which the defendant was arrested is Catholic.”133 Inquisitor Mañozca

131 Thomas Aquinas, The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 22 vols. (London: R&T Washbourne, Ltd., 1911-18), VIII.293. 132 “verdad y bondad,” “en orden a su fin,” “no dicen que se salvaban en virtud de aquella ley, sino que se entiende que se salvaban por los merecimientos de Cristo.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.106. 133 “la proposición por que fue preso el susodicho es católica.” Ibid., II.106.

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and the consultor, in contrast, believed that the tribunal’s theologians were rather too charitable in interpreting Mesa’s statements in a Catholic manner. Mañozca went so far as to say that if “the theologians with their erudition and doctrine searched for the Catholic sense” on each “equivocal proposition,” then “no one could ever be a heretic”—a situation that would be “as harmful to religion as beneficial to the particular defendants.”134 It should be underscored that neither inquisitor disagreed with the conclusions of the calificadores—viz., that the statements made by

Mesa did possess an orthodox Catholic meaning. Mañozca objected, however, to the assumption that simply because Mesa’s statements could hold a Catholic meaning, that Mesa was, therefore, not a heretic.

In Mañozca’s opinion, the only way to determine for sure which sense Mesa meant was to submit him to torture. Nonetheless, at this point, even Mañozca demurred, acknowledging that to torture a “noble man and encomendero” over which sense to take a certain proposition was a

“harsh thing.”135 What is somewhat surprising is how little the inquisitors seemed to be concerned about Mesa’s reputedly Jewish father or the possibility that Mesa could be a crypto-

Jew himself. The lengthy trial summary that was sent to Madrid contains nothing to suggest that the inquisitors sought to investigate Mesa’s personal religious practices or any of his other beliefs, except this question about the Mosaic Law in the pre-Christian era. It seems incredible that the son of an allegedly Jewish father was not more thoroughly questioned by the Inquisition about his religious practices and beliefs, after voicing very positive statements about the Law of

134 “siendo así le pareció cosa necesaria en investigar a cuál de estos dos sentidos alude el reo, porque de arrimarse absolutamente al sentido católico buscado por los teólogos con su erudición y doctrina, se seguiría que en ningún tiempo pudiése ninguno ser hereje, pues en cualquiera los hombres doctos en estas proposiciones equívocas les hallarán salida, consecuencia a su parecer tan dañosa a la religión como provechosa a los particulares reos.” Ibid., II.107. 135 “un hombre noble y encomendero,” “cosa recia.” Ibid., II.107.

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Moses. Yet, this interrogative path appears never to have been taken. The reasons for this inquisitorial indifference are hard to explain. In large part, the inquisitors only responded to the specific allegations or concrete evidence that they were given in each case. On multiple occasions, the Cartagena tribunal showed itself to be disinclined to pursue more speculative lines of questioning, even when, as in this example, there were reasons to be suspicious. Furthermore, it seems that due to Mesa’s elite status, the inquisitors were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Even if there were grounds for suspicion, being a Spanish encomendero nullified many of these misgivings.

As the trial concluded, Mañozca conceded that there were indeed various “indications” of impurity in Mesa’s bloodlines, due to “his New Christian father,” but nevertheless, Mañozca eventually voted not to torture Mesa, due to his privileged status as a Spanish encomendero.136

For his part, Salcedo showed great concern about having an encomendero “defamed of heresy” and maligned as “being a New Christian”—both points that Salcedo seems to have doubted— simply for having uttered statements that were judged by the calificadores as having an orthodox meaning.137 In the end, despite Mañozca’s qualms, both inquisitors agreed to conclude the trial by absolving Mesa of all charges. Mesa’s status and social rank as an encomendero appears to have taken precedence over all other considerations.

Although not involving a Portuguese defendant, the case of Diego de Mesa illuminates many of the key themes of this chapter. First, inquisitorial officials exercised real discretion and judgment in these cases, instead of reflexively punishing anyone suspected of harboring Jewish sympathies. Second, as was true in the cases discussed above, the inquisitors refused to turn

136 “indicios,” “su padre cristiano nuevo.” Ibid., II.107. 137 “sea difamado de herejía, ni que sea cristiano nuevo.” Ibid., II.107.

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Mesa’s proposiciones trial into a possible case of judaizante, despite having had some real justification for doing so. The case remained focused on Mesa’s ambiguous propositions, never venturing off into an investigation of Mesa’s religious practices or even other religious opinions.

Third, as in many other cases, the inquisitors handed down a surprisingly light sentence, especially given the wealth that might have been accumulated by finding an encomendero guilty of the more serious charges of judaizing and confiscating his property. Whatever role greed played in the judicial and extra-judicial activities of the Holy Office in Cartagena, it was far from the leading factor, in part due to examples like Diego de Mesa and in part due to the complete penury of the tribunal even a quarter-century after its establishment.

These patterns also speak to how in the minds of the inquisitors (and it can be safely assumed, for many other Spaniards as well), the Portuguese were not substantially different in religious matters than their Spanish neighbors. Reflecting the religious culture of the period, whenever Portuguese individuals uttered blasphemies, dabbled in sorcery, or gave credence to heretical propositions, the inquisitors did not regard these phenomena as in any way connected to crypto-Judaism. Even when potentially suspicious circumstantial evidence arose, the inquisitors in Cartagena never sought to make a case more than what it originally was. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, minor blasphemies or erroneous theological ideas did not suddenly become signs of crypto-Judaism, simply because the defendant was from Lisbon or

Évora.

As this chapter has shown, the Cartagena Holy Office was an experimental move, and one that proved to be largely a failure until late 1635, when news came from Lima concerning a discovery of a “complicity of Jews.” In short order, a parallel complicity was uncovered in

Cartagena. Not only were the Portuguese implicated in crimes against the faith, but testimony

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arose concerning possible political treachery as well. Yet, despite the truly exceptional circumstances of the late 1630s, many of the same patterns observed in this chapter held true in those subsequent years, even as the number of judaizante cases increased significantly. First and foremost, local cooperation was as important as ever, and its sustained absence in Cartagena continued to frustrate inquisitorial agendas. Additionally, the inquisitors themselves would prove to be far from gullible rubes, and instead, they weighed the testimonies before them with some circumspection. Finally, the outcomes of these trials were hardly preordained. Many Portuguese received no punishment at all; others received harsh sentences. The dynamics at play in this complicidad were far more complicated than simply anti-Jewish prejudice or inquisitorial greed.

As always, local circumstances and individual decisions played a sizeable role in determining these outcomes.

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CHAPTER 5 LA COMPLICIDAD PEQUEÑA

By 1621, Spain was eager for war. The Twelve Years’ Truce with the Dutch expired that year, and a new chapter opened between the Spanish and their former subjects. Open warfare broke out across the Atlantic world, and through their newly established West India Company, the Dutch struck the Spanish at critical weak points. In May 1624, Salvador da Bahia was captured by a force of twenty-six ships and 3,300 men, and although the city was re-taken a year later, the episode demonstrated that colonial conquest was a powerful new strategy in this ongoing global struggle.1 In 1628, successful beyond their wildest imaginations, the Dutch led by Piet Heyn captured the entire Spanish silver fleet near Mantanzas (Cuba), funneling over eleven million guilders to the Dutch. As Jonathan Israel notes, such a princely sum equaled nearly two-thirds of the annual cost of supplying and equipping the Dutch army.2 The rapid financial improvement in the West India Company’s finances led to a second, larger, and ultimately more successful assault on Brazil. In 1630, Pernambuco fell to the Dutch, and for the next quarter-century, Dutch Brazil would remain a thorn in the side of the Habsburgs.3

During the same year as the capture of Pernambuco, the Dutch easily captured the town of Santa Marta, located some 200 kilometers east of Cartagena. Despite the pleas of successive governors of the province, no defensive structures were built between 1602 and 1644, and thus,

1 Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 51; Stuart B. Schwartz, “The Voyage of the Vassals: Royal Power, Noble Obligations, and Merchant Capital before the Portuguese Restoration of Independence, 1624-1640,” The American Historical Review 96 (1991): 735- 62. 2 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World, 1606-1661 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 198. 3 José Manuel Santos Pérez and George F. Cabral de Souza, eds., El desafío holandés ibérico en Brasil en el siglo XVII (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2006); Michiel van Groesen, ed., The Legacy of Dutch Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

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when the Dutch squadron of twenty-six ships arrived in 1630, the town’s fifteen soldiers and meager defenses proved next to worthless. Although the Dutch admiral, Adriaen Pater, thoroughly sacked the town, he had little to show for his efforts in terms of plunder.4 Of greater long-term significance was the capture of the island of Curaçao by the Dutch in 1634. At first, the Dutch saw the island as a provider of basic supplies, especially salt and timber. As it turned out, the island failed to provide the supplies of salt initially expected; however, the strategic position of the island encouraged Dutch fortification. In response to this new Dutch threat so close to the Spanish mainland, a junta de Curazao was established, led by the Count-Duke of

Olivares himself. Although plans were made for an expeditionary force to retake the island, the military needs of the Spanish in other places led to the effective suspension of these designs.5

Curaçao would remain in Dutch hands, although the real commercial value of the island and its magnificent harbor would only emerge in the 1650s (cf. Chapter 6).

With the Dutch striking increasingly close to Cartagena, Spanish fears of another 1586— when Francis Drake had easily captured the city—were both widespread and quite plausible.

Although largely erroneous, rumors also circulated widely that it was converso duplicity that had enabled the Dutch to capture Brazil.6 The presence of Jewish synagogues in Dutch Brazil only further infused the geo-political situation with potent anti-Jewish sentiments. According to some historians, Spanish America at this time was widely afflicted by psychosis and paranoia regarding the Dutch and their Jewish allies. Drawing on Irene Silverblatt’s work on the Lima

4 Israel, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World, 198-199; Wim Klooster, “The Geopolitical Impact of Dutch Brazil on the Western Hemisphere,” in The Legacy of Dutch Brazil, 30. 5 Israel, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World, 273-74. Cf. Carlos Felice Cardot, Curazao hispánico (antagonísmo flamenco-español) (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1973). 6 Anita Novinsky, “A Historical Bias: The New Christian Collaboration with the Dutch Invaders of Brazil (17th Century),” in Proceedings of the 5th World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1972), II.141-154.

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Inquisition, Lúcia Helena Costigan argues that the Dutch invasion of Bahia caused a widespread

“panic” among the inquisitors and “other members of the upper sectors of Spanish society.”7

Julián Ruiz Rivera takes this argument further, describing the early 1620s as a period marked by a “psychosis of fear” concerning possible Dutch attacks.8 Similarly, Fernando Serrano Mangas posits that the “infiltration of Portuguese Jews had already become an obsession in 1630.”9

It was within this geo-political context that, six years after the successful establishment of

Dutch Brazil, the Cartagena inquisitors received testimonies about a purported Jewish fifth column within their very own city—the so-called “Cofradía de Holanda” (Brotherhood of

Holland). According to the testimonies collected in the trial records, the cofradía was a group of

Portuguese residents in Cartagena, who had been sending regular payments of money to the Jews of Amsterdam, in order to help finance a Dutch conquest of Cartagena or another Spanish

Caribbean port city. Confusing matters somewhat, some witnesses also testified to a “Compañía de Holanda” (Company of Holland). Although there has been some disagreement among scholars about the nature and relation of these two entities, this chapter argues that the Cofradía and the Compañía were not strictly the same. Instead, the Cofradía was a distinct group of local crypto-Jews in Cartagena within the larger Compañía, which was the label used in inquisitorial documentation for the Dutch West India Company.

Perhaps surprising given the ostensibly apprehensive atmosphere of the mid-1630s, the

Cartagena inquisitors responded to these allegations of Portuguese Jewish treason with notable

7 Lúcia Helena Costigan, Through Cracks in the Wall: Modern Inquisitions and New Christian Letrados in the Iberian Atlantic World (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 130. 8 Julián B. Ruiz Rivera, “Municipio, puerto y provincia (1600-1650),” in Julián B. Ruiz Rivera, Cartagena de Indias y su provincia: Una mirada a los siglos XVII y XVIII (Bogota: El Áncora Editores, 2005), 211. 9 Fernando Serrano Mangas, La encrucijada portuguesa: Esplendor y quiebra de la unión ibérica en las Indias de Castilla (1600-1668) (Badajoz: Excelentísima Diputación Provincial de Badajoz, 1994), 76.

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circumspection, not hysteria or panic. Unfortunately, only a couple of historians in recent years have recognized this. Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano claims that while the Dutch threat caused

“wide spread [sic] psychosis” in Lima, the inquisitors in Cartagena “acted with moderation, despite the rumors that the Portuguese were conspiring with the Dutch.”10 Following the arguments first put forward by Ricardo Escobar Quevedo, Pulido Serrano suggests that this was due to “shared financial interests” between the Portuguese and the inquisitors.11 While this was certainly an important consideration for the inquisitors, this chapter argues that an additional factor to this peculiar outcome was the mediocre quality of testimony regarding the Cofradía de

Holanda. When the main witnesses to the Cofradía proved unable or unwilling to provide more detailed information, the inquisitors became more skeptical. For those Portuguese accused of participating in the Cofradía, issues of Dutch collusion played a very minor role, only meriting a brief mention on a couple of occasions during their trials. The inquisitors did not make the

Cofradía de Holanda a central issue, likely because they themselves were not certain if the allegations had any merit to them. As seen in the previous chapters, Spanish officials, including inquisitors, refused to succumb either to panic or to stereotypes about the Portuguese. For their part, the inquisitors did not view all Portuguese as traitors to the Crown, since at no point were any Portuguese questioned about the Cofradía unless they had been previously accused of participating in the group’s activities.

10 Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano, “Converso Complicities in an Atlantic Monarchy: Political and Social Conflicts behind the Inquisitorial Persecutions,” in The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond, Volume Three: Displaced Persons, ed. Kevin Ingram and Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 120-24. 11 Ibid., 123; cf. Ricardo Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes en América española (Siglos XVI- XVII) (Bogota: Editorial Universidad del Rosario, 2008), 165-68.

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The Cofradía de Holanda was uncovered as part of a larger “complicidad” involving a group of Portuguese who were suspected of following the rites and ceremonies of the Law of

Moses together. Since this was deemed a “crime”—the “delito del judaísmo”—the communal nature of these actions made each of the accused a “cómplice,” and the entire enterprise became a “complicidad.” Although best known by historians today as a term referring to suspected gatherings of suspected crypto-Jews, the term “complicidad” was used in other contexts, especially regarding groups of witches who practiced their diabolical magic in secret.12 Indeed, just a few years before the complicidad de judíos was ostensibly uncovered, the Cartagena

Inquisition prosecuted a multitude of individuals, mostly of African descent, as part of a so- called “complicidad de brujos.” In their correspondence, the inquisitors linked these two complicidades together as evidence of the zealous activity of the tribunal, as well as grounds for continued support (financial and otherwise) from the Suprema.13 Although the term

“complicidad” was used by the inquisitors to refer to those who were complicit in the “crime” of

Judaism, the discovery of the supposed Cofradía de Holanda added an additional dimension to this phenomenon, as multiple Portuguese faced accusations of being further complicit in the political crime of treason by allying themselves with the Dutch rebels. Thus, one can legitimately speak of multiple “complicities” within the “complicidad,” even though the latter term was only used to refer to religious perfidies, not political ones. Nevertheless, as will be seen, the line separating the religious and the political was often quite vague and hard to draw.

12 For more on the meaning of the term “complicidad,” see: Ana E. Schaposchnik, The Lima Inquisition: The Plight of the Crypto-Jews in Seventeenth-Century Peru (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 22; Vincent Parello, “Inquisition and Crypto-Judaism: The ‘Complicity’ of the Mora Family of Quintanar de la Orden (1588-1592),” in The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond, Volume One: Departures and Change, ed. Kevin Ingram (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 187-88. 13 AHN, Inq., L.1012, f. 77r.

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Unfortunately, the complicidad in Cartagena has sometimes been rather neglected, even by prolific scholars of the Inquisition in Spanish America. For instance, Medina only gives a scant seven pages to the events of the late 1630s in his book on the Cartagena tribunal, in contrast to his treatment of the Lima complicidad, which ran to well over a hundred pages in his two-volume work on the Lima Inquisition.14 In his 1971 article on the “Great Complicity in

Peru,” Seymour Liebman argues that in Lima, there existed a “conspiracy to make Peru free of

Spanish hegemony,” specifically by means of a Dutch conquest.15 Liebman further explains that

“the desire of the Portuguese Jews to have Holland incorporate Peru into its expanding New

World empire was prompted by Torah, trade, and tolerance—religion, commerce, and full citizenship.”16 In order to back up this claim, Liebman relies largely on testimonies about the

“cofradía de Holanda,” but he never informs the reader that these testimonies were part of the

Cartagena complicidad and those accused of being cofrades were exclusively residents of

Cartagena, not Lima. Unfortunately, nowhere in the article is the complicidad in Cartagena ever even mentioned.

Furthermore, until recently, substantive comparisons between the three Inquisition tribunals of the New World had been sorely lacking. It was only with Ricardo Escobar

Quevedo’s Inquisición y judaizantes (2008) that an extended comparative treatment was finally given. From this approach, Escobar Quevedo emphasizes the relative “moderation” of the tribunal, as evidenced in the disproportionate number of absolutions and suspensions handed down in Cartagena compared to Lima and Mexico City. Out of twenty-two cases in Cartagena,

14 José Toríbio Medina, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicón de Cartagena de Indias (Santiago: Imprenta Elzeviriana, 1899), 221-27; idem., Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de Lima (1569-1820) 2 vols. (Santiago: Imprenta Gutenberg, 1887), II.47-164. 15 Seymour B. Liebman, “The Great Conspiracy in Peru,” The Americas 28 (1971): 186. 16 Ibid., 185.

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eleven ended in suspensions or absolutions, while nine convictions were reached in 1638.17 In contrast, the complicidades in Mexico City and Lima combined to produce only twelve suspensions (out of a total of 272 trials), while not a single accused judaizante was absolved by either tribunal during this period.18 What accounts for this unusual percentage of cases that ended in favor of the defendant? The inquisitorial records provide a dual answer: the lack of sufficient witness testimony, and the ability of multiple defendants to withstand the multiple rounds of inquisitorial torture without confessing. In order for a case to proceed, two prosecution witnesses were needed, and in multiple cases, the inquisitors proved unable to reach even this low threshold. As seen in Chapter 4, the almost complete lack of local support in the inquisitorial efforts to investigate possible cases of crypto-Judaism was always the Achilles’ heel of the

Cartagena tribunal. After so many years, the inquisitors finally had the wealthy Portuguese merchants within their grasp. Yet, so many of them were to slip through the fingers of the Holy

Office. Never again were the inquisitors in Cartagena to receive such a lucrative opportunity.

Some historians have claimed that the Inquisition was a “well-oiled machine” that crushed heretics and religious deviants, but in the case of the Cartagena tribunal, this was plainly not the case.19 To borrow the machinery metaphor, it could be said that the “oil” that made the

17 Two cases were not concluded by the 1638 auto de fe. One ended in a suspension (Fernán López de Acosta), while the other trial concluded over a decade later with a sentence of relaxation en estatua, because the defendant (Manuel Álvarez Prieto) was no longer alive. 18 The statistics for the Mexico City and Lima complicidades were compiled from Ricardo Escobar Quevedo’s comprehensive table of all judaizante cases in colonial Spanish America. Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes, 365-403. For Cartagena, the data was drawn from the relevant relaciones. Anna María Splendiani, et al., eds., Cincuenta años de Inquisición en el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias, 1610-1660. 4 vols. (Bogota: Centro Editorial Javeriano, 1997), III.43-85 19 Regarding the tribunals in Iberia, see: François Soyer, “‘It is not possible to be both a Jew and Christian’: Converso Religious Identity and the Inquisitorial Trial of Custodio Nunes (1604-5).” Mediterranean Historical Review 26 (2011): 83; James W. Nelson Novoa, Being the Nação in the Eternal City: New Christian Lives in Sixteenth-Century Rome (Peterborough: Baywolf Press, 2014), 35. Similarly, Jonathan Israel has written that the Inquisition in the New World was “a ruthless and brutal organisation.” Jonathan Israel, “Olivares and the Government of the Spanish Indies, 1621-1643,” in

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machine work efficiently was the cooperation and assistance of the local population—both in serving in various inquisitorial posts and in denouncing their neighbors for crimes against the faith. Yet, since the tribunal never enjoyed much assistance from Cartagena’s vecinos, the machinery of the Holy Office labored only with great difficulty and without much to show from its efforts. Indeed, the complicidad de judíos only occurred because of an infusion of “oil” from

Lima, but even here, the results were rather lackluster when compared to the complicidades of

Lima and Mexico City.

All of the foregoing demands a re-evaluation of the perennial charge that the inquisitors were greedy bureaucrats, who were first and foremost after the riches of their unfortunate victims. Given that a number of wealthy defendants were released due to a procedural technicality—one that could have easily been disregarded—it seems that greed was not the foremost motivation for the inquisitors. For example, in what turned out to be the most controversial trial, the inquisitors actually gave Luis Gómez Barreto, the city’s depositario general and one of the wealthiest men in all of Cartagena, a full absolution. It was later discovered by officials in Spain that Gómez Barreto had a number of friends within the ranks of the local tribunal, and many of the normal procedures, such as checking for circumcision, were blatantly disregarded during his trial. In this instance, it appears that monetary gain was outweighed by other considerations. Of course, inquisitors were quite pleased to receive large confiscations from their wealthy victims; however, this was neither the cause of the complicidad, nor was it a singular overriding consideration. Some wealthy men like Gómez Barreto were absolved, while some penurious defendants, such as Juan de Campo, who was unable even to

Jonathan Israel, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy, and the Jews, 1585-1713 (London: Hambledon Press, 1990), 278.

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pay for his own food while imprisoned, were found guilty and condemned to lifelong exile from the Indies. Judging collectively from all the cases, there is no straightforward correlation to be found between the sentences rendered by the inquisitors and the wealth of the defendant.

A “Complicity of Jews” in Cartagena

The first denunciation in what would become the “complicidad de judíos” in Cartagena was also the only denunciation to come from a non-Portuguese resident of the city. In April

1634, Diego López, on trial himself for being a brujo, revealed some information that he knew the inquisitors would be interested in hearing. López had been friends with the Portuguese surgeon, Blas de Paz Pinto, and at the continued insistence of his paramour, Rufina, López began snooping around Paz Pinto’s house when other Portuguese were gathered there. Although López admitted that he did not know most of the Portuguese who met inside the house, nor could he give much detail as to what actually transpired inside, he was confident that these gatherings were religious in nature: the house was a “synagogue,” he claimed, and Paz Pinto was the

“rabbi.” He testified that he had once seen Juan Rodríguez Mesa carry a book inside entitled La

Recopilación de la Biblia, and that the Portuguese suspiciously pulled all the curtains to keep out any prying eyes.20

It is unknown whether anything would have come from López’s testimony on its own.

The inquisitors seemed to have their doubts about López’s veracity, and it would not have been unusual for the inquisitors simply to shelve the testimony for a more favorable occasion.21 As it happened, the opportune moment arrived in very short order. In the final months of 1635,

20 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 7, ff. 12r-24r. 21 As is what happened with Manuel Bautista Pérez, the leader of the Portuguese merchant community in Lima. One witness even testified before the inquisitors that he believed that “Your Highness [Inquisitor Mañozca] did not want to catch him [Pérez], so as to keep him for a better occasion.” Quoted in Schaposchnik, The Lima Inquisition, 112.

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startling new denunciations began to arrive from Lima, where the inquisitors of that city had discovered their own “complicidad” of Jews. From the collected denunciations that had arrived from Lima, the Cartagena inquisitors had the names of five accused judaizantes: Juan Rodriguez

Mesa, Manuel López de Noroña, Antonio Rodríguez Ferrerín, Francisco Rodríguez Carnero, and

Francisco de Ortega. The inquisitors moved quickly to make their arrests. Rodríguez Mesa was the first to be arrested on 15 March 1636. Four more Portuguese were apprehended the following month, and by mid-August, a total of twenty-two suspected judaizers had been detained by the

Holy Office.22 While the denunciations from Lima constituted an important starting point, they were not the principal catalyst. Instead, what really transformed the initial arrests of the mid-

1630s into a full-fledged “complicidad” was the fact that most of those Portuguese who were initially arrested in Cartagena quickly denounced significant numbers of other Portuguese in the city. For example, Rodríguez Mesa became an abundant source of information, naming over thirty people, including his own mother, as accomplices in the “delito de judaísmo.”23 Similarly,

Francisco Piñero, who was arrested just a few weeks after Rodríguez Mesa, denounced over twenty-five people as judaizers.24 While some of these accusations were made against individuals in far-off places, such as Angola or Portugal, the majority were directed against fellow vecinos of Cartagena. All of this provides a clear contrast to the mid-1620s, when a handful of Portuguese from the interior of New Granada were arrested for judaizing (Chapter 4); yet, by the end of their trials, they had revealed very little information about other potential judaizers in the region, leaving the inquisitors with only a small number of judaizante cases.

22 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.43-85. 23 Ibid., III.43-49. 24 Ibid., III.53-55.

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Of the twenty-two men eventually arrested as part of Cartagena’s complicidad, there was wide diversity in terms of blood purity status (limpieza de sangre).25 Eight of the twenty-two confessed to being New Christians without any additional explanation.26 A ninth defendant,

García Serrano, admitted that he was “a descendant of Hebrews,” but that he knew of no one who had been “arrested, penanced, reconciled, or condemned by the Holy Office.”27 The tenth and final defendant who confessed to being a New Christian gave an even more interesting gloss.

Fernán López de Acosta, who was the Cartagena factor for the asentista Manuel Rodríguez

Lamego, also confessed that he had Jewish ancestors, but he insisted that these ancestors

“voluntarily converted in Portugal, and thus, were publicly reputed as Old Christians.”28 Two of

López de Acosta’s sons were also arrested as part of the complicidad, and both declared that they did not know whether they were Old or New Christians. However, one of the sons, Manuel de

Acosta, similarly maintained that their family held a reputation of being of Old Christian stock.29

If ten defendants confessed (in one way or another) to being New Christians, six others declared to be Old Christians on all sides. In five of these six cases, the Inquisition did not assert anything contradicting these claims in the trial summaries; however, in one case (Francisco de

Heredia), the inquisitors labeled him a “descendiente de hebreos.”30 It is unknown why, in this

25 Of the five Portuguese arrested between 1638 and 1642, marking the second phase of the complicidad, three were New Christians (or mostly New Christian), and one claimed to be Old Christian (but judging from the circumstantial evidence, was likely a New Christian). The limpieza of the fifth man was not given. Ibid., III. 87-116. 26 Ibid., III.43-85. 27 “declaró ser descendiente de hebreos, pero que no sabía ninguno de los susodichos hubiese sido preso, penitenciado, reconciliado, ni condenado por el Santo Oficio de la Inquisición.” Ibid., III.74. 28 “declaró ser descendiente de hebreos, pero de los que voluntariamente se convirtieron en Portugal, por lo cual habían estado en opinión de cristianos viejos.” Ibid., II.453. 29 Ibid., II.446-47. 30 For Heredia’s claim to be an Old Christian, see: Ibid., III.60; and for the inquisitors’ assessment: Ibid., III.40.

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particular case, the inquisitors explicitly disbelieved the defendant’s testimony. Heredia was convicted of being a judaizer, but another self-proclaimed Old Christian (Manuel de Fonseca

Enríquez) was convicted as well. Yet, in the latter case, the inquisitors did not put forward an opinion on the limpieza question in the trial summary.31

Regarding the six remaining cases: one defendant, Luis Gómez Barreto confessed that he was half-New Christian (on his mother’s side). Four defendants claimed they did not know their limpieza. Two of these, as mentioned previously, were the sons of Fernán López de Acosta, while the other two were Manuel López de Noroña and Blas de Paz Pinto. Regarding these latter two men, there was again a disparity in the inquisitors’ response. They declared Paz Pinto to be a

New Christian, while they withheld judgment on López de Noroña’s genealogy.32 From the trial summaries alone, it is impossible to explain the reasons for this difference. (The complete trial records of both men have been lost.) Finally, in one case (Francisco Rodríguez Carnero), the trial summary gives no indication at all whether the defendant was an Old or New Christian.

From this overview, it is clear that it would be a mistake to simply declare that

Cartagena’s complicidad consisted of Portuguese New Christians. Neither can it be affirmed that only New Christians were punished. Of those nine defendants who were found guilty of judaizing and punished in the 1638 auto de fe, six admitted to being New Christians, two confessed that they were Old Christians, and one claimed to not know.33 Furthermore, in

Cartagena, admitting to being a New Christian did not automatically condemn a person. In three

(out of ten) cases, those who admitted openly to being New Christians were eventually released

31 Ibid., III.41, 62-64. 32 For Paz Pinto: Ibid., III.39; and for López de Noroña: Ibid., II. 445-46. 33 As mentioned above, the inquisitors believed that two of these latter three men were, in fact, New Christians.

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and had their goods returned to them. Being of New Christian ancestry likely increased the inquisitors’ suspicions, but it was hardly an automatic sentence of guilt. Finally, it must be underscored how the entire question of limpieza was fundamentally a question of reputation and public perception. It was not for nothing that both Fernán López de Acosta and his son, Manuel, both declared that they were reputed to be Old Christians. Similarly, Francisco de Silva Castillo not only declared himself to be an Old Christian, but also emphasized that he enjoyed “an opinion and reputation as such in both Seville and Castillo Blanco [in Portugal].”34 As was argued in Chapter 4, the inquisitors did not automatically equate Portuguese nationality with

Jewish ancestry. Nowhere did they claim that all the Portuguese in Cartagena were Jews, nor would such a stance make sense, given their inclusion of Portuguese individuals within the ranks of the inquisitorial bureaucracy.

Whether of New Christian ancestry or not, those Portuguese arrested as part of Cartagena complicidad were accused of fairly standard “Jewish” beliefs and practices, including fasting regularly, washing bedsheets and lighting candles for the Sabbath, hoping for the coming of the future Messiah, refusal to eat pork and other unclean foods, hostility towards Catholic veneration of the saints and adoration of the Eucharist, denial of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, and so forth. As with other tribunals of the Holy Office, the Cartagena Inquisition also heard accusations of a more bizarre variety. For example, it was claimed by López that Blas de Paz

Pinto menstruated like a woman—a long-standing anti-Jewish trope that gained increased prominence in Iberia during the seventeenth century.35 Another curious instance was related by

34 “dijo que era cristiano viejo, descendiente de tales y que en tal opinión y reputación habían estado en Sevilla y en Castillo Blanco, de donde eran naturales sus padres, en el Reino de Portugal.” Ibid., III.74. 35 Ibid., III.55. According to Jonathan Schorsch, the theory of Jewish male menstruation went back at least to the thirteenth century. Jonathan Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians, and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), I.133-34. See also: Willis Johnson, “The Myth of Jewish Male Menses,” Journal of Medieval History 24 (1998): 273-

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Juan Rodríguez Mesa, who confessed that he “had passed the edge of the knife against the thumbnail of his left hand five or six times, or more, according to the rite and ceremony of the said Law of Moses.”36 All the crypto-Jewish doctrines and traditions, from the conventional to the eccentric, have been analyzed extensively by scholars, whether pertaining to the Portuguese in Cartagena or in Mexico City and Lima.37 However, with few exceptions, most scholars have ignored the striking dissimilarities between the complicidad in Cartagena and its counterparts in the viceregal capitals.

The complicidades in Lima and Mexico City were both termed “complicidades grandes,” due to the large number of those arrested and punished. Such an appellation cannot be given to the set of trials carried out by the Cartagena tribunal in the late 1630s. Of course, as the

Portuguese population in Cartagena was smaller than in the viceregal capitals, one would not expect Cartagena’s complicidad to rival those of the viceregal capitals in terms of sheer numbers.

Nevertheless, at a time when Cartagena’s Portuguese population numbered in the hundreds—the majority likely being of Jewish descent—a total of nine convictions among only twenty-two arrests must have been a rather disappointing result for the inquisitors. Yet, what is still more

95; and John L. Beusterien, “Jewish Male Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century Spain,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73 (1999): 447-56. 36 “había pasado el filo del cuchillo otras cinco o seis, o más, sobre la uña del dedo pulgar de la mano izquierda, por rito y ceremonia de la dicha ley de Moisés.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.45. Although a few examples are known where crypto-Jews ensured that a blade was free from any nicks, so that the knife could be used for kosher slaughtering, what is strange about the case of Rodríguez Mesa is that the trial summary seems to imply that the knife was passed against the nail as an end in itself. Furthermore, the detail about which specific nail was (always?) used by Rodríguez Mesa appears to indicate that this ritual became invested with religious meaning apart from its original purpose. Regarding kosher butchering among crypto-Jews, see: David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 542-46. 37 The most exhaustive discussion can be found in Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit. See also, the lengthy discussions in: Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes, 285-327; and María Cristina Navarrete Peláez, La diáspora judeoconversa en Colombia, siglos XVI y XVII: Incertidumbres de su arribo, establecimiento y persecución (Cali: Universidad del Valle, 2010), 245-88.

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unusual about Cartagena’s complicidad was the proportion of Portuguese (50%) who were released without any punishment whatsoever.38

These outcomes were the result of circumstances largely outside of the control of the inquisitors. This can be evidenced clearly in the case of Antonio Rodríguez Ferrerín. After receiving the testimonies from Lima, the inquisitors in Cartagena believed that Rodríguez

Ferrerín would be a suspect of the utmost importance. In an October 1635 letter to the Suprema, the inquisitors were quite honest about their expectations: “We presume that in this city, there is a synagogue of Jews, … and with the arrival of the said Antonio Rodríguez Ferrerín, the truth will come to be confirmed and clarified, because he is an intimate friend of all those presumed to be Jews with whom he commonly dealt with much familiarity.”39 It seems that if there was anyone that the inquisitors thought would be eventually found guilty of judaizing, it would be

Rodríguez Ferrerín. However, as things would turn out, this accused Portuguese not only steadfastly denied all the charges, even under torture, but he also accurately named his accusers, declaring them to be his enemies, thus invalidating their testimonies against him. With this turn of events, the case against Rodríguez Ferrerín collapsed, and the inquisitors voted to absolve the

38 Once again, this is in sharp contrast to the complicidades in Mexico City and Lima. Out of the 194 judaizing cases that comprised the Mexico City complicidad, the majority (102) were reconciled, while a small number (12) were given the lighter sentence of abjuration. Only two defendants escaped with a suspension, and none were absolved. The remaining 78 defendants were sentenced to death (“relaxation to the secular arm”), although in 65 cases, the relaxation was carried out en estatua, due either to the death of the defendant or to their physical absence. However, in thirteen cases, the death penalty was carried out en persona. For the Lima complicidad, the majority of cases (46/78) also ended in reconciliation. Ten defendants abjured, while another ten enjoyed the good fortune of having their case suspended. Once again, no accused judaizante was acquitted. In twelve cases, the death penalty was carried out. Unlike in Mexico City, none of these twelve cases were en estatua. Escobar Quevedo, Inquisición y judaizantes, 365-403. 39 “Presumimos que hay en esta ciudad sinagoga de judíos … y con la venida de la persona del dicho Antonio Rodríguez Ferrerín se vendrá a confirmar y aclarar la verdad porque este es íntimo amigo de todos los que se presume son judíos con quienes de ordinario se trataba con mucha familiaridad.” AHN, Inq., L.1012, ff. 11v-12r.

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defendant, although this was later changed to a suspension.40 The trial of Rodríguez Ferrerín encapsulates well the disappointing outcome (from the inquisitors’ perspective) of Cartagena’s

“complicidad,” when compared to the original outsized expectations of “a larger conspiracy of

Jews and of greater importance than that of the Inquisition of Peru.”41 Although the Cartagena

Holy Office did pocket a great deal more money than it had hitherto obtained from previous trials, it was merely a fraction of what was obtained by the Inquisition tribunals in Lima and

Mexico City from their complicidades grandes.

These two elements present in Rodríguez Ferrerín’s case—the successful denunciation of accusers and the endurance of torture without confessing—proved to be important means by which other Portuguese escaped with comparatively light punishments, if not suspensions or even acquittals. For example, Francisco Rodríguez Carnero was denounced by two other

Portuguese, one from Lima (Juan de Acevedo) and the other from Cartagena (Francisco

Rodríguez de Solís). Arrested in August, he was accused of having taught the Law of Moses to others in Angola, before coming to Spanish America and continuing to judaize. Through his lawyer, Rodríguez Carnero mounted an effective defense, presenting an interrogatorio that named his two accusers as personal enemies.42 Unfortunately, since Rodríguez Carnero’s proceso de fe no longer exists, it is impossible to know exactly what specific accusations were laid out in this set of questions for witnesses. Typically, these sorts of questionnaires gave lengthy questions in which the desired answer was contained within the question itself.

40 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.80-81. 41 “mayor complicidad de judíos y de mayor importancia que que [sic] la de la Inquisición del Perú.” AHN, Inq., L.1012, f. 11v. 42 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.81-82.

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Nevertheless, this interrogatorio proved convincing to the inquisitors, who handed down a sentence of absolution due to the “enmity of the [prosecution] witnesses.”43

Taking the complicidad as a whole, it is clear that withstanding torture was a much more common method of demonstrating one’s innocence and sometimes even meriting an acquittal. In a striking contrast to their counterparts in Lima, the inquisitors in Cartagena released a significant number of accused judaizers who managed to endure several “vueltas de mancuerda” without confessing to any of the charges.44 As has been discussed, Rodríguez Ferrerín was one such example. Another was Manuel de Acosta, who was accused of judaizing by three different

Portuguese from Cartagena. Obstinately denying all the charges, Acosta was put to the “rigorous question of torment,” which the inquisitors hoped would lead to a confession. However, the only thing that Acosta confessed during his long ordeal was that he “was a Catholic Christian and that he would die in the faith of Our Redeemer Jesus Christ.”45 Even after six turns on the rack,

Acosta insisted that he had always been faithful to the Church. With no confession forthcoming, the case against Acosta was suspended, an outcome that must have been especially bitter for the inquisitors, given that the defendant was the son of the factor Fernando López de Acosta, one of the wealthiest men in Cartagena.46 As with the other cases, the sentence given to López de

43 “enemiga de los testigos.” Ibid., III.82. 44 According to Irene Silverblatt, during the complicidad grande in Lima, refusing to confess any wrongdoing under torture—“conquering torture,” to use the inquisitorial parlance—did not lead to any suspended sentences or absolutions. However, in 1624, the Lima tribunal had given suspended sentences to two suspected judaizers, who steadfastly maintained their innocence under torture. One of these men was Manuel Bautista Pérez, the famous captain and leader of the Portuguese in Lima, who was executed in 1639 for judaizing. Irene Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 248 n.49. 45 “fuese puesto a rigurosa cuestión de tormento y que se le diesen todas las vueltas que el derecho disponía, respondió que era católico cristiano y que moriría por la fe de Nuestro Redentor Jesucristo.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, II.448. 46 Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos [1977], 2nd ed. (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014), 82, 280.

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Acosta owed more to circumstances outside of the inquisitors’ control than with any preconceived motives on the inquisitors’ part. Although López de Acosta was both a converso and a man of conspicuous wealth, neither variable decided his fate before the Holy Office.

It would be wrong, however, to assume from these examples that the torture meted out by the Cartagena Holy Office was of a milder variety than other tribunals. This was certainly not the case. Although the Inquisition always strove to avoid any “effusion of blood” during these torture sessions, serious, sometimes fatal, injuries did occur.47 While some Portuguese managed to endure the torture without injury, others were not so fortunate. Luis Gómez Barreto, the depositario general of the city, suffered a broken arm from being stretched on the rack.48 Manuel

Álvarez Prieto suffered two broken arms and died not long after being tortured.49 Similarly, as a result of inquisitorial torture, Blas de Paz Pinto suffered a broken arm and a rapid decline in his health. He, too, would die in prison, unable even to open his mouth to receive the viaticum from

St. Pedro Claver.50 It is clear, therefore, that we cannot attribute the successful endurance of torture on the part of some Portuguese to any degree of mildness on the part of the Cartagena tribunal.

One possible explanation for why there were multiple instances of broken bones and other injuries was that there was no competent official to administer the torture, forcing the

47 This idea was part of a lengthy tradition. In his Directorium inquisitorum (1376), Nicholas Eymerich wrote that inquisitorial torture should proceed “without [any] effusion of blood.” Even earlier, in 1252, Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture by the Inquisition, provided that it did not involve any bloodshed, mutilation, or death. Karen Sullivan, The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 188; Bernard Hamilton, “The Albigensian Crusade and Heresy,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5: c. 1198-c. 1300, ed. David Abulafia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 173. Cf. Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 190. 48 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.78. 49 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15. 50 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.57-59.

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inquisitors to resort to dubious ad hoc substitutes. One of these interim torturers was the lieutenant governor of the city, Francisco de Llanos Valdés, who had been himself arrested by the Inquisition, but soon managed to befriend his fellow Viscayan, Inquisitor Martín de Cortázar y Velásquez, who ordered the prisoner to be transferred to house arrest. Far from being confined to his home, Llanos Valdés was not only back on the streets of Cartagena, but Cortázar even began to employ his countryman as the tribunal’s designated torturer.51 As Cortázar himself explained to the Suprema in 1639: “As the city did not have a licensed and skilled torturer, leaving it to the blacks to administer the tortures, the said lieutenant governor [Francisco de

Llanos Valdés], as a former judge, [was selected] to assist the tribunal in giving some tortures,

[as he knew] the form in which the defendants were to be tied and given the turns [on the rack].”52 Apart from the Portuguese, there were hardly any cases in the preceding few years that included torture, so it is quite likely that the ten Portuguese who suffered torture as part of their trials did so at the hands of Llanos Valdés.53 Despite Cortázar’s assurances to the contrary, there is much room for skepticism as to the lieutenant governor’s skill at torturing inquisitorial prisoners correctly.54 Five men survived torture without confessing a thing, while two other men confessed under torture. The remaining three suffered significant injuries, including broken

51 Medina, Historia del Tribunal … de Cartagena de Indias, 207-08; Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1908), 478. 52 “para que asistiese al dar al dar [sic] algunos tormentos el tribunal, a título de que la ciudad no tenía verdugo diestro y que dijese a los negros que los daban, el dicho teniente, como juez antiguo, la forma en que habían de ligar a los reos y dar las vueltas.” AHN, Inq., L.1012, f. 149v. 53 Torture was ordered against an eleventh Portuguese defendant, Francisco Rodríguez de Solís, but he confessed shortly before it was carried out. Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.66. 54 As Ana Schaposchnik notes, inquisitorial guidelines sought to instruct officials how to achieve a “careful calibration of the pain that could be inflicted—not too little, but not too much,” in order best “to achieve the goal: the prisoner’s confession.” No doubt this heinous practice required much experience to perfect, and it is quite likely that Llanos Valdés lacked such experience and skill in striking this proper “calibration.” Schaposchnik, The Lima Inquisition, 65.

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limbs. The first of these men was Blas de Paz Pinto, who confessed under torture, suffering a broken arm and other injuries in the process. Soon thereafter, he died in prison.55 The second of these cases was Luis Gómez Barreto, who also suffered a broken arm, but did not confess.56 He was eventually given a full absolution. Lastly, Manuel Álvarez Prieto suffered two broken arms, and it was even noted in his trial record that both arms were “badly damaged.”57 Like Paz Pinto,

Álvarez Prieto would also die in prison. Such a high rate of broken arms and other serious injuries seems to indicate a great deal of inexperience on the part of the torturer. By the same token, one may wonder whether Llanos Valdés’s incompetence also led to the large percentage of defendants (50%) who were able to survive torture without confessing anything. If the inquisitors had someone more experienced in administering torture than the lieutenant governor of the city, it is quite likely that the numbers of convicted judaizers during this complicidad would have been higher.

The most significant impediment that the inquisitors faced, however, in prosecuting this

“complicidad of Jews” was the simple lack of witnesses who were willing to denounce the

Portuguese for their supposed crimes. According to inquisitorial regulations, denunciations from at least two witnesses were needed before a trial could proceed.58 While defendants were

55 Ibid., III.57-59. Interestingly, the inquisitors note that Paz Pinto was buried in the cathedral of the city, a perhaps surprising final resting place for a (posthumously) convicted judaizer. From the trial summary, it is clear that every effort was taken to ensure that Paz Pinto received last rites, including the sacraments of Extreme Unction and the Eucharist. However, due to his poor condition, Paz Pinto could not open his mouth to receive the Eucharist, so only the oil of Extreme Unction was given. All in all, it seems that Paz Pinto had convinced the inquisitors of the sincerity of his contrition, and therefore, they treated the dying Portuguese as a reconciled Christian, up to and including a Christian burial in the cathedral. 56 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.78. 57 “muy maltratados.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 108v. 58 Schaposchnik, The Lima Inquisition, 58. Cf. Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition in Spain, 4 vols. (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1922): II.561-62. This was also the rule for the Roman Inquisition: Thomas F. Mayer, The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 214.

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sometimes arrested on the basis of only a single testimony, the inquisitors could not proceed unless more evidence was brought to them. At no point did they seek to conduct independent investigations on their own accord. At the extreme end, three cases ended in suspensions, due to a lack of a second witness. All three men—Francisco de Silva Castillo, García Serrano, and

Melchor Báez Méndez—were arrested in late July, over four months since the first arrests in

Cartagena were made. In each case, by the time of the defendants’ first audiences, it was clear that no additional testimonies were likely to be forthcoming. The inquisitors were left with little choice but to suspend the cases and freely return the confiscated goods back to their owners.59

Notably, in all three of these cases, the inquisitors did not use torture as a means of obtaining information. While torture could be used to test whether a defendant was telling the (whole) truth once a minimum of two witnesses had come forward, it appears that the inquisitors in Cartagena did not utilize such methods to make up for a missing second witness.

What is perhaps most striking is how in the aftermath of the initial arrests in March and

April 1636—news of which undoubtedly spread throughout the city in very short order—no one in Cartagena (with the exception of a few low-ranking officials of the tribunal) added their testimonies to the inquisitorial record. In sharp contrast to this situation, the Portuguese defendants assembled a whole host of defense witnesses to testify to the fidelity of the accused, as well as to the enmity that existed between the defendants and their accusers. For instance, to help bolster his defense, Luis Fernández Suárez gathered over thirty witnesses, many of whom were clerics who could testify to the Catholic piety and devotion of the Portuguese merchant. To take one example of many, Juan Melgarejo, a clerigo presbítero, declared that “it was very common for [Fernández Suárez] to hear Mass at the Hospital of San Juan de Dios. … Fernández

59 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.74-75.

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Suárez assisted at Mass frequently with much devotion and reverence.”60 Another priest, Nicolás

González, told a story about after discovering that there was little wax left in the candles used to illuminate the “santíssimo sacramento,” he went to Fernández Suárez, who promptly sent a dozen candles to help facilitate the necessary worship of this sacrament.61

This final anecdote is especially interesting, given the fact that anti-Catholic sentiments on the part of crypto-Jews were frequently manifested in verbal or physical attacks on the

Eucharist. Indeed, Juan Rodríguez Mesa, one of Cartagena’s wealthiest merchants, confessed that he had committed various “outrages” against the Blessed Sacrament (as well as against multiple images of the saints).62 It is quite likely that González knew about these common accusations against suspected crypto-Jews, and so he chose to emphasize Fernández Suárez’s devotion to the Eucharist specifically. If this is so, it underscores that at least some of these defense witnesses were not merely regurgitating the questions asked of them, but were actively trying to support their friends by constructing a detailed picture of the Catholic piety of the accused.63 Again, it is worth underscoring that these strategies of assisting the Portuguese occurred within a larger geo-political context of increasing hostility and distrust between Spain and Portugal, exacerbated greatly by Dutch attacks and Jewish (or converso) collusion. Yet, for many Spaniards in Cartagena, these broader concerns did not stop them from testifying to the

60 “muy de ordinario a oír misa al hospital de San Juan de Dios,” “le ayudaba a decirla muchas veces le dicho Luis Fernández Suárez con mucha devoción y reverencia.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 11, f. 85r. 61 Ibid., f. 80v. 62 “confesaba que había tenido consentimiento en las dichas tentaciones de ultrajar y deshacer entre las manos el Santísimo Sacramento y de derribar las dichas cruces e imágenes de Jesucristo y de Nuestra Señora y de otros santos.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.44. 63 Scholars have long recognized the strategic nature of inquisitorial testimony, especially as it derived from the defendants themselves. However, witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense undoubtedly engaged in similar sorts of strategizing. On questions of autobiographical presentation before the Inquisition, see: Richard L. Kagan and Abigail Dyer, eds., Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics [2004], 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

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orthodoxy and loyalty of their Portuguese neighbors and friends, and what is more, these anxieties failed to stimulate cooperation with the Inquisition against the Portuguese merchants, even when accused of the most serious crimes.

Taken as a whole, the complicidad in Cartagena serves as a reminder that the Inquisition did not always succeed with ruthless efficiency, nor could it operate in a wholly autonomous way, dictating its agenda on a helpless population. The actions (or inactions) of the defendants themselves, as well as those of the larger population in Cartagena, helped to dictate a more moderate outcome of Cartagena’s complicidad compared to those in Mexico City and Lima.

Even the actions of the inquisitors themselves contributed to this atypical result, especially the decision to respect the inquisitorial regulations regarding the need for a second witness before proceeding with the trial. Finally, it is also notable that very little correlation appears between a defendant’s blood purity status and the eventual outcome of his trial. Being a converso did not guarantee a guilty verdict, and as shall be seen in the next section, neither did accusations of political treason.

The Cofradía de Holanda

Without question, the most peculiar part of the complicidad de judíos in Cartagena was the supposed existence of an enigmatic organization known as the Cofradía de Holanda. For the better part of a century, the question of what this association exactly was has bedeviled historians. Was it simply the Dutch West India Company under a different name? Was it a separate, unconnected organization? What kinds of ties did this group have to Jewish communities in Holland (and perhaps the Holy Land), as well as to the Dutch armadas that menaced Spanish interests across the globe? Before examining the primary source documentation that has survived, it is worth examining the various scholarly theories that have been put forward about this puzzling entity. The first scholar to analyze the Cofradía de Holanda

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in detail was Seymour Liebman, who gives his most detailed description of the group in his book, New World Jewry, 1493-1825: Requiem for the Forgotten (1982):

Under torture, [Manuel Álvarez Prieto]…testified about the Cofradia de los Judios de Holanda, the ‘Brotherhood of the Jews of Holland,’ which operated via cells. There were usually three to five men in each cell, one serving as the treasurer. The treasurer was the only one who knew their superior. Funds were collected to aid the Dutch in their fight against the Spanish Catholic kings and to aid the Jewish communities in the Holy Land. The funds that were raised from the Jews in the region of the cell were transmitted to the Jewish community in Venice, which sent the proceeds to the Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. Part of the funds were retained in Venice to augment the money required to ransom Jews captured by the Barbary pirates. Funds came from many groups in Peru, New Granada, and other parts of South America. Members of the Cofradia agreed that, if apprehended by the Inquisition, they would confess quickly that they were Jews, that they observed the Law of Moses, and that they wished to live and die as Jews.64

Although Liebman makes it seem like these rich details connecting the “Jews” in Spanish

America to those in Venice and the Holy Land emerged from Álvarez Prieto’s testimony, this is not the case. Liebman pieces together this imaginative picture of the Cofradía from a handful of disparate sources that were almost certainly not referring to the same thing. Liebman’s basic mistake is to confuse the “Cofradía de Holanda” and the “Compañía de Holanda,” as if they were interchangeable terms. As will be discussed later in this section, these labels were not used interchangeably in the inquisitorial sources, but applied to distinct entities.

In addition to the inquisitorial sources from the Cartagena tribunal, Liebman argues that

Simón Osorio, a Portuguese convicted as part of Lima’s complicidad, was also part of this group, since “[Osorio] sent 8,000 ducats to Brazil for ‘la Compania de los olandes [sic] contra su majestad.’”65 Liebman unconvincingly insists that this “compañía” was not the Dutch West India

64 Seymour B. Liebman, New World Jewry, 1493-1825: Requiem for the Forgotten (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982), 80-81. 65 Ibid., 93. The quoted material within this quotation is from Medina’s Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de Lima (1887).

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Company, but instead was “a separate Jewish organization.”66 However, such an argument becomes completely untenable when one analyzes the original source: Osorio’s trial summary, which was quoted in its entirety by José Toríbio Medina. According to the summary, some papers of Osorio’s had been found, in which “he had boasted that he and a brother of his invested

8,000 ducats in the compañía de los olandeses for a fleet destined for Brazil against His

Majesty.”67 From the summary alone, it is unclear when this investment was made, but given the reference to Brazil, the most plausible conclusion is that this “compañía” was the Dutch West

India Company, which waged a highly successful war against the Spanish throughout the 1620s and 1630s. Nowhere, however, does Liebman establish any connection between Osorio and the

Cofradía in Cartagena. The exact relationship between the Cofradía and the Dutch West India

Company remains muddled in Liebman’s work.

Additionally, Liebman is the only historian who has claimed that the Cofradía de

Holanda was an organization dedicated to sending money not only to Holland, but also to Jewish communities in the Holy Land. He bases this claim not on inquisitorial documentation from

Cartagena or Lima, but on a single aviso written in 1640 by the Aragonese chronicler, José

Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar, who claimed that many Portuguese had “grandes correspondencias” with synagogues in Holland and the Levant, “assisting them against Spain and Christianity with intelligence and money.”68 The idea that Portuguese conversos served as a fifth column for

66 Ibid., 93. 67 Medina, Historia del Tribunal…de Lima, II.127. 68 “muchos portugueses judaizantes…tenían grandes correspondencias con las sinagogas de Holanda y de Levante, asistiendolas contra España, y la Christianidad con avisos y dineros.” José Pellicer de Tovar, Avisos: 17 de Mayo de 1639 – 29 de Noviembre de 1644, eds. Jean-Claude Chevalier and Lucien Clare (Paris: Éditions Hispaniques, 2003), I.81-82. In his paragraph discussing these “correspondencias,” Liebman makes it appear that he is drawing from three different sources: 1) José Pellicer, 2) “an article in Seminario Erudito” from 1640, and 3) a “document translated by Lea” from Simancas. However, when all three sources are tracked down, one discovers that they are all the same 1640 aviso written by Pellicer. Liebman, New World Jewry, 94. For some context to this aviso, see: Kimberly Lynn, Between Court and

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Spain’s enemies, whether the Dutch or the Ottomans, was quite commonplace by the late 1630s.

But this source cited by Liebman adds no new details about the specific activities of the

Portuguese in Lima or Cartagena; it only repeats the same anti-Portuguese canards, only now using the New World complicidades as “proof” for these claims. Finally, Liebman states that two inquisitorial visitas from Brazil are related to the Cofradía de Holanda, but these supposed connections are never clearly articulated, much less demonstrated.69

Like Liebman, many other historians have identified the Cofradía de Holanda as being the same as the Compañía de Holanda, except that instead of interpreting this group as “a separate Jewish organization,” the much more common conclusion is that the

Cofradía/Compañía was simply the name given in inquisitorial sources for the Dutch West India

Company.70 For example, in his seminal 1985 article about the Portuguese conversos in Spanish

America, Alfonso W. Quiroz argues that “a critical political conjuncture” helped to spark the

Lima and Cartagena complicidades, specifically the “association of Portuguese New Christians with the ‘enemigo olandés’ and the ‘Cofradía de Olanda’ (Dutch West Indies Company).”71

Although this Dutch connection was important in setting off these inquisitorial crackdowns,

Quiroz notably maintains that “no conclusive proof was found to demonstrate a direct involvement of Portuguese New Christians of Peru, Mexico or Cartagena in the so called

Confessional: The Politics of Spanish Inquisitors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 219- 21. 69 Liebman, New World Jewry, 92-93. 70 Lucía García de Proodian, Los Judíos en América: Sus actividades en los Virreinatos de Nueva Castilla y Nueva Granada, S. XVII (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1966), 93; Enriqueta Vila Vilar, “Extranjeros en Cartagena (1593-1630),” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 16 (1979): 164 n.54; Daniel Mesa Bernal, “Los judíos en la época colonial,” Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades 73 (1986): 389; Fermina Álvarez Alonso, La Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias durante el siglo XVII (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1999), 117. 71 Alfonso W. Quiroz, “The Expropriation of Portuguese New Christians in Spanish America, 1635- 1649,” Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 11 (1985): 430.

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‘conspiracy’ [with the Dutch].”72 This skeptical judgment on the part of Quiroz stands in sharp contrast to the picture painted by Liebman. Nonetheless, the difficulty with Quiroz’s identification of the Cofradía de Holanda with the Dutch West India Company is that it fails to make sense of why two different terms—the “Cofradía de Holanda” and the “Compañía de

Holanda”—were used in the inquisitorial sources to refer to the same organization. Of course, one must account for scribal errors; however, as will be demonstrated below, clear patterns can be detected in the documents regarding the usage of these two terms.

Although the dominant interpretation has been to identify the Cofradía de Holanda with the Dutch West India Company, an alternative explanation was put forward by Maria da Graça

A. Mateus Ventura, who hypothesized that this cofradía could have either been part of the Dutch

West India Company (Compañía Holandesa de las Indias Occidentales) or was perhaps part of another group called the Compañía de los Judíos Portugueses.73 (Interestingly, this bears a prima facie resemblance to Liebman’s theory that the Cofradía de Holanda was “a separate

Jewish organization.”) Ventura’s sole source for this latter group is a 1635 confession given by

Esteban Ares de Fonseca to the Toledo Inquisition, which was transcribed in an appendix by

Julio Caro Baroja in his Los judíos en la España Moderna y Contemporánea (1961).74 While

Ventura notes the similarities in semantics and timeframe, no evidence is provided linking this group to the Portuguese in Cartagena.75 An additional problem is that, according to Ventura, this

72 Ibid., 430. 73 Maria da Graça A. Mateus Ventura, “Los judeoconversos portugueses en el Perú del siglo XVII: Redes de complicidad,” in Familia, Religión y Negocio: El sefardismo en las relaciones entre el mundo ibérico y los Países Bajos en la Edad Moderna, eds. Jaime Contreras, Bernardo J. García García, e Ignacio Pulido (Madrid: Fundación Carlos Amberes, 2002), 397-98. 74 Julio Caro Baroja, Los judíos en la España moderna y contemporanea, 3 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Arion, 1961), III.332-36. 75 Furthermore, beyond the single source cited by Ventura, I have not seen any other documentary evidence for the existence of a “Compañía de los Judíos Portugueses.”

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Compañía de los Judíos Portugueses was founded in 1634. However, according to the testimony of Manuel de Fonseca Enríquez, he had made financial contributions to the Cofradía de Holanda since 1632.76 Thus, if Fonseca Enríquez is to be believed, this association could not be the same as the Compañía de los Judíos Portugueses.

A deeper difficulty arises from other known testimonies given by Esteban Ares de

Fonseca, specifically a memorial written to the Suprema in 1634, in which he decried the Dutch

West India Company as “a Brazilian company and composed of pirates, [which] is governed by

Jews of Amsterdam, for all the rich ones give their money to the said company.”77 Interestingly,

Ares de Fonseca denounces some of the same individuals in both documents, such as Diego

Peixeto, Antonio Méndez Peixeto, and Francisco Serra. Given these commonalities, it is most likely that the “Compañia que los portugueses judíos de allí levantaron para ir a Pernambuco contra Su Majestad,” referred to by Ventura, was nothing other than another name given by Ares de Fonseca for the Dutch West India Company. Also, contrary to what Ventura states, there is nothing in Ares de Fonseca’s confession that dates the founding of the Compañia de Judíos

Portugueses to 1634. Instead, what Ares de Fonseca said was that he advised the Crown about the dangers of this company of Portuguese Jews in 1634.78 In fairness to Ventura, she herself seems not to be fully convinced of this hypothesis, and in another place, she appears more sympathetic to identifying the Cofradía de Holanda with the Dutch West India Company.79

76 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 18, f. 13r. 77 “A Contemporary Memorial Relating to Damages to Spanish Interests in America Done by Jews of Holland (1634),” trans. Cyrus Adler, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 17 (1909): 50. 78 Caro Baroja, Los judíos en la España, III.335. 79 Ventura, “Los judeoconversos portugueses en el Perú,” 398. Cf. idem., Portugueses no Peru ao tempo da união ibérica: mobilidade, cumplicidades e vivências, 3 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 2005), I.298-300.

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In contrast to these diverse scholarly claims, this chapter argues that the Cofradía de

Holanda and the Compañía de Holanda were not simple synonyms for the same entity.

Throughout the inquisitorial documentation, the label “Compañía de Holanda” referred to the

Dutch West India Company, headquartered in Amsterdam, while the term “Cofradía de

Holanda” referred to a distinct subgroup of Portuguese Jews in Cartagena that existed within the broader Compañía. Non-Jews or even Portuguese Jews who lived in other cities were said to belong to the Compañía, but not to the Cofradía. Although typically shortened to the “Cofradía de Holanda,” the full name of the organization was the Cofradía de los Judíos de Holanda, which underscored its Jewish character. Tellingly, Manuel Álvarez Prieto, who used this longer name in his initial testimony, declaring that membership to this group necessitated desiring “to die as a Jew and guard the Law of Moses.”80 This certainly was not the case for the Compañía de

Holanda. According to Duarte López Mesa, the Compañía was governed by twenty-four wealthy men in Amsterdam, five of whom were Portuguese, but the rest were from other nations, including England, Holland, and Denmark. Although this account was far from an accurate description of the Heeren XIX, it is clear that the Compañía de Holanda referred to the Dutch

West India Company as a whole. Nowhere was the Compañía ever referred to as the “Compañía de los Judíos de Holanda,” nor was any impression ever given by any witness that the Compañía was a “separate Jewish organization,” as Liebman has argued.

Álvarez Prieto’s testimony sheds additional light on these distinctions. Asked about the

Cofradía, Álvarez Prieto denounced himself and Manuel de Fonseca Enríquez as members.

However, in the very next question, he was asked about if there were Jews in the Compañía, to which he replied in the affirmative, naming himself, Fonseca Enríquez, and a third Portuguese,

80 “morir judío y guardar la ley de Moisés.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 40r.

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Francisco Álvarez Cubillan, who was a merchant living in New Spain.81 Likely a relative of

Álvarez Prieto, Álvarez Cubillan was originally a vecino in Lisbon, but he came to Spanish

America as part of the slave trade under the asiento of Antonio Fernández de Elvas in the early

1620s.82 By naming Álvarez Cubillan as a member of the Compañía, but not the Cofradía, it is clear that Álvarez Prieto conceived of the Cofradía as a local phenomenon. Declaring himself as an adherent to both the Cofradía and the Compañía, Álvarez Prieto further maintained the distinction between the two by adding clarificatory phrases, such as “que está aquí” or “en esta ciudad,” when talking about the Compañía, but never when discussing the Cofradía.83 These phrases indicate not only that the Compañía was the larger entity, but also that the Cofradía never needed this kind of explanation, since it was always, by definition, “en esta ciudad.”

Documentation from outside Cartagena tends to confirm this distinction between the

Cofradía and the Compañía. For example, as mentioned above, the Lima Inquisition received testimony that Simón Osorio and his brother gave 8,000 ducats to “the compañía de los olandeses,” which was typical of the terminology used in Spanish documentation of the time to refer to the Dutch West India Company.84 One cédula written to the Audiencia of Panama in

1626 warns about the threat posed by a Dutch armada in the Caribbean, which had been financed by “la Compañía llamado en ella de mis Indias Occidentales.”85 In contrast, the only references

81 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 40r. 82 AGI, Contratación, 5375, N.71. 83 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 40r. 84 Medina, Historia del Tribunal…de Lima, II.127. 85 AGI, Panamá, 229, L.2, f. 165v. An additional example can be found in a 1622 aviso sent by the “Compañía de las Indias Occidentales,” which was translated from Dutch into Spanish. AGI, México, 29, N.91b

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I have seen to a “Cofradía de Holanda” derive from documentation specifically related to the complicidad in Cartagena.86

In sum, the foundational problem in previous scholarly assessments of this topic is the simplistic conflation of the Cofradía de Holanda with the Compañía de Holanda. While

Liebman was right to see the Cofradía de Holanda as a “separate Jewish organization,” he erred in making it synonymous with the Compañia de Holanda. Likewise, while other scholars were correct to assert that the Compañía de Holanda was the Dutch West India Company, they, too, were mistaken in simply conflating it with the Cofradía de Holanda. As has been shown, a close reading of the various witness testimonies collected in the surviving inquisitorial documentation reveals that the Cofradía de los Judíos de Holanda was described as a distinct Jewish organization in Cartagena within the broader Dutch West India Company.

An interesting omission in this historical literature is the basic fact that our knowledge of the Cofradía de Holanda comes exclusively from two arrested Portuguese in Cartagena: Manuel

Álvarez Prieto and Manuel de Fonseca Enríquez. These testimonies are supplemented by depositions from two additional witnesses, who testified about what they heard Álvarez Prieto say about the Compañía de Holanda while languishing in his prison cell. One of these men,

Duarte López Mesa, was a fellow prisoner, while the other man, Rodrigo Pereira, was the alcaide of the prison. When comparing the testimonies of Álvarez Prieto and Fonseca Enríquez, distinct emphases clearly emerge about the nature of this mysterious Cofradía de Holanda, as well as the diverse hopes on the part of these Portuguese about the benefits to be gained from their Dutch allies. Additionally, the entire affair surrounding the Cofradía de Holanda highlights

86 Interestingly, when inquisitors asked Manuel de Fonseca Enríquez if there were members of the Cofradía de Holanda in other cities, he replied that he did not know. AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 18 (segundo proceso), f. 72v.

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the measured responses on the part of the inquisitors to this alleged cabal of traitors. Far from gullibly exaggerating the threat posed by these cofrades, the inquisitors overall treated the allegations with circumspection, and indeed, there are legitimate grounds for wondering whether the inquisitors even believed that such a cofradía even existed at all. Similar to other crisis moments involving Portuguese traitors and heretics (cf. Chapters 3 and 4), the dominant response on the part of local Spanish officials and observers was caution and discernment, not hysteria.

The inquisitors first became aware of the Cofradia de Holanda in April 1636, when

Manuel Álvarez Prieto mentioned the group in response to a question about the casta y generación of himself and his family. Álvarez Prieto’s response was recorded as follows: “He said that he protested to live and die in the Law of Moses, and that as a Jew, he was a member of the Cofradía de los Judíos de Holanda.”87 The inquisitors then asked where this cofradía was located, to which Álvarez Prieto responded that it was located “en esta ciudad” and that he and

Manuel de Fonseca Enríquez, as well as anyone else who guarded the Law of Moses, were part of this cofradía. A few moments after mentioning that he was an adherent to the Cofradía de

Holanda, Álvarez Prieto then said that he was also an adherent to the “Compañía de Holanda que aquí esta.”88 Following up on this further revelation, the inquisitors asked about the persons who belonged to this Compañia and if they are Jews as well. Naming himself and Fonseca

Enríquez again, Álvarez Prieto added a third name to the list: Francisco Álvarez Cubillán.

Beyond this, however, the defendant did not give much more in way of a response, leaving the inquisitors with a couple of names and a host of questions.

87 “Dijo que él protestaba de vivir y morir en la ley de Moisés y que el estaba asentado por judío en la cofradía de los judíos de Holanda.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 39v. 88 Ibid., f. 40r.

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The subsequent attempts by the inquisitors to interrogate Álvarez Prieto about the

Cofradía de Holanda likewise proved unsuccessful, as the defendant kept repeating the same basic responses: he wanted to live and die in the Law of Moses, he followed the Compañía de

Holanda, and he did not know anything about the local leadership of the Cofradía de Holanda in

Cartagena, nor when it was established, nor any other members of the group.89 What is perhaps most notable about Álvarez Prieto’s testimony is what is conspicuously absent—viz., any overtly political considerations or dimensions to the Cofradía de Holanda. In contrast to the testimonies of Manuel de Fonseca Enríquez, there was no mention of Dutch armadas, hostility to the Spanish king, or monetary payments to help fund Dutch conquests of Iberian territories in the New

World. Taken as a whole, Álvarez Prieto seemed to view membership in the Cofradía de

Holanda as conferring spiritual benefits, rather than geo-political advantages. Although the mention of “Holanda” no doubt proved disquieting to the inquisitors, it is telling that Álvarez

Prieto repeatedly connected the Cofradía de Holanda to guarding the Law of Moses and dying as a Jew, not to conquering Habsburg colonial possessions or expanding Dutch influence in the

New World.

The political dimensions were not long absent, however. Shortly after Álvarez Prieto gave his initial testimony about the Cofradía de Holanda, a fellow prisoner, Duarte López Mesa, testified to some strange things that he had overheard from his prison cell. According to him, a voice that he had recognized as Álvarez Prieto’s had said in a loud voice, “Señores of the

Compañia de Holanda, come and rescue me, because I want to depart and cleanse myself, since I am very dirty, surrounded by my enemies.”90 These “enemies” likely referred to the inquisitors,

89 Ibid., ff. 41r-43r, 49r-51r. 90 “Señores de la Compañía de Holanda, venid a buscarme que me quiero ir a lavar, que estoy entre mis enemigos muy sucio.” Ibid., f. 7r.

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whom Álvarez Prieto attacked with belligerent and vulgar words: “The inquisitors could kiss his ass, because he was a Jew.”91 Even in prison, Álvarez Prieto continued to emphasize the religious benefits of his connections to the Compañía, rather than the political dimensions of an alliance with the Dutch. His primary hope is personal and religious: to leave Cartagena behind and to purify himself, in order better to live and die in the Law of Moses.

These emphases are all the more striking, since López Mesa added his own gloss to

Álvarez Prieto’s words, making explicit the political subtexts that were ignored (or at least, left unsaid) by Álvarez Prieto. López Mesa told the inquisitors that he had taken careful notice of the words that he had overheard, because he knew about this “Compañía”:

[I]n Amsterdam, [the] twenty-four men of the board [of directors] gathered together every day in a designated house, called the House of Trade, and five of these twenty-four are Portuguese and the rest [were] Dutch, English, Danes of Denmark, French, and [men] of other nations, all of whom were powerful men of wealth who had made asiento of 1,800,000 ducados that they had put forth to make war against Spain. … They said that in a short time, they had become the lord of the Indies and had left the King of Spain as a good farmer, because in the first five years of the asiento, the asientistas had gained five and a half million [ducados], not including the great quantities that the soldiers took in their pillages.92

This description was taken from López Mesa’s proceso, which has unfortunately been lost.

However, additional details about the Compañía de Holanda emerge from the relación of López

Mesa’s trial: “A Portuguese youth, called Diego de Pineda Sepúlveda, told him that … the

91 “los inquisidores que le besasen en el culo.” Ibid., f. 7v. 92 “En Ámsterdam se juntaban todos los días veinticuatro hombres a consejo en casa señalaba que llaman de la contratación y que cinco de ellos son portugueses de nación y los demás holandeses, ingleses, danos de Dinamarca, franceses y de otras naciones, todos hombres poderosos de caudal, que tienen hecho asiento de un millón y ochocientos mil ducados que tienen de manifesto para hacer diferentes guerras a España. … decían que en breves días había de ser aquella compañía señor de las Indias y habían de dejar al Rey de España como un buen labrador, porque en los cincos años primeros del asiento de la dicha compañía habían ganado los asentistas cinco millones y medio sin lo mucho que robaban los soldados en los pillajes.” Ibid., ff. 7r-7v.

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Company would be able to put 40,000 paid men in the Indies.”93 A well-traveled merchant,

López Mesa had been taught the Law of Moses in Cueta in 1623 by a Jew named Usefe Mesías.

Without question, he gave the inquisitors the most detailed descriptions of the Compañía de

Holanda and its international activities. Although he admitted to knowing much about the

Compañía de Holanda, López Mesa never confessed to being a part of that organization (or to the Cofradía de Holanda). While admitting that he guarded the Law of Moses for over a decade, he always described the activities of the Compañía from the perspective of an outside observer, not a member or a participant.94

What is to be made of this fascinating, highly detailed testimony? Perhaps the first point that should be made is that most of López Mesa’s descriptions of the Compañía were highly inaccurate and thoroughly exaggerated. For starters, the Dutch West India Company was governed by nineteen members (the famous Heeren XIX), not twenty-four, and to be sure, there were no Portuguese board members, much less five of them.95 The highly international cast of characters—including even “Danes from Denmark”—reflected the geo-political divisions of the ongoing Thirty Years’ War in Europe, but it had little relation to the genuine Dutch West India

Company.96 Furthermore, the purported wealth and capabilities of these men and the compañía that they governed were also wildly embellished. For instance, López Mesa declared that

“40,000 paid men” could be sent to the Indies to fight the King of Spain. Yet, when this assertion

93 “le dijo un mozo portugués, llamado Diego de Pineda Sepúlveda, que … [la Compañía de Holanda] podían poner cuarenta mil hombres pagados en las Indias.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.50. 94 Ibid., III.49-51. 95 Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic, 162. It should be noted that in his analysis, Schorsch mistakenly states that López Mesa testified that it was Álvarez Prieto who had visited Amsterdam, when in fact, López Mesa was talking about himself. 96 Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

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is compared to the size of the Dutch expeditions that attacked Callao (1,637 men), captured

Bahia (3,300 men), and conquered Pernambuco and Olinda (7,000 men), one gains a true appreciation for the farcicality of López Mesa’s statements.97 Regarding the financial backing of the Company, López Mesa was similarly off-base. Investments in the West India Company came not from a few wealthy and powerful merchants, but primarily from “inland non-mercantile investment” in cities such as Leiden, Utrecht, and Groningen. Indeed, with certain exceptions, leading Dutch merchants were not major contributors, and Portuguese Sephardic merchants in

Amsterdam, who had dominated the Brazilian sugar trade, contributed “a mere half of 1 per cent of the Company’s starting capital.”98

Despite the specious nature of López Mesa’s assertions regarding the Compañía de

Holanda, his testimony about what he heard from Álvarez Prieto is much more trustworthy. In large measure, this is due to corroborating evidence from the Inquisition’s alcaide, Rodrigo

Pereira, who testified two days after López Mesa about what he heard from inside the jail.

According to the alcaide, Álvarez Prieto declared that “the inquisitors could kiss his ass as much as they wanted, since he told them nothing, because he is a Jew, observant in the Law of Moses, and that he wanted them either to burn him or to send him to the Compañia de Holanda, where he had many friends.”99 The fierceness of Álvarez Prieto’s assertions of his own Jewishness is striking, which makes the absence of any explicit political commentary in his reported statements about the Compañía all the more intriguing. In Pereira’s version, Álvarez Prieto expresses hope

97 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 129-30, 202. 98 Ibid., 127; Jonathan Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 158-59. 99 “le besasen en el culo los inquisidores una y muchas veces y que no se le daba nada de ellos, porque él era judío, observante de la ley de Moisés, y quería que le quemasen por ello o que le enviasen a la Compañía de Holanda donde tenía muchos amigos.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 44r.

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that he would be sent to his friends in the Compañía, rather than having the Compañía come and get him—the latter being, of course, a much more menacing scenario.

Up to this point, the geo-political threat posed by Cartagena’s Cofradía de Holanda had largely been expressed in rather an oblique manner. By the end of September, this was no longer the case. On 25 September, the inquisitors asked Manuel de Fonseca Enríquez, a Portuguese on trial for judaizing, about the Cofradía de Holanda. He testified that Manuel Álvarez Prieto and others had “contributed money for the dispatch and maintenance of the armadas … against the

King of Spain.”100 The names of those who contributed money for this cause, along with the amounts given each year, were all recorded in “a large book with a cover of red sterling,” which was owned by Juan Rodríguez Mesa, the treasurer of the Cofradía.101 Fonseca Enríquez continued by telling the inquisitors that Rodríguez Mesa collected the money and sent it to a

Portuguese Jew in Holland. The armada financed by this money was intended to sail “to this port

[i.e., Cartagena] or to a port in Brazil, or to wherever seemed best.”102 From the documentation that has survived, it is known that Fonseca Enríquez named at least five Portuguese as cofrades:

Blas de Paz Pinto, Juan Rodríguez Mesa, Manuel Álvarez Prieto, Luis Gómez Barreto, and Luis

Fernández Suárez.103 However, since Fonseca Enríquez declared that he had seen the signatures of “many Portuguese” in the book owned by Rodríguez Mesa, it is possible that other local

Portuguese were involved as well.104

100 “contribuido dinero para el despacho y sustento de las armadas que de ella salían contra el Rey de España.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 26r. 101 “un libro grande con una cubierta de esterlín colorado.” Ibid., f. 26r. 102 “para este puerto o para el del Brasil o para donde mejor pareciese.” Ibid., f. 26r. 103 Ibid., f. 28v; AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 11, f. 20v; AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 18, f. 12v. 104 “ha visto firmas de muchos portugueses.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 15, f. 29r. Nonetheless, there is no evidence warranting the assumption that all Portuguese arrested in Cartagena for judaizing were ipso

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While López Mesa described the threat posed by the Compañía de Holanda to the

Spanish in general terms, Fonseca Enríquez testified that it was very close at hand. Local

Portuguese residents of Cartagena, as part of the Cofradía de Holanda, were financing a Dutch operation to capture the city—or if this did not prove to be feasible, another colonial port ruled by the Habsburgs. Far from treating these threats with an obsessive paranoia, the inquisitors continued to pursue a strategy of careful inquiry. For instance, Álvarez Prieto was asked about the leadership of the Cofradia, especially the “mayordomo y depositario o tesorero,” while

Fonseca Enríquez was queried about whether there were cofrades “in the city of Lima and in

Mexico [City], Pernambuco, Bahía de Todos [los] Santos, and other parts of the kingdoms of these Indies.”105 To the chagrin of the inquisitors, both men said they did not know. In a later audience, the inquisitors exhorted Fonseca Enríquez to provide “more clarity and proof” to his statements.106 Far from exhibiting a paranoid gullibility, the inquisitors did their best to piece together what evidence they could obtain from the defendants. As will be discussed in the next section, this task of collecting sufficient proof was made much more challenging due to the lack of corroborating witnesses from the local population in Cartagena.

Despite their best efforts, the inquisitors gained little from Álvarez Prieto and Fonseca

Enríquez, beyond their initial testimonies. To strengthen these suggestive, but ultimately vague, confessions, what was needed was something more certain, such as the book of red sterling, which was nowhere to be found. Left with few options but to seek information from other potential cofrades, the inquisitors questioned those Portuguese named by Fonseca Enríquez, but

facto members of the Cofradía de Holanda. Cf. Kris Lane, Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 110. 105 “en la ciudad de Lima y en la de México, Pernambuco, la Bahía de Todos Santos y otros puertos de los reynos de las Indias.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 18 (segundo proceso), f. 72v. 106 “más claridad y justificación.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 11, f. 23r.

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this also failed to result in any additional leads. One of the prisoners (Blas de Paz Pinto) died of his wounds in prison before his trial concluded, while the other two (Luis Gómez Barreto and

Luis Fernández Suárez) steadfastly denied under torture all the charges, whether related to the

Cofradía specifically or to judaizing in general. Gómez Barreto was eventually absolved of any wrongdoing,107 while Luis Fernández Suárez abjured de levi, which was the lightest sentence possible, short of a suspension or absolution. In general, the severity of the sentence rendered against accused cofrades correlated strongly with whether the defendant in question had confessed to any wrongdoing or whether he maintained his innocence, even under torture.108

Thus, Manuel Fonseca Enríquez was given a much harsher sentence than either Gómez Barreto or Fernández Suárez: reconciliation with the full confiscation of his goods, as well as two years in prison and permanent exile from the Indies. The other key witness to the Cofradía, Manuel

Álvarez Prieto, died in prison before his trial concluded, but in 1651, he was finally sentenced to death en estatua.109

Finally, Blas de Paz Pinto and Juan Rodríguez Mesa were both reconciled—the former en estatua; the latter en persona at the 1638 auto. However, it is notable that in the trial summaries of both men (their full procesos no longer exist), there is no mention of the Cofradía de

107 However, as part of an official visitation into the activities of the Cartagena Inquisition, irregularities were discovered in the case, and he was put on trial for a second time. Although adamantly maintaining his innocence, Gómez Barreto was found guilty of judaizing, forced to abjure de vehementi, and punished with the confiscation of half of his goods. Nevertheless, the inquisitors failed to obtain any additional information about the Cofradía de Holanda in this second case. 108 This correlation also held true for all charges of judaizing, apart from the Cofradía de Holanda. It should be noted, however, that this pattern was not universal—indeed, Luis Fernández Suárez was the exception. He was the only defendant to be punished without confessing, although his sentence of abjuration de levi was by far the lightest of all judaizantes penanced in the 1638 auto. The rest were given a harsher sentence of reconciliation, which included complete confiscation of goods and perpetual exile from the Indies (although these sentences were frequently not carried out fully). 109 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.387-88.

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Holanda. This is especially peculiar in the case of Rodríguez Mesa, whose relación includes lengthy descriptions of his judaizing activities, but nothing about any connection to the Cofradía, despite being denounced as the treasurer of the group who sent funds to a Portuguese Jew in

Amsterdam.110 Although an extant proceso of his trial no longer exists, certain pieces of his trial record can be found in other places, including two accusaciones detailing numerous charges against Rodríguez Mesa.111 Not a single one of the charges, however, mentions any involvement in the Cofradía de Holanda. Perhaps he was charged with being a cofrade in a different accusation (since several formal accusations were sometimes drawn up over the course of a single trial), but it is still strange that the accused treasurer of the Cofradía does not seem to have been convicted of any charges in this regard. The same holds true for Blas de Paz Pinto, Luis

Fernández Suárez, and Luis Gómez Barreto, although the charge of being a cofrade in the

Cofradía was at least mentioned in Gómez Barreto’s trial summary. Nevertheless, he was fully absolved and returned to his prominent position as depositario general of the city—a striking restoration for someone accused of seeking to betray the city to the Dutch. Likewise, Juan

Rodríguez Mesa remained a prominent resident in Cartagena for some time after his humiliating reconciliation in 1638.

The wide variety of sentences rendered in these cases involving accused cofrades provides further evidence that the inquisitors did not automatically assume the guilt of the defendant nor did they gullibly accept all the testimonies presented before them. Regarding the presence of the Cofradía de Holanda, the inquisitors instead appear to have been quite cautious in drawing conclusions. While the allegations were certainly troubling, so too was the noticeable

110 Ibid., III.43-49. 111 AHN, Inq., 1601, N.18, ff. 31r-37v.

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ignorance of the Álvarez Prieto and Fonseca Enríquez regarding even basic features of the organization. In any case, these testimonies about funding a Dutch fleet did not provoke a panic.

The minimal number of times that the Cofradía was even mentioned in the trials of Gómez

Barreto and Fernández Suárez provides good evidence that the inquisitors were not particularly anxious about the threat posed by these supposed traitors.

The Auto de Fe of 1638 and the Endurance of the Status Quo

The Cartagena Inquisition’s crackdown against the complicidad de judíos climaxed on

March 25, 1638, when nine Portuguese convicted of judaizing, together with three other penitents, were marched in humiliating fashion through the streets of Cartagena de Indias to the cathedral, where their sentences were read to the gathered assembly. All nine of the Portuguese were merchants, who endured not only the tremendous dishonor of the ceremony itself, but also the devastating loss of almost all of their possessions. The entire auto was a didactic exercise of the first order, down to the very date that was chosen. In the Catholic liturgical calendar, March

25 is the Feast of the Annunciation, commemorating the announcement of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to Jesus, the “Son of the Most High” (Lk. 1:26-38).

For the inquisitors in Cartagena, since the Incarnation was “the first article that the Jews denied,” there was a “particular providence” in celebrating the Holy Office’s triumph over the Portuguese judaizers on that day.112 Taking full advantage of this circumstance, the homilist for the auto, the

Jesuit Sebastián Morillo, labored to prove the veracity of the Incarnation by “many ingenious proofs”—no doubt aiming his message in a particular way at those convicted judaizantes who stood on the raised platform in the center of the cathedral.113

112 “el primer artículo que los judíos negaban,” “con particular providencia.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.38. 113 “Provó con curiosos lugares el misterio de la encarnación.” Ibid., III.38.

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The Portuguese, it is frequently argued, were categorically suspect of being crypto-Jews

(or at the very least, conversos), and as such, they were of particular interest to the Inquisition, which aimed to punish anyone who followed the “Law of Moses.” At first glance, the 1638 auto in Cartagena might seem to validate this narrative. Yet, upon a closer examination, this memorable auto de fe also reveals the persistence of the symbiotic status quo between the

Portuguese and the city of Cartagena, as analyzed throughout this study. For example, the auto began with a procession through the streets of the port city, in which those who were to be penanced were towards the front of the procession, followed by many dignitaries and officials from both the city and the Holy Office. Almost immediately, local residents would have noticed that the nine convicted judaizers were not the only Lusitanian elements of this auto. A central component of the procession was a large “standard of the faith,” which was carried by the inquisitorial prosecutor (fiscal) and two city councilors, one of whom was a Portuguese named

Luis de Rocha, who had served on the city council for several years.114 A native of Viana,

Portugal, Rocha was praised by his fellow councilmen for his diligent “assistance in all the affairs of the city, especially those concerning the poor.”115 Even more striking was the fact that the priest who said the Mass for this auto de fe was Fernando Díaz Pereira, the arcediano of the city’s cathedral chapter and brother-in-law of accused judaizer, Luis Gómez Barreto.116 The central roles played by Portuguese elite individuals in the very auto de fe that was directed against Portuguese judaizing testifies strongly to the prevailing forces of local integration and social ascent, which even the Holy Office could not reverse.

114 “estandarte de la fe.” Ibid., III.38. 115 “asistencia a todos los negocios de ella [la ciudad].” AGI, Santa Fe, 63, N.83. f. 1r. Cf. AGI, Santa Fe, 56B, N.73, f. 19r. 116 AHN, Inq., 1600, N.16, ff. 33r-33v.

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The conspicuous presence of Portuguese on Cartagena’s city council was the subject of much commentary from observers. In 1611, the inquisitors themselves had acerbically noted that

“in this city council are some men of quality, honored hidalgos, who are recognized as such; as for the rest, some are foreigners and others are Portuguese. ... There are commoners who are part of the cabildo, because greater quality is not required in order to be accepted for those who have money.”117 Julián B. Ruiz Rivera has shown that during the turn of the seventeenth century, the prices for a seat on the city council peaked at over 1,000 pesos, as the composition of the cabildo shifted from an encomendero elite to a mercantile oligarchy that would come to dominate the city for over a half-century.118 Those who could afford to purchase such posts were necessarily men of wealth. Officials at the Casa de Contratación sharply denounced the inability of royal officials in the Indies to enforce the laws prohibiting Portuguese merchants from trading in the

Indies without a license. From the perspective of these peninsular observers, Cartagena seemed to represent an extreme example of how far things had devolved: not only were the governors unable or unwilling to act against these foreigners, who were “totally suspect in matters of limpieza,” but furthermore, “in Cartagena, [the Portuguese] are alcaldes ordinarios, alguaciles mayores y menores y depositarios.”119 Without question, the Portuguese referred to in this letter

117 “en este cabildo...son hombres de calidad hidalgos honrados y conocidos por tales, los demás unos son extranjeros y otros portugueses ... el cabildo entran son personas muy comunes porque no se requiere más calidad para ser admitidos en ellos que tener dinero.” AHN, Inq., L.1008, f. 21v. 118 Julián B. Ruiz Rivera, “Los regimientos de Cartagena de Indias,” in La venta de cargos y el ejercicio del poder en Indias, eds. Julián B. Ruiz Rivera y Ángel Sanz Tapia (León: Universidad de León, 2007), 207. See also: idem., “Cartagena de Indias: ¿Un cabildo cosmopolita en una ciudad pluriétnica?,” in El municipio indiano: Relaciones interétnicas, económicas y sociales. Homenaje a Luis Navarro García, eds. Manuela Cristina García Bernal and Sandra Olivero Guidobono (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2009), 407-24. 119 “toda sospechosa de todas maneras en la provisión limpieza,” “en Cartagena son alcaldes ordinarios, alguaciles mayores y menores y depositarios.” AGI, Contratación, 5171, ff. 180v-181r.

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were Vicente de Villalobos and Luis Gómez Barreto, Cartagena’s alguacil mayor and depositario general, respectively.

Villalobos, a successful merchant in Antioquia, was able to marry into one of the most prominent families of the region and eventually became a regidor and alguacil mayor in

Cartagena. A man of high aspirations, Villalobos was lauded by four different city councils throughout New Granada in 1609 for being a “person of valor, understanding, and virtue.”120

These letters of approbation reflect the strength of public reputation and decorous behavior to transcend those impediments that could be incurred by Portuguese naturaleza. However, this is not to say that Villalobos simply tried to disavow his Portuguese background. In fact, he utilized it to his advantage in a most intriguing way. In a 1611 probanza, Villalobos asked a series of character witnesses about whether “the nobility of his person” was known and respected not only by Castilians, but also “in particular [by] his fellow countrymen.”121 It appears that Villalobos believed that testimony about his standing among his fellow Portuguese would increase his standing in the eyes of local Castilian elites. Some witnesses did not answer this part of the questionnaire at all, no doubt because they did not know how the Portuguese viewed Villalobos’s

“nobility.” Others, however, went into great detail. One witness, a Portuguese resident in

Zaragoza (Antioquia), claimed to know Villalobos’s family in Portugal, which included

“alcaldes and regidores,” who faithfully served the king with their “horses and arms” in the city of Lagos. All the Portuguese who knew Villalobos, it was said, held “much respect and estimation” for him, because they knew his “birth and quality.”122 For Villalobos explicitly to

120 “persona de valor, entendimiento y virtud.” AGI, Santa Fe, 66, N.72, f. 1r. 121 “como tal le tratan y respetan en particular la gente su natural y patria conociendo la nobleza de su persona.” AGI, Santa Fe, 99, N.45, f. 93r. 122 “son gente principal y de calidad y que son alcaldes y regidores y tienen caballos y armas en servicio de Su Majestad en la ciudad de Lagos reino de Portugal,” “en esta ciudad se tiene mucho respeto y

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ask for testimony about local Portuguese opinion suggests that Castilian persons of importance held such opinions in some regard. Indeed, judging from Villalobos’s strategy in this probanza, it would seem that the idea of Portuguese individuals with pure and honorable lineage was far from the kind of oxymoron that it becomes if Spanish perceptions of Portuguese “impurity” or

“taintedness” are exaggerated, for example, by a disproportionate emphasis on the stereotype of

Portuguese as secret Jews.

Another Portuguese regidor of great importance was Luis Gómez Barreto. Born in

Portugal around 1570 to a mercantile family, his father was involved in the slave trade and died in São Tomé when Gómez Barreto was only twelve years old. His brother worked as a merchant throughout the Atlantic world, including Santo Domingo, Brazil, and Angola. During the 1590s, when Gómez Barreto started working as a merchant in his own right, the slave trade to Spanish

America was a lucrative, if risky, enterprise. Following in his father and brother’s footsteps,

Gómez Barreto worked the slaving route between Portuguese Angola and Spanish America. By the end of the century, Gómez Barreto had profited greatly from trafficking in human merchandise, but he wanted to leave behind his old peripatetic lifestyle and to establish himself in Spanish America, where he could increase his fortunes and rise in the ranks of colonial society. To this end, he moved to Cartagena de Indias, the most important port city in all of

South America, since it was the only legal entry point for both the silver fleets and the slave trade in the entire viceroyalty of Peru, and in 1598, he married a local woman, Bárbara

Pereira.123

estimación particularmente la gente de su natural y patria porque conocen su nacimiento y calidad.” Ibid., ff. 115v-116r. 123 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 18, ff. 16r-18r. Pereira was born in Cartagena to Portuguese parents (Andrés Fernández and Beatriz Gómez), and is thus labeled in various sources as an “hija de portugués,” as well as a “criolla.” For example: AGI, Escribanía, 589A, pieza 7, f. 67r; AGI, Santa Fe, 106, N.31a, ff. 443r, 447r. Unsurprisingly, Portuguese creoles like Pereira helped to blur the lines between native-born and

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Opportunity came quickly for the enterprising Gómez Barreto. In 1606, for the steep price of 10,000 pesos, he bought the political office of general depositary of the city, whose responsibility it was to hold any embargoed merchandise while judicial investigations were ongoing. This was a smart investment on Gómez Barreto’s part, since much of the merchandise under his supervision were slaves who were seized as part of contraband investigations. Gómez

Barreto made a habit of selling these slaves and keeping a portion of the profits for himself.124

Another benefit of the office was that its holder automatically gained a seat on the local city council, thus further increasing Gómez Barreto’s prestige and local influence. As befitted a man of his standing, Gómez Barreto became a prominent member of multiple religious brotherhoods, as well as a patron of the local Jesuit college and one of the local hospitals in the city.125 In addition to the many close associations that he cultivated with other Portuguese merchants and traders, Gómez Barreto became friends with many of the highest-ranking men of the city and region, including some who worked for the Inquisition. As would be uncovered later by the

Crown-appointed visitador, Pedro de Medina Rico, the friendships helped Gómez Barreto gain a full acquittal at the end of his trial.126

A third Portuguese who appeared (briefly) among the ranks of the Cartagena regidores was Jorge Fernández Gramajo, who was famously described by one contemporary as a man

foreigner, and for Gómez Barreto, it was, in a sense, the best of both worlds: being married to a criolla helped make a stronger case for his rootedness in Cartagena, but at the same time, he was able to take advantage of the Portuguese familial connections that his wife’s family possessed. Perhaps the most notable member of Pereira’s family was her brother, Fernando Díaz Pereira, who was the arcediano in Cartagena during the 1630s. 124 Linda A. Newson and Susie Minchin, From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 328. 125 For details about these activities, see the testimonies included in AHN, Inq., 1620, N.18, ff. 32r-55r. 126 For the charges brought by Medina Rico against various officials of the Cartagena tribunal, including those related to Gómez Barreto’s trial, see: AHN, Inq., 1600, N.16.

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powerful enough “to destroy the Indies by monopolizing trade and sending the money to

Lisbon.”127 A man of immense civic importance before he served as a city councilman,

Fernández Gramajo helped fund the city’s defenses against the English in 1595, and a few years later, he became the patron of the local Franciscan monastery.128 The Portuguese benefactor served as a regidor for three years.129 It is not known why Fernández Gramajo did not serve longer. Perhaps given his accumulated wealth (and the political power derived from that wealth), he did not deem a regimiento as being a worthwhile investment. In any case, given his business ties with many of the permanent regidores on the council, it is certain that Fernández Gramajo’s economic interests were well-represented, even if he was not an official member of the cabildo.130

As with its secular counterpart, Cartagena’s cabildo eclesiástico counted multiple

Portuguese as members during the seventeenth century. Perhaps most controversial was Antonio de Fuentes, a Portuguese cleric who was given a canonjía in 1618, which provoked a bitter debate throughout the subsequent decade among the leading citizens of Cartagena.131 Members of the city council put the matter in straightforward terms, complaining to the king in 1626 that

“ecclesiastical offices and privileges,” which belonged by right to the “native sons of the land,” were instead being given to “the Portuguese and the sons of the Portuguese and [other]

127 “destruir las Indias por la forma de acaparar el comercio y el dinero que enviaba a Lisboa.” These words come from Gregorio de Palma Hurtado. Quoted in Vila Vilar, “Extranjeros en Cartagena,” 165. 128 AGI, Santa Fe, 100, N.37a, ff. 1r-1v. 129 Ruiz Rivera, “Los regimientos de Cartagena de Indias,” 201. 130 Antonino Vidal Ortega, Cartagena de Indias y la región histórica del Caribe, 1580-1640 (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2002), 135-44. 131 AGI, Santa Fe, 228, N.78, f. 3v.

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foreigners.”132 Although Fuentes was not mentioned by name, the letter was certainly written in response to the scandal of his appointment. Yet, Fuentes was not without his allies. In particular, the Franciscans and Augustinians both wrote letters, testifying to Fuentes’s “good habits, life, and right conduct in all his obligations.” In their collective judgment, Fuentes was worthy of being “elevat[ed] to the greatest dignity that will be of service to God our Lord and to Your

Majesty.”133

Further information comes from a 1626 report to the Council of the Indies, which states that Fuentes was given this position as a reward for his many services to the Crown, including six years of evangelizing the Indians in the mining districts of Zaragoza and later serving as a corregidor in Tunja, where he helped ensure that there was “much sustenance and supplies for all people throughout the region.”134 Clearly biased in Fuentes’s favor, this report laments how the canon had suffered much “hate and ill will…because he was Portuguese.”135 Yet, according to the author of this account, this calumny was undeserved for multiple reasons. First, Fuentes was only half-Portuguese, since his father came from the Spanish border town of Ayamonte.

Second, although Fuentes’s mother was Portuguese, she came from the Algarve, a region whose residents enjoyed the prerogative from the Casa de Contratación to “pass over to the Indies as naturales of the Crown of Castile.”136 Third, although born in Portugal, Fuentes and his family

132 “los oficios y prebendas eclesiásticas,” “los hijos naturales de la tierra,” “portugueses y hijos de portugueses y extraños.” AGI, Santa Fe, 63, N.60, f. 1r. Unsurprisingly, none of the Portuguese city councilors signed this letter. 133 “buenas costumbres, vida y recto proceder en sus obligaciones,” “acrescentando su persona en mayor dignidad que será en el servicio de Dios nuestro Señor y de Vuestra Majestad.” Letter dated 24 July 1620. AGI, Santa Fe, 243. 134 “mucho sustento y bastimentos a toda aquella tierra y gente.” Letter dated 14 September 1626. AGI, Santa Fe, 244, f. 2r.. 135 “odio y mala voluntad le calumnió que era portugués.” Ibid., ff. 2r-2v. 136 “pasan a las Indias como naturales de la Corona de Castilla.” Ibid., f. 2v.

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lived in Seville for more than thirty-five years, and thus, should be considered as thoroughly naturalized. The report conceded that Fuentes did not yet possess an official “carta de naturalización y habilitación,” although it requested that the Crown and the Council of the Indies remedy this deficiency in a prompt manner.137 In case there would be any objections to this request, the report pointed out that similar requests had been granted to other Portuguese on

Cartagena’s cathedral chapter, including “the arcediano [Fernando Díaz Pereira], the treasurer of the said cathedral [José Pacheco], and another Portuguese canónigo [Matías Suárez de

Melo].”138 Given the high proportion of Portuguese on the cabildo eclesiástico, it is understandable why the members of the city council demanded that the Crown cease its practice of elevating “Portuguese and the sons of the Portuguese and [other] foreigners” to the highest echelons of the city’s ecclesiastical hierarchy.139

Yet, not all of these appointments were subjected to the kind of hostility that Fuentes endured. The example of Matías Suárez de Melo, who was widely respected by the leading citizens of the city, presents an obvious contrast to Fuentes. Suárez de Melo came from a family of high status, he spent most of his life in New Granada, and he gained a prestigious education from some of the leading universities in the Spanish-speaking world—all points of marked dissimilarity with Fuentes. Having left the Azores with his parents at the age of seven, Suárez de

Melo’s family settled in Zaragoza. At the age of fifteen, he studied with the Jesuits at their colegio in Bogota. Continuing his education in Spain, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Sevilla, and then earned a master’s and a doctorate in Theology from

137 Ibid., f. 2v. 138 “el arcediano y tesorero de la dicha iglesia catedral y otro canónigo portugueses de todos.” Ibid., f. 2v. 139 “portugueses y hijos de portugueses y extraños.” AGI, Santa Fe, 63, N.60, f. 1r.

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the Universidad de Ávila.140 Given the scarcity of persons in New Granada with his academic credentials, combined with his local familial ties, Suárez de Melo was well on track for a high- ranking ecclesiastical position in the region. In 1626, he was given a canonjía in Cartagena, and starting in 1639, he also exercised the post of calificador for the Cartagena Inquisition.141 Suárez de Melo’s foreign naturaleza appears not to have caused any hindrance in his career. Indeed, the high point of his ecclesiastical vocation was his almost decade-long tenure as interim bishop of

Cartagena (1651-61). During these years, Suárez de Melo also enjoyed promotions as treasurer of the diocese (1655) and then as the dean of the cathedral chapter (1660).142

As part of his appointment as calificador, letters of approbation were collected from the

Augustinian and Franciscan monasteries, as well as the city’s cathedral chapter, all of which testified to his worthiness for the “most honorable positions,” due to his “education, nobility, good sense, and virtue.”143 Most interesting was the Franciscans’ explicit avowal of “the nobility of his blood, which is well designated.”144 It is impossible to know whether this was included as a means of offsetting any potential suspicion arising from Suárez de Melo’s Portuguese background. Nevertheless, as was seen in the case of Vicente de Villalobos, the idea of a “noble”

Portuguese hardly required much imagination on the part of the Spanish. What the Franciscans affirm explicitly (and the Augustinians and the cathedral canons affirm implicitly) is that nobleza de sangre was hardly incompatible with Portuguese naturaleza. Even as the actions of the

140 “Memorial de los servicios del Doctor don Matías Suárez de Melo” (1622). AGI, Santa Fe, 244, ff. 1r- 1v. 141 AHN. Inq., L.1012, ff. 139r-141r. 142 María Paulina Molino García, “La sede vacante en Cartagena de Indias, 1534-1700,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 32 (1975): 15-21. 143 “las letras, nobleza, cordura y virtud.” AHN. Inq., L.1012, f. 139r. 144 “la nobleza de su sangre que es muy calificada.” Ibid., f. 140r.

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Cartagena Holy Office in the 1638 auto served to reinforce the connection between Portuguese background and crypto-Judaism, their employment of a Portuguese calificador likewise serves as a reminder that this connection was far from absolute.

To be sure, the Cartagena Inquisition was hardly immune to the broader patterns of

Portuguese integration and ascent that allowed men such as Vicente de Villalobos and Manuel de

Fuentes to reach positions of prestige and stature in colonial Spanish American society. Even in the midst of the tribunal’s actions against the complicidad de judíos—when one would suspect that inquisitorial hostilities against the Portuguese would be at their apex—the inquisitors made a perhaps surprising request: they asked the Suprema to approve Lorenzo Álvarez Barbosa, a

Portuguese resident in Bogota, for a familiatura in that city.145 Demonstrating that this was not a one-time aberration, the inquisitors made a similar request three years later, in 1640, for Pablo

Ferrera, another Portuguese vecino of Bogota, to be approved as a familiar.146 Both men claimed to be of Old Christian stock, and they submitted evidence for these claims. As discussed in the previous chapter, the Cartagena Inquisition was perennially undermanned, and they admitted to their superiors that local exigencies required the cutting of certain bureaucratic corners. Given the utilization of foreigners for familiaturas from the beginning of the tribunal’s creation, it should not come as a surprise that Portuguese applicants were also approved. What is quite notable, however, is the timing of these two requests. Even during the ongoing crackdown against suspected Portuguese judaizers, the inquisitors never succumbed to a reflexive anti-

Portuguese animus. Employed in inquisitorial posts in Cartagena and Bogota, the Portuguese presence within the Holy Office itself could not be extinguished from either the complicidad de

145 AHN, Inq., 1575, N.793; AHN, Inq., 1506, N.7. 146 AHN, Inq., 1339, N.14.

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judíos or the revolt of the Duke of Braganza in 1640. In this way, the Cartagena Inquisition reflected its local environment, as the Portuguese in Cartagena were far from defeated by either crisis.

Outcomes and Consequences

For most of the Portuguese penanced at the 1638 auto de fe, their sentence included permanent exile from the Indies and the confiscation of all of their goods. However, later documentation reveals that at least some of the sentences were not carried out. The first difficulty for the inquisitors in executing their sentences was the fact that almost all the Portuguese immediately appealed their cases to the Suprema. Somewhat surprisingly, especially given the heightened suspicions against the Portuguese after the Braganza revolt in late 1640, some convicted judaizantes won important victories upon appeal. For instance, Juan Rodríguez Mesa, the accused treasurer for the Cofradía de Holanda, successfully lobbied to be freed of the humiliation of wearing the sambenito in public.147 Whether because of Rodríguez Mesa’s elite connections in Spain or due to some other reason, the dispensation was granted. Not only did

Rodríguez Mesa avoid wearing the sambenito, but he also managed to escape serving his jail sentence of three years. Only a short time after the 1638 auto, the prominent Portuguese merchant was once again a conspicuous part of public life in Cartagena. As can be imagined, this outcome provoked much consternation for the inquisitors in Cartagena, who complained that

Rodríguez Mesa’s authorized flouting of his original sentence heaped “great contempt and discredit” upon the Cartagena tribunal.148 Certainly the example of Rodríguez Mesa illustrates

147 AHN, Inq., L.1012, ff. 180r-180v. 148 “gran menosprecio y desautoridad.” Ibid., f. 180r.

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that beneath the Inquisition’s fearsome façade lay a much more complex reality—one in which the wealthier Portuguese were anything but helpless victims.

Due to the bureaucratic inefficiencies of the age, many of the appeals on behalf of the

Portuguese were not finally resolved until the late 1640s or even, in some cases, the 1650s. In the meantime, some of the Portuguese continued to live in Cartagena as vecinos. For example,

Francisco Piñero, who was convicted of judaizing in 1638 and sentenced to “perpetual exile from the Indies,” was still residing in Cartagena ten years later, when he was called to testify before

Pedro de Medina Rico, the visitador for the Cartagena tribunal, about the tribunal’s confiscations during the complicidad.149 It is unknown whether the other Portuguese also found ways of escaping—or at least, mollifying—their sentences, although such outcomes seem likely. For those Portuguese who were not convicted, there seems to have been no lasting repercussions.

Thus, Luis Gómez Barreto continued to serve as the depositario general of the city until his second trial before the Holy Office in the early 1650s, by which time the accused judaizer was over eighty years of age.150

The investigation into the complicidad de judíos did not entirely end with the 1638 auto.

Subsequently, a handful of additional testimonies arrived from the Lima Inquisition, which concluded its crackdown on the Portuguese judaizers on 23 January 1639 with an enormous auto de fe, several times the size of the auto celebrated in Cartagena the year before.151 From these new testimonies, the Cartagena inquisitors arrested four more Portuguese: Duarte Pereira, Felipe

Álvarez, Sebastián Cutiño, and Pedro Duarte. None of these men seems to have been established

149 “desterrado perpetuamente de las Indias.” Cincuenta años de inquisicion, III.40; AHN, Inq., 1603, N.3, ff. 380r-381v. 150 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 18. 151 Fernando de Montesinos, Auto de la fe celebrado en Lima a 23 de enero de 1639 (Madrid: Imprenta del Reyno, 1640).

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residents in Cartagena. A fifth Portuguese, Álvaro López Mesa, who had lived for some time in

Guatemala, was arrested due to the testimony given by his relative, Juan Rodríguez Mesa, in

1636. All five men were found guilty and sentenced to the usual punishment of perpetual exile and confiscation of all goods. All the defendants except López Mesa confessed to judaizing, and so the trials were much more straightforward than many of the earlier trials.152

From this “complicidad,” the Cartagena Inquisition profited substantially. The value of confiscations during the second half of the 1630s almost equaled that of the entire first two decades of the tribunal’s history.153 According to Nikolaus Bottcher, 97% of the revenue gained by confiscations during this period came from four men: Álvarez Prieto, Rodríguez Mesa, Paz

Pinto, and Rodríguez Solís.154 By the late 1640s, however, the tribunal would once again be running a budget deficit, instead of a surplus.155 Nevertheless, for a tribunal that was so threadbare before 1635, it is important not to minimize the change in fortune experienced with the “discovery” of the complicidad de judíos. With that being said, it cannot be automatically deduced that monetary gain was the primary (much less, the sole) reason for putting Portuguese merchants on trial for judaizing. Such sentiments, however, are commonly expressed, as much

152 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.87-116. 153 From 1635-39, the tribunal confiscated 7,309,125 maravedís, while from 1611-31, the total amount confiscated only totaled to 8,242,566 maravedís. José Martínez Millán, La hacienda de la Inquisición (1478-1700) (Madrid: Instituto Enrique Flórez, 1984), 327. 154 Nikolaus Böttcher, Aufstieg und Fall eines atlantischen Handelsimperiums: Portugiesische Kaufleute und Sklavenhändler in Cartagena de Indias von 1580 bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag, 1995), 128. Lea strongly suggested such a pattern back in 1908: “Wealth flowed in with the discovery of Judaizers in 1636, whose confiscations were announced in the auto de fe of March 25, 1638. That of Juan Rodriguez Mesa amounted to 65,000 pesos; that of Blas de Paz Pinto to 50,000; of Francisco Rodriguez Pinto [sic – Solís] to 40,000, while the smaller ones brought the aggregate to 200,000, as reported, June, 1638, by Andrés de Castro the receiver.” Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, 501. 155 It would only be by the 1660s and 1670s that the tribunal would be consistently running budget surpluses. Ibid., 327-29.

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now as they were in the early modern era. For example, in 1656, the suspected judaizer,

Francisco Botello, was said to have declared that “the inquisitors were unable to judge well in many trials; some they punished only for being rich.”156 Similar sentiments were expressed by an eighteenth-century Portuguese diplomat, who observed that in the Jews, the Inquisition had discovered a gold mine.157

Some present-day historians have likewise pointed to greed as the overriding factor in the complicidades against the Portuguese. For example, María Cristina Navarrete has argued that the accusations of Judaism were a “pretext, in order to arrest the New Christians, confiscate their goods, and remove them as economic rivals to the group of Spanish and creole merchants who…existed in Cartagena.”158 Yet, in the case of the Cartagena tribunal, it is not easy to make such cut-and-dry judgments. Certainly the inquisitors were not unaware of the pecuniary dimensions to the complicidad. In a 1641 letter, the inquisitors informed the Suprema that they had received multiple denunciations regarding a Portuguese doctor, Fernando Báez de Silva, who had fled the complicidad in Lima and had gone to Spain. Tellingly, the inquisitors concluded their letter by stressing that “this man carried more than 100,000 pesos of his [to Spain], and he

156 Quoted in Quiroz, “The Expropriation of Portuguese New Christians,” 427. 157 Jacob R. Marcus, The Colonial American Jew, 1492-1776, 3 vols. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), I.66. 158 Although Navarrete does not deny the Inquisition’s “intention to eradicate the Jewish footprint” from the region, it is the economic motive of the Holy Office that is clearly emphasized. María Cristina Navarrete Peláez, “Judeoconversos en el Nuevo Reino de Granada,” in Los judíos en Colombia: Una aproximación histórica, eds. Adelaida Sourdis Nájera and Alfonso Velasco Rojas (Madrid: Casa Sefarad Israel, 2011), 43. This parallels the claims made by Harry Cross and Peter Bradley regarding the Lima complicidad. Harry E. Cross, “Commerce and Orthodoxy: A Spanish Response to Portuguese Commercial Penetration in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1580-1640,” The Americas 35 (1978): 151-167; Peter T. Bradley, “The Portuguese Peril in Peru,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 79 (2002): 591-613, especially p. 603.

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is a wealthy merchant, despite being a doctor.”159 Such details were far from incidental to the

Holy Office. Nevertheless, while considerations of profit were important, they were not the only, or even the primary, catalyst. Such a straightforward explanation fails to account adequately for the outcomes in the trials of such wealthy men as Fernán López de Acosta, who had his case suspended, or Luis Gómez Barreto, who was absolved completely.

Furthermore, not all of those convicted as judaizers by the Cartagena tribunal were wealthy merchants. On the opposite extreme from men like Fernández Suárez and Gómez

Barreto was Juan del Campo, who was so poor that he was forced to eat “de limosna” while in jail, unable to afford his own food. Despite being a burden on the Inquisition’s coffers, Campo was kept in prison for almost two years until the 1638 auto, when his sentence of reconciliation was publicly pronounced. As part of this sentence, all of Campo’s goods were to be confiscated, although his trial summary explicitly notes that the impoverished Portuguese “had no goods” to confiscate.160 As these examples all demonstrate, one cannot simply correlate the severity of the

Inquisition’s sentences to the amount of wealth the defendant possessed. This is not to say that the financial benefits of a case were unimportant, but that many variables worked together to produce the individual outcomes of each case.

Conclusion

It has been a guiding principle of this dissertation that moments of greatest conflict and anxiety concerning the Portuguese in Spanish America can be the most revealing about how successful the Portuguese were overall at integrating into colonial society and forming alliances

159 “este hombre llevó más de cien mil pesos suyos y es gran mercader aunque médico.” AHN, Inq., L.1012, f. 209r. 160 “con confiscación de bienes, que no tuvo ningunos, y ha comido de limosna.” Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.53.

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on the local level. This is perhaps best exemplified in the 1638 auto de fe, which was supposed to showcase the triumph of the Holy Office over the Portuguese judaizantes, and yet, two leading

Portuguese residents of Cartagena had prominent roles in the ceremony. Inquisitorial propaganda could only effect so much. In a city with such a large Portuguese population, it must have been rather embarrassing for only nine Portuguese to be wearing sambenitos in the cathedral on that day. From the beginning, the Inquisition in Cartagena received little substantive support from the local populace, which continued to hinder the efforts of the Holy Office. The inquisitors were in such desperate need of lay officials that they were quite willing to employ Portuguese for the task. What also emerges from the inquisitorial records are countless numbers of Spanish witnesses who interacted with their Portuguese neighbors, formed friendships with them, and worshipped alongside them at Mass. Testimonies accumulated from city elites, parish priests, and other eyewitnesses testifying to the innocence of the accused.

Were the accused, in fact, innocent? Of course, it is impossible for the historian to know with anything approaching certainty. However, the clichéd nature of most of the accusations made against the Portuguese, as well as their own confessions, provides much fertile soil for skepticism regarding the charges. It is certainly possible that certain Portuguese individuals became interested in the Law of Moses at some point, and perhaps this did translate into more ritualized observance in some instances. It seems likely, for example, that Manuel Álvarez Prieto found some sort of emotional consolation from the Law of Moses, although it is not clear how much he knew in terms of belief and practice. Nevertheless, in most cases, the lack of outside

(non-Portuguese) witnesses, combined with the dubious circumstances in which the confessions were extracted, casts large shadows of doubt regarding the “Jewishness” of these Portuguese.

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In any case, what is more intriguing to this author is the fact that so many Spaniards at the time believed that their Portuguese neighbors were indeed ordinary, faithful Catholics. Now it is perhaps possible that the memorialist, Fernando de Montesinos, was correct when he declared that convicted judaizantes like Manuel Bautista Pérez “performed so many works of a good Christian that he dazzled even those who were very attentive as to whether they had been fooled by such actions.”161 But what Montesinos subtly admits here is that the power of anti-

Portuguese stereotypes was not stronger than that of public behavior and reputation within a local community. In the end, most Portuguese behaved as faithful Catholics and loyal subjects of the Crown, and they were taken to be such by the majority of their fellow vecinos.

For their part, the inquisitors proved willing to exercise some skepticism regarding some of the testimonies that emerged during these trials, especially as it regarded the Cofradía de

Holanda. Only two Portuguese testified to the existence of such an organization, and it seems that the inquisitors did not find it to be a particularly threatening prospect, despite the very real threat that the Dutch West India Company posed to the security of Spanish Caribbean ports like

Cartagena. Additionally, during these years, the inquisitors released a high percentage of

Portuguese defendants without any punishment whatsoever. In some cases, a second witness could not be found, while in other cases, the defendants refused to confess even under torture. In sum, the complicidad in Cartagena brought the dynamics examined in the previous chapter into sharp relief. The lack of local support, the difficulty in finding qualified officials (e.g., a torturer), and the mutually beneficial friendships between the Portuguese and various

161 “hacía tales obras de buen cristiano que deslumbraban aun a los muy atentos haber si podía haber engaño en acciones semejantes.” Montesinos, Auto de la fe celebrado en Lima, f. 23r.

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inquisitorial officials all assisted in moderating the severity of the Inquisition’s crackdown against the Portuguese judaizers.

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CHAPTER 6 AFTER 1640: RUPTURE AND CONTINUITY

The 1640s are often seen, and rightly so, as a decade of rupture. The Braganza revolt in

1640, the suspension of payments by the Crown to its Portuguese bankers in 1647, and the 1649 auto grande de fe in Mexico City all marked the end of a period of unrivaled Portuguese economic dominance within the Spanish Empire. However, beneath these momentous fractures, important continuities remained in the New World, continuities that ungirded a sustained

Portuguese presence in Spanish America for many decades after the dissolution of the Union of the Iberian Crowns. This chapter examines three of the most important of these continuities, as they impacted Cartagena and the surrounding region.

First, even after the “betrayal” of the Duke of Braganza in 1640, many Spanish officials continued to judge resident Portuguese in Spanish America based on local factors and individual circumstances, rather than on generalized stereotypes or vulgar prejudices. This can be clearly seen in the aftermath of the aborted plot of the Conde de Castelmelhor in Cartagena. Accused of plotting to capture the port for the Duke of Braganza, Castelmelhor caused the city to go on high alert. With hundreds of armed Portuguese soldiers in the city as part of the annual fleet, anxieties were high. However, most local officials still aimed to distinguish those Portuguese who were loyal to Philip IV from those who had treasonous designs. As Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert has noted, even after 1640, it was recognized that “one could simultaneously be of the Portuguese

Nation and a subject of the king of Spain. … [Spanish officials] believed that clemency, rather than rigor, would be the best guarantee of Portuguese loyalty.”1 To be sure, this measured approach best reflected the situation on the ground, since the Portuguese in the city, whether

1 Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 176-77.

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long-term residents or soldiers and sailors on the fleet, were hardly of one mind about the rebellion in Portugal. As it turned out, it was a Portuguese officer, Antonio de Azevedo, who first alerted local authorities about Castelmelhor’s plot. Without his assistance, the city would have faced a much more perilous threat.

As the 1640s went on, Spanish officials wrestled with what to do with the numerous

Portuguese who still resided in the Spanish Indies, especially if they served in sensitive military positions. Following long-established patterns, most officials in Caribbean port cities, such as

Santo Domingo, San Juan, and Cartagena, judged the Portuguese based on local circumstances and individual factors. The conclusion reached most often was that resident Portuguese in the

Spanish circum-Caribbean after 1640 had demonstrated their loyalty to the Habsburgs on numerous occasions, and that without their presence, the Spanish Caribbean ports would be far weaker and more vulnerable.

Second, even after the rupture of the Union of the Crowns, common strategies of local integration and social ascent remained unchanged from decades prior. This can be observed by examining the younger generation of Portuguese who were born in the New World and were coming of age during these tumultuous decades. In particular, this chapter focuses on an especially revealing example: the multi-generational partnerships enjoyed between the

Portuguese and the Jesuit college in Cartagena. From the establishment of the Jesuit college in the city in 1604, the Portuguese served as indispensable patrons and friends of the Society, and these ties remained strong even after the Braganza revolt in 1640. The continuity in social and spiritual ties with the Jesuits among a second generation of Portuguese can be clearly evidenced in the witness testimonies collected for the cause of canonization for St. Pedro Claver, who died in Cartagena in 1654. As their parents did, this younger generation of Portuguese, who had been

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born in the New World, sought to establish their social prominence through public acts of

Catholic piety and the consolidation of a good reputation.

Third, despite the cancellation of the Portuguese asientos and the dissolution of the Union of the Crowns, Portuguese traders and merchants continued to be drawn to Spanish America.

Although the larger geo-political situation shifted immensely during the decade of the 1640s, the

Portuguese in Spanish America continued to leave their mark on the Atlantic world both economically and ideologically. In 1644, a Portuguese named Antonio de Montesinos traveled from New Granada to Amsterdam with a dramatic story about the lost tribes of Israel, some of whom were purportedly living in the Spanish Indies. Montesinos’s account found an eager audience in Amsterdam, and it likely encouraged the launching of a curious expedition in 1648 to help bring the conversos of Spanish America more into alignment with rabbinical Judaism.

Although this quest proved unsuccessful, Tierra Firme and the Sephardic diaspora did become more closely intertwined than ever before with the rise of Curaçao as a major Atlantic entrepôt in the 1650s. Although these commercial linkages were of recent origin, they succeeded in large part because of two long-standing factors: the complicity of local officials, and the fluidity that existed between Jews and New Christians. Taken together, these continuities necessitate a re- evaluation of the traditional periodization of the history of the Portuguese in the Spanish circum-

Caribbean. To be sure, the 1640s marked the beginning of a new chapter, but it was hardly the end of Portuguese influence in the region.

The Plot of the Conde de Castelmelhor

The origins of this conspiracy were rooted in the ongoing efforts of the Spanish to crush the English colony of Providence Island. Founded in 1629 by Puritan settlers from England, the colony had long been a thorn in the side of the Spanish. Always a threat to Spanish maritime trade, the English only grew more emboldened after a Spanish attack in 1635 failed to dislodge

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them.2 Four years later, the English sacked Trujillo (Honduras), infuriating Spanish authorities still further, who ordered a second attack against this “intolerable infestation” of heretics in 1640.

Led by Antonio Maldonado y Tejada, the sargento mayor of Cartagena, this expedition likewise failed to accomplish its objective.3 The colony of Providence seemed to be living up to its name.

Realizing that the desired conquest of Providence Island would require a much stronger military force, the Crown sought to take advantage of the recent arrival to the area of a joint Spanish-

Portuguese armada, commanded by the skilled admiral, Francisco Díaz Pimienta, who himself was likely of Portuguese descent. Ordered to eradicate the English threat once and for all, Díaz

Pimienta departed Cartagena on 6 May 1641 with a force of 1,400 soldiers and 600 sailors and artillerymen. Arriving eleven days later at Santa Catalina (as the island was known to the

Spanish), the admiral consulted with his officers about the best line of attack against the English defenses. Despite being delayed by stormy weather, the Iberian forces quickly overwhelmed the

English strongholds. One week after their arrival, Santa Catalina was once again under Habsburg control.4

The conquest of Providence Island marked the final act of Spanish-Portuguese imperial cooperation, although the threat of Portuguese subversion was always present. At the time of the fleet’s departure in May, news of the Braganza revolt was known by all, although its ramifications were, of course, still to be determined. Nevertheless, as Fernando Serrano Mangas has noted, Díaz Pimienta was forced to undertake the expedition “without full confidence

2 Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 135-36. 3 “intolerable infestación.” Relación del suceso que tuvo Francisco Díaz Pimienta, general de la Real Armada de las Indias en la isla de Santa Catalina [1642], in Varias relaciones del Perú y Chile y conquista de la isla de Santa Catalina, 1535 a 1658 (Madrid: Imprenta de Miguel Ginesta, 1879), 331. 4 Ibid., 332-50.

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concerning the fidelity of the Portuguese soldiers under his command.”5 According to the admiral’s reports, the Portuguese appeared, on the whole, to be dependable soldiers during the conquest of Providence Island, although there were admittedly growing indications of discontent:

“Many captains and solders of this nation [i.e., the Portuguese] proceeded with valor, [although] almost all were quite unenthusiastic.”6 Nevertheless, after the successful capture of the island on

25 May, Díaz Pimienta reported that “the Portuguese gave him loving praises as warmly as the

Castilians did.”7 Yet, even at this happy moment, there were foreboding signs of future discontent. In particular, the admiral noted that the loss of the Portuguese ship, Nuestra Señora d’Ajuda, was due not to the English defenders, but to a handful of Portuguese who wanted to take the ship back to Portugal, in support the Duke of Braganza and his forces. Noting the irony in hindsight, Diaz Pimienta reported that during this affair, “the Conde de Castelmelhor proceeded with great affection of love for the service of the King [Philip IV].” At the time, the admiral admitted, “it did not seem that this evil [of treason] was to be found in the noblemen.”8

Subsequent events in Cartagena, however, would necessitate a reconsideration of this judgment.

Díaz Pimienta did not have much time in Cartagena to celebrate his victory over the

English, as he was soon dispatched to meet the treasure fleet in Puertobelo. When he returned in early September, he found “the city and the presidio of Cartagena very unruly.”9 Only a few days

5 Fernando Serrano Mangas, La encrucijada portuguesa: esplendor y quiebra de la unión ibérica en las Indias de Castilla (1600-1668) (Badajoz: Diputación Provincial, 1994), 131. 6 “Aunque en la jornada de Santa Catalina procedieron con valor muchos capitanes y soldados de esta nación casi todos fueron de muy mala gana.” Letter dated 10 September 1641. AGI, Santa Fe, 3, f. 3r. 7 “le dijeron amorosas alabanzas, tan afectuosas en los portugueses como en los castellanos.” Relación del suceso que tuvo Francisco Díaz Pimienta, 350. 8 “en que el General de Portugal, a quien cometió el de Castilla la causa, y el conde Castilmellor, procedieron con grande afecto de amor al servicio del Rey, nuestro señor, pareciendo cualquiera dellos fiscal desta maldad, que entonces no pareció que había hallado acogida en gente noble.” Ibid., 352. 9 “Halló la ciudad y presidio de Cartagena muy alborotada.” Ibid., 356.

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previously, one of the Portuguese noblemen who had served under Díaz Pimienta in the Armada, the Conde de Castelmelhor, had been thwarted in his attempt to capture the city of Cartagena in the name of the Duke of Braganza. Although the specifics are unclear and will never be fully known, it appears that Castelmelhor had planned to capture the reducto de la Media Luna on the night of 29 August 1641, and from there, launch a strike against the city’s other defenses.10

Unfortunately for the Portuguese nobleman, before he had a chance to launch this audacious attack, he was betrayed by a fellow Portuguese, Antonio de Azevedo, in whom Castelmelhor had confided his treacherous plot. Instead of supporting the rebels, Azevedo immediately informed the sargento mayor, who arrested Castelmelhor and five other Portuguese captains and ordered the streets emptied and all the militia companies armed. Fearful of antagonizing the large number of Portuguese soldiers that were in Cartagena as part of the armada, the sargento mayor issued these commands under the pretext of the appearance of seventy enemy ships in la Punta de las

Canoas. City officials ordered Castelmelhor and his five comrades to be questioned under torture, in order to gain further information about their treasonous designs. In a relacão published in Lisbon only a few months later, special umbrage was taken at this decision to torture someone of noble blood, “as if someone of such distinguished blood would confess under even the most cruel torture.”11 Indeed, after confessing nothing, Castelmelhor was imprisoned and sentenced to be taken to Spain to await further judgment.

10 Good summaries of these confusing events can be found in Juan Manuel Pacheco, “Sublevación portuguesa en Cartagena,” Boletín de historia y antigüedades 42 (1955): 557-60; and Stuart Schwartz, “Panic in the Indies: The Portuguese Threat to the Spanish Empire, 1640-50,” Colonial Latin American Review 2 (1993): 176-78. 11 Relacão verdadeira dos sucessos do Conde de Castelmelhor, preso na cidade de Cartagena de Indias… (Lisbon: Na Officina de Domingos Lopes Rosa, 1642), n.p.

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Castelmelhor was placed in the Castillo de San Fernando de Bocachica, which would ultimately prove inadequate to the task. Castelmelhor was not without sympathizers among the

Portuguese, and a few of his friends, including his Portuguese confessor, Ambrosio do Spirito

Santo, hatched a plan to break Castelmelhor out of prison. As an aside, it is worth noting that among this group of conspirators was a Spaniard, Antonio Rodríguez, who declared himself to be “Castilian in nationality, but Portuguese in spirit.”12 The plan put together by Rodríguez,

Padre Ambrosio, and the others worked to perfection. On the night of 16 July 1642, a Portuguese ship escorted by two Dutchmen quietly approached the walls of the castillo. Without disturbing the sentries, the Conde managed to climb over the walls and into the waiting ship. Once they had sailed a short distance from the city, the ship discharged its artillery as a taunting mockery of the

Spanish.13 Humiliated, the governor ordered an investigation into why the castillo was caught so off-guard. What officials discovered only added insult to injury. The castellano and teniente had been away, and the jail had been left to a lowly sargento, who subsequently confessed (under torture) to having assisted Castelmelhor’s escape. A Portuguese mulato confessed the same. Both men were sentenced to death. The absent castellano, Gregorio de Castellar, was fined 8,000 pesos. As for Castelmelhor, he successfully reached Portugal, where he served João IV on the

Galician frontier and eventually became governor-general of Brazil (1650-54).14

The whole Castelmelhor affair seemed to justify all of the Spanish anxieties about the perfidious nature of the Portuguese who manned the armadas and resided in the Spanish Indies.

A few months before the aborted takeover of Cartagena, anxieties were expressed to the Consejo

12 Ibid. 13 Pacheco, “Sublevación portuguesa en Cartagena, 558-59. 14 H.V. Livermore, A New History of Portugal [1966], 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 179-80; Stuart B. Schwartz, Sovereignty and Society in Colonial Brazil: The High Court of Bahia and Its Judges, 1609-1751 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 373.

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de Estado about the entire armada. According to this unknown author, the “danger” was great, because “the captains and almost all of the men [of this armada] are Portuguese.”15 This kind of consternation on the part of some officials in Spain was directed not only to lower-ranking officers and enlisted men, but also even to some of the highest-ranking admirals and generals.

Díaz Pimienta provides a striking example of this. In December 1640, the admiral was given command of the entire armada, a promotion that was criticized by the Viceroy of Peru once news of the revolt in Portugal reached the New World.16 Not only was Díaz Pimienta suspected of being of Portuguese descent, he was also rumored to be of disreputable ancestry. Specific allegations emerged in an unambiguous way during his later consideration for the Order of

Santiago. It was said that the admiral

is not Castilian nor has limpieza de sangre on his father or his mother’s side. … He is the son of a so-and-so Pimienta, of the Portuguese nation; although born in the Canary Islands, he is a Hebrew and a son of a mulata slave called Catalina la Cagona; and as the son of such lowly parents, he was raised doing menial tasks, walking barefoot through the city, carrying a quitasol for his father, a task in those parts for blacks, mulattos, and Indians or mestizos, not Spaniards; and being older, he was a vendor of cheap merchandise until he sailed to Angola as a cargador de negros, which is an occupation of commoners.17

According to Serrano Mangas, it was only thanks to a direct intervention on the part of Philip IV that Díaz Pimienta was admitted to the noble Order of Santiago.

Despite the qualms of the viceroy, who always possessed strong misgivings regarding the

Portuguese, Díaz Pimienta retained his position as top commander of the joint Spanish-

Portuguese Armada, which proved to be greatly advantageous to the Spanish. Similarly, after the machinations of Castelmelhor had been discovered, officials in Cartagena and in Spain largely

15 Quoted in Serrano Mangas, La encrucijada portuguesa, 101. 16 Ibid., 130. 17 Quoted in ibid., 85.

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pursued a moderate course of investigation, attempting to discern between those Portuguese who remained faithful to Philip IV and those who switched their allegiances to the rebel Duke of

Braganza. This was a natural course of action for several reasons, not least of which was the basic fact that the Castelmelhor plot was only discovered due to the loyalty of the Portuguese captain, Antonio de Azevedo. Another important Portuguese loyalist was Rodrigo Lobo, who

Díaz Pimienta lauded as having shown “much passion and fervor in the service of Your

Majesty.”18 Furthermore, it should also be noted that as part of Antonio Maldonado de Texeda’s failed assault against the English at Providence Island in 1640, the brother of the Conde de

Castelmelhor, Nicolás Sosa de Vasconcelos, commanded a force of 400 men, including many

Portuguese noblemen brought on the expedition at Sosa de Vasconcelos’s own expense.19 These sorts of deeds all demonstrated a strong loyalty to the Habsburg Crown on the part of Portuguese individuals at a time when the broader Union of the Crowns was breaking apart. Portugal may have been deemed a faithless kingdom, but it was clear to most observers that the same could not be said for all Portuguese.20

As always, distinguishing between loyal and disloyal Portuguese was difficult, although certainly some Spaniards were willing to use nationality as a straightforward index by which to measure fidelity or treason. Notably, the viceroy of Peru, the Marqués de Mancera, was quite suspicious of all Portuguese, viewing them as potential traitors to the Crown. In his estimation, half of the Portuguese were “unattached persons, in whom confidence was not able to be

18 “mostrando gran sentimiento y fervor en el servicio de Vuestra Majestad.” Letter dated 10 September 1641. AGI, Santa Fe, 3, f. 3r. 19 Kupperman, Providence Island, 289. 20 Of course, similar to what was observed in Chapter 3, broad generalizations about loyalty derived from nationality were undermined by the presence of treasonous Spaniards. In the case of the Castelmelhor affair, it is notable that one of the accomplices that helped the Portuguese nobleman escape from prison was Antonio Rodríguez, a Spaniard.

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placed.”21 The image of the peripatetic Portuguese, who was highly mobile and rootless was far from the only stereotype that got wide circulation in the aftermath of the Braganza revolt. One particularly striking real cédula, sent to the Viceroy of New Spain in early 1642, gathers many of these canards together in one place: the Portuguese were said to be “more united amongst themselves than all the rest”; they were “the sponge [that soaked up] all the gold and silver” in the New World; and they were “wealthier and better armed than the Spanish in the [viceregal] ports.”22 Of course, religion and genealogy were very much part of these concerns as well. For his part, Viceroy Mancera wrote to Philip IV, warning him that all the Portuguese in Buenos

Aires were New Christians.23

Yet, even in such perilous times, many Spaniards continued to view most Portuguese as trustworthy members of the local community and faithful vassals of the Crown. In 1641, the governor of Puerto Rico affirmed that “the Portuguese that are found on this island today [are] the most naturalized by Your Majesty and much attached to your royal service; and even those with fewer roots, it has seemed advisable not to proceed with mistrust against them.”24 The practical considerations alluded to by the governor in this letter were explicitly utilized by many

Portuguese petitioners who sought to have their rights and privileges reinstated by the Crown.

Many supplicants based their appeals on the elementary realities of economic hardship facing the

Spanish Indies in the wake of the collapse of the trans-Atlantic slave trade following the rebellion of Portugal. “[Given] the great necessity that there is in all of the Indies for slaves,” wrote Simón Garces, a vecino of Seville, to the king in 1645, “I offer to go and obtain black

21 Quoted in Serrano Mangas, La encrucijada portuguesa, 109. 22 Quoted in ibid., 84, 88. 23 Ibid., 84. 24 Quoted in ibid., 138.

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slaves [from Africa] in order to bring them to the Indies, on the following conditions…”25

Garces went on to give a list of standard demands concerning who should crew the ships (“at least half being Spaniards, [either] Castilian or Portuguese”), where the slaves should be delivered (“Cartagena or New Spain”), among other such considerations. All in all, the demands envision a return to the slave-trade system that flourished over the previous half-century, but that had been interrupted by the rebellion of Portugal.

It must not be forgotten that many Portuguese in Spanish America nurtured a stubborn hope of continued political union between Portugal and Spain during these tumultuous years.

These loyalists included not only many prominent Portuguese who resided at the royal court in

Madrid, but also countless numbers of more ordinary Portuguese who lived throughout the

Spanish Indies. For example, Tome López de Sosa, a vecino of Santa Fe de Bogotá, wrote an impassioned appeal to Philip IV in 1645 on behalf of himself and his brothers, one of whom was

Antonio de Sosa Hurtado, an alferez de la gente de guerra in Lima. In his letter, López de Sosa denounces the “tyranny of the Duke of Braganza,” and pleads with the king to command that

“the Portuguese found in Your kingdoms not be given any grievance, trouble, or vexation” on account of “the pretext of being born in the kingdom of Portugal.”26 One particular grievance that upset López de Sosa was the command of the viceroy that all Portuguese be prohibited from carrying arms. This proscription deprived the Portuguese from the “great honor and estimation

25 “viendo la mucha necesidad que hay en todas las Indias de esclavos por el levantamiento de Portugal ofrece ir a rescatar negros para pasarlos a las Indias con las condiciones siguientes.” Letter dated 27 July 1645. AGI, Indiferente, 2796, f. 1r. 26 “los portugueses que se hallan en sus reinos no se les haga agravio molestia ni vejacion pues por la tirania del Duque de Braganza no han perdido lo que merecieron naciendo vasallos de Vuestra Majestad,” “con pretexto de ser nacidos en el reino de Portugal.” Letter dated 19 January 1645. AGI, Santa Fe, 14, N.79, f. 1r.

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that has been and always will be in the use of arms … in service of Your Majesty.”27 According to López de Sosa, faithful Portuguese vassals like himself and his brothers should not be prohibited from any privileges accorded to Castilians, since, like the Castilians, they themselves are “true Spaniards and loyal vassals of Your Majesty.”28 Despite the changing circumstances of the decade, López de Sosa utilized long-standing notions of vassalage and honor, in order to negotiate a more favorable position for himself and other Portuguese. In the same way as

Portuguese petitioners of an earlier period argued that the actions of disloyal pilots or unfaithful conversos should not disadvantage their own faithful service to the Crown, so did López de Sosa argue in 1645 that the punishment due to the rebels should not be borne by all Portuguese alike.

Drawing upon the common logic of royal paternalism, López de Sosa called upon the king to punish those who were guilty, but also reward those who were faithful—regardless of nationality.

By the beginning of the 1650s, it was clear that despite the continuing war with Portugal, the majority of Portuguese residents in Spanish America remained firmly planted within their local communities. It was becoming apparent that the emergency measures decreed in the early

1640s were no longer necessary. Thus, in 1651, the Crown decreed that the weapons confiscated from the Portuguese born in the Spanish New World be returned, since these “natives of [the

Spanish Indies] have milder affections for the nation and fatherland that they do not know [i.e.,

Portugal].”29 Around this same time, the Audiencia of Santo Domingo debated what security measures against the Portuguese were needed, if any. The President of the Audiencia advocated

27 “mayor honra y estimación ha sido y será siempre el uso de las armas para mejor emplearse con ellas en el servicio de Vuestra Majestad.” Ibid., f. 1r. 28 “españoles verdaderos y naturales vasallos de Vuestra Majestad.” Letter dated 19 January 1645. AGI, Santa Fe, 14, N.79, f. 1v. 29 Quoted in Serrano Mangas, La encrucijada portuguesa, 155.

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expelling all Portuguese from the island—a strategy that was frequently called for in the 1640s, but less commonly carried out. In contrast to this proposal, the majority of the judges gave the

Crown their reasons for not wanting to carry out such tactics:

No Portuguese has been found to have been delinquent nor have any occasioned any suspicion of infidelity to the king, our lord, but always very obedient to your royal commands and ministers of Peace and War; the same is true in relation to religion, as there is no memory of anyone having been brought before the vigilance of the Holy Office. And in the militia and other ministries, the Portuguese have been useful and faithful, without anything being discovered to the contrary.30

Although this positive opinion of the Portuguese was not unanimously shared by all members of the Audiencia, it is illustrative of how Spanish officials in the Caribbean judged the question of

Portuguese loyalty on the basis of observation and first-hand experience, not irrational hysteria and wild rumor.

Furthermore, it is also revealing that the Audiencia of Santo Domingo mentions the local militia companies as one prominent “ministry” in which the Portuguese had served the Crown faithfully, “without anything being discovered to the contrary.” The wisdom of utilizing

Portuguese soldiers in the Spanish Caribbean after 1640 was naturally questioned by many

Spanish officials, a large number of whom were resolutely opposed to having Portuguese residents serve in any military capacity. Nor was this a trivial question, as Portuguese soldiers constituted a significant number of the local militia forces in the Spanish Caribbean. In 1640, the governor of Puerto Rico reported that “the greater part [of soldiers on the island] are Portuguese or disabled”—a sentence that is highly revelatory of the governor’s opinion on the reliability of the Portuguese.31 In contrast to the Audiencia’s later assessment, it seems that this local governor had little faith that his Portuguese troops would serve as loyal defenders of the island.

30 Quoted in ibid., 145. 31 Quoted in ibid., 26.

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Nonetheless, even with these misgivings, considerations of a most practical variety soon took precedence. For instance, Díaz Pimienta judged it expedient to leave a mixed contingent of

Spanish and Portuguese soldiers behind to defend Santa Catalina from any avenging English fleets or opportunistic Dutch expeditions.32 As the War for Portuguese Independence escalated in the mid-1640s, however, this status quo became even more delicate. The governor of the island,

Jerónimo de Ojeda, even reported that six Portuguese soldiers had attempted to poison him, but word of the planned assassination got out, and Ojeda ordered the orchestrators to be sentenced to the galleys.33 After this incident, the governor asked the king for replacements for all Portuguese stationed on the island. In response, the king commanded thirty or forty Spanish soldiers be sent to Santa Catalina and, in turn, the Portuguese soldiers taken back to Spain. Royal cédulas were also sent to the president of the Audiencia of Panama and the governor in Cartagena asking for their cooperation in sending replacement soldiers, if none could be found aboard the silver fleet.34 It is unclear whether these orders were ever carried out. Certainly for the rest of the century, Spanish forces on the island suffered from lack of supplies and low morale. Santa

Catalina was a remote and unappealing outpost, so much so that plans were even drawn up to send a few dozen women of questionable morals from Cartagena and Panama to the island, in order to improve the morale of the Spanish garrison.35

If the Portuguese were indeed relieved of their post in Santa Catalina, they probably were likely quite overjoyed at this change in fortunes. Many of their fellow countrymen, however,

32 Donald Rowland, “Spanish Occupation of the Island of Old Providence, or Santa Catalina, 1641-1670,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 15 (1935): 300-02. 33 Ibid., 302. 34 AGI, Panama, 229, L.3, ff. 359r-364v. 35 Rowland, “Spanish Occupation,” 302-04.

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would remain stationed in presidios across the circum-Caribbean. For example, in 1655, in the wake of the English conquest of Jamaica, the Audiencia of Santo Domingo again reported to the king about the utilization of Portuguese and creole soldiers throughout the island. A royal cédula had been sent sometime earlier ordering officials on the island to bar Portuguese and creoles from serving as soldiers, but in response, members from the Council of War and the Council of the Treasury all reported on the faithful service carried out by soldiers from “all nations” throughout the island. Furthermore, in light of the low numbers of soldiers on the islands, the report stated that it would be unwise to prohibit anyone who had demonstrated continued fidelity in their positions to be barred from military service in the future.36 As has been seen repeatedly throughout this dissertation, local circumstances required a re-evaluation of priorities. While the

Crown was concerned about possible treasonous activities on the part of Portuguese soldiers, local officials in the Caribbean faced difficult shortages of men and supplies. Questions of birthplace, even in a kingdom that was presently at war with Spain, did not seem to warrant such drastic actions as barring Portuguese from serving as soldiers against Spain’s enemies.

Jesuit Connections

In 1654, the governor of Buenos Aires wrote to the king, declaring that he found complete “fidelity in the married Portuguese who are rooted with criollo children and grandchildren.” Further emphasizing the creolized nature of the younger Portuguese population, the governor reiterated the same point: “[As the older Portuguese] are married to criollas or daughters of Castilians, … [disloyalty is] an impossibility.”37 What the governor observed about the second-generation Portuguese in Buenos Aires also held true in Cartagena. Raised and

36 “todas naciones.” AGI, Santo Domingo, 58, R.2, N.12. 37 Quoted in Serrano Mangas, La encrucijada portuguesa, 155.

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educated in the New World, these sons of Portuguese immigrants followed the same patterns of integration and social ascent examined in prior chapters. The upheavals of the 1640s did not hinder this second generation from participating thoroughly in the political and social life of their local community. This section examines these continuities through the multi-generational ties cultivated between the Portuguese of Cartagena and the Jesuit college of that city. Through the inclusion of Portuguese Jesuits in the college, as well as through influential patronage relationships with elite Portuguese laymen, the Jesuits in Cartagena served to exemplify the

Catholic religiosity of the resident Portuguese, thereby facilitating their integration into local society.

In 1565, twenty-five years after their founding, the Jesuits were granted permission by

Philip II to go and labor in the Spanish Indies. Shortly thereafter, the first Jesuits arrived in

Cartagena, but quickly moved on to Bogota and Lima. Among these first Jesuits in South

America were a handful of Portuguese. For example, in 1576, four Portuguese Jesuits lived in the

Lima colegio—a number that would double by 1601.38 By the turn of the seventeenth century, other Portuguese Jesuits could be found in Potosí, Arequipa, and Panama.39 It was at this time that they established a permanent colegio in Cartagena, which had long been eyed by the Jesuits who hoped to battle against the widely reputed immorality of the city’s inhabitants.40 After multiple requests, official permission was given in 1604. Arriving in a city that already boasted

38 Antonio de Egaña, ed., Monumenta Peruana II (1576-1580) (Rome: Apud “Monumenta Historica Soc. Iesu,” 1958), 124-29; Antonio de Egaña and Enrique Fernández, eds., Monumenta Peruana VII (1600- 1602) (Rome: Apud “Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu,” 1981), 238-62. 39 Antonio de Egaña, ed., Monumenta Peruana V (1592-1595) (Rome: Apud “Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu,” 1970), 769, 773; Egaña and Fernández, Monumenta Peruana VII, 256. 40 According to one Jesuit, Diego de Zuñiga, in 1583: “Predicó antes el Padre Rector declarándoles cómo aquesto era castigo de Dios por peccados, máxime públicos, de cierto género que aquí dixen ay muchos, al tono de Cartagena.” Antonio de Egaña, ed., Monumenta Peruana III (1581-1585) (Rome: Apud “Monumenta Historica Soc. Iesu,” 1961), 244.

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multiple religious orders, the Jesuits were forced to rely on the generosity of the local populace.

As it turned out, it was an “ilustre lusitano” who provided much of the needed resources to get the newly established Jesuit college off the ground. This lusitano was Manuel Artiño (sometimes given as “Cutiño”), a former student of the Jesuits in Évora. Relieving the newly arrived Jesuits of the need to lodge “in a thatch hut built by [their] own hands,” Artiño gave them his own house without accepting any payment, donating it to the Society “de limosna.”41 The grateful Jesuits claimed that their new residence was “the best house in the city,” and they expressed their profound gratitude to this “caballero portugués” for his liberality.42

The generosity of Artiño was hardly an aberration; instead, it was a prominent example of a quite common pattern of religious patronage on the part of Portuguese immigrants to

Spanish America. The most prominent example of this was undoubtedly Jorge Fernández

Gramajo, who was the sole benefactor of the Franciscan monastery of San Diego in Cartagena, which one traveling Spanish friar noted was “of excellent design and construction, built at his own expense by Captain Gramajo.”43 Fernández Gramajo’s patronage did not stop with the

Franciscans, however, as he also contributed generously to the local Augustinian monastery as well. As one of the most distinguished residents of Cartagena, Fernández Gramajo cemented his reputation for liberality with regular donations to the city’s hospitals and churches. Although

41 “en una choza pajiza hecha de nuestras manos.” José del Rey Fajardo and Alberto Gutiérrez, eds., Cartas anuas de la provincia del Nuevo Reino de Granada: Años 1604 a 1621 (Bogota: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2015), 136. 42 “la mejor casa de la ciudad en el mejor sitio de ella.” Ibid., 136. 43 “de excelente obra y fábrica, que hizo a su costa el Capitán Gramajo.” Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, Compendio y descripción de las Indias occidentales [c. 1620] (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1948), 292. Julián Ruiz Rivera posits that Fernández established the convent as “a secure front” against the Inquisition; however, he provides no evidence for his claim. Julián B. Ruiz Rivera, “Gobierno, comercio y sociedad en Cartagena de Indias en el siglo XVII,” in Cartagena de Indias en el siglo XVII, eds. Haroldo Calvo Stevenson and Adolfo Meisel Roca (Cartagena: Banco de la República, 2007), 362.

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friends with some of the highest-ranking clerics of the region, including the bishops of Cartagena and Popayán, Fernández Gramajo could depend upon the testimony of “public voice and opinion” to attest to his pious service to God and the local community. Although differing in scale, the same type of religious liberality can be witnessed in much poorer Portuguese as well.

For instance, Andrés González was a pharmacist who routinely donated necessary medicines to

Cartagena’s monasteries and convents, as well as tending to the poor and destitute of the city.

These acts of generosity, together with his curative skill, led many leading residents of the city to declare that González was “one of the most useful, necessary, and loyal persons in this land.”44

For rich and poor Portuguese alike, works of mercy, such as almsgiving and religious patronage, were critical means by which a person’s piety was enacted and recognized by others in the community.

From the beginning of their establishment, the Jesuits in Cartagena regarded their primary collective vocation to be missionaries to the thousands of enslaved Africans who were unloaded each year on the city’s shores. Indeed, only one year after their establishment in

Cartagena, the local Jesuits had set up a congregation for “negros ladinos.”45 As most slaves at this time were shipped across the ocean by Portuguese slave traders, it became inevitable that the

Jesuits and the Portuguese would be in continual contact and association. Sandoval recounts an exchange he had with two (Portuguese?) slave traders who had scruples about their occupation.

After trying to justify themselves based on the personal sacrifices and expenses that they had made to procure their human cargo, Sandoval delivered this caustic reply:

Sir, go from here to the church of San Francisco, which is somewhat far away, and upon arriving cut the lamp from its cord and take it to your house. And if when the

44 “una de leal personas mas útiles y necesarias en esta tierra.” AGI, Escribanía, 589B, pieza 23, f. 20v. 45 Margaret M. Olsen, Slavery and Salvation in Colonial Cartagena de Indias (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), 55.

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law apprehends you as a thief and intends to hang you (as it hung a man the other day for having stolen the lamp from [the church of] Santo Domingo), say simply that you did not steal the lamp, but rather you had taken it as compensation for the trouble you had gone through in going from here to there to get it. If, for this reason, as I say, the law accepts the justification for your work and does not punish you, I will say that you bring your blacks here honestly, and that the basis for your reasoning is solid.46

This hostility on the part of Sandoval and many of his fellow Jesuits to the typical practices of the slave trade undoubtedly provoked the ire of many in the slave-trading business, which certainly included not a few Portuguese. Sandoval’s story ends with one of the slave traders exclaiming to his partner, “By God, you are strange. Didn’t I tell you not to ask these fathers anything?”47

Early Jesuit histories of the era reinforce this self-understanding of Cartagena Jesuits’ collective vocation. For instance, it is not accidental that eight of the first ten chapters about the

Cartagena colegio in Pedro de Mercado’s Historia de la Provincia del Nuevo Reino y Quito de la

Compañía de Jesús (c. 1683) recount the heroic labors of the Jesuits in “whitening the souls of the blacks” [blanqueando almas de negros].48 The same themes of evangelizing the heathen or semi-heathen emerge throughout most of the twenty-seven chapters concerning Cartagena, although they are sometimes directed to other groups, such as unbaptized Turks or English heretics. Regardless of the target groups in question, it is clear that the Jesuits saw themselves as a vital Christianizing influence in a city beset by so many heresies and diabolic practices.49

Unsurprisingly, this led the Jesuits of the city to cooperate with the Holy Office. At least three of the rectors of the colegio—Antonio Agustín, Baltasar Mas Burgues, and Sebastián de Murillo—

46 Quoted in ibid., 108-09. 47 Ibid., 109. 48 Pedro de Mercado, Historia de la Provincia del Nuevo Reino y Quito de la Compañía de Jesús [c. 1683], 4 vols. (Bogota: Empresa Nacional de Publicaciones, 1957), I.233. 49 Ibid., I.225-346.

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served either as consultores or as calificadores for the Cartagena tribunal.50 Additionally, St.

Pedro Claver assisted the Inquisition by ministering to the defendants in prison. In one notable instance, he provided last rites to the dying Blas de Paz Pinto, who succumbed to injuries sustained while being tortured.51

Sandoval and Claver were joined in Cartagena by many confrères from Italy and

Portugal. For many aspiring Jesuits across Europe, the West (and East) Indies were especially alluring. As historian Jennifer Selwyn notes, part of the draw was the potential glory for God and the Society through heroic overseas labors, but for many, there was also the hope “to escape the drudgery of less glorious activities closer to home.”52 Like many of his contemporaries, the

Italian Jesuit, Carlo D’Orta wanted to labor in distant lands, and judging from his correspondence, he was especially persistent in making his desires known. In one letter to his superiors, D’Orta writes,

As of today, it has been fifteen days since I reminded your Paternity [Muzio Vitelleschi] of the desire that I have expressed many times in the past to be employed as an Apostle. … I feel drawn to far-off places, where one could truly consume one’s time and one’s life. … I have not yet had a response [from you] … For this reason, once again, I beg you to console me [by] sending me on one of the next missions to the East … [knowing] that once there, I will remain a most obedient son.53

D’Orta eventually received what he desired, albeit he was sent to the New World, rather than to the East Indies. Stationed in Cartagena, whatever idealized notions D’Orta might have had of the

50 Anna María Splendiani, et al., eds., Cincuenta años de Inquisición en el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias, 1610-1660. 4 vols. (Bogota: Centro Editorial Javeriano, 1997), II.177, 210; José del Rey Fajardo, Los jesuitas en Cartagena de Indias, 1604-1767 (Bogota: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2004), 49, 229. 51 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.59. 52 Jennifer D. Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits’ Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 100. 53 Quoted in ibid., 113.

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New World quickly vanished. In his letters, the Italian Jesuit laments the unappealing food, the oppressive weather, and the endless numbers of insects, although he states that he mentions all these things “not out of unhappiness … but only to inform you of the qualities of this part of the

New World.”54 D’Orta was hardly the only Italian to experience such inconveniences. In 1616, six men were sent to Spanish America from Naples alone, and many of these Italian Jesuits were transferred to the newly established Jesuit province of New Granada and Quito.55 The Cartagena colegio alone boasted four Italian members during its first two decades.56

The Italian Jesuits in New Granada were joined by a number of Portuguese compatriots.

Like his more famous counterparts, Alonso de Sandoval and St. Pedro Claver, Francisco Martín, a Portuguese from Lagos, entered the Society of Jesus and became proficient in several African languages during his thirty-year residence in Cartagena. According to historian José del Rey

Fajardo, it is likely that Martín first immigrated to Cartagena, and then decided to become a

Jesuit. After thirty years laboring in the port city, he was assigned to Mompox and later to

Honda, a small town along the Magdalena River, where the octogenarian Jesuit died in 1674.57

Other Portuguese Jesuits in Cartagena took on different roles. For example, Luis Méndez, a

Portuguese who had studied rhetoric in Évora, spent four years in Cartagena (1606-1610), during

54 Quoted in ibid., 114. Of course, D’Orta was hardly the only resident in Cartagena to complain about the weather and the mosquitos. The inquisitors make repeated mention of such discomforts in their correspondence. For example, in one letter dated 9 July 1619, the inquisitors Mañozca and Salcedo lament how Cartagena possessed “the greatest inconveniences in all the Indies,” including the “heat and the mosquitos” [las mayores incomodidades que hay en las Indias … aire de calor y mosquitos]. AHN, Inq., L.1009, ff. 14r-14v. 55 Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 111. 56 Rey Fajardo, Los jesuitas en Cartagena de Indias. 57 Ibid., 204-05.

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which time he labored to evangelize the Guajira Indians together with a Spanish Jesuit, Francisco

Perlín.58

In addition to having Portuguese within its ranks, the Jesuits in Cartagena also maintained close spiritual and financial relationships with many of the leading Portuguese residents of the city. For example, one witness testified that Luis Gómez Barreto, the depositario general, was

“very charitable and a patron of the Society of Jesus.”59 Likewise, it was said that Luis

Fernández Suárez was very charitable to all, but “in particular to the said [barefoot] nuns and the

Society of Jesus.”60 Another witness affirmed that Fernández Suárez “heard Mass in the colegio of the Society of Jesus frequently, … praying with devotion.”61 Finally, it is known that Juan

Rodríguez Mesa had business dealings with the Jesuits in Angola, which likely involved the colegio in Cartagena as well.62

Given the nature of most of the sources that have survived concerning seventeenth- century Cartagena, it can be difficult to gain much insight into Portuguese members of the

Society of Jesus or those Portuguese who were friends and patrons of the local colegio.

Thankfully, one lengthy source exists that sheds some valuable light on these dynamics: the proceso for St. Pedro Claver’s beatification and canonization.63 This collection of hundreds of pages of testimonies from residents in Cartagena across all backgrounds and social classes was begun shortly after Claver’s death in 1654. Portuguese deponents are scattered throughout this

58 Ibid., 215-16. 59 “muy caritativo y limosnero a la Compañía de Jesús.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 18, f. 51v. 60 “en particular a las dichas monjas y a la Compañía de Jesús.” AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 11, f. 52v. 61 “vio muchas veces al susodicho oír misa en el colegio de la Compañía de Jesús … rezar con devoción.” Ibid., f. 80v. 62 AHN, Inq., 1608, exp. 15. 63 Anna María Splendiani and Tulio Aristizábal Giraldo, eds., Proceso de beatificación y canonización de San Pedro Claver (Bogota: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2002).

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proceso, reflecting the multiple close relationships shared between St. Pedro Claver and resident

Portuguese in the city.

The most frequent witness was Manuel Rodríguez, who began his novitiate under Claver in 1646. An ardent disciple of the saint, Rodríguez’s testimony includes a couple of interesting details. First, he declared that Claver would regularly go visit the slaves of Jorge Fernández

Gramajo, the leading Portuguese merchant of the city, ministering to their physical and spiritual needs.64 Perhaps Fernández Gramajo was more welcoming of the Jesuit’s efforts to evangelize his slaves than other slave traders, although it is impossible to know with any certainty. Still, it points to yet another connection between the Portuguese and the Society. Second, Rodríguez recounts an instance when Claver asked the inquisitors for permission to absolve four

Englishmen of their sins of heresy.65 This highlights yet another point of convergence between the Jesuits’ own work in the city and that of the Holy Office, and it corresponds to the Jesuits’ own understanding of their mission as being concerned with battling heresy and ignorance from the city.

Another prominent witness was Manuel López de Estremoz, who hailed from a

Portuguese merchant family with lucrative connections to Peru and Seville. A student of the

Jesuits in Cartagena, López de Estremoz claimed to have known St. Pedro Claver for over twenty years, and experienced firsthand the saint’s extraordinary abilities to cure diseases and maladies. Suffering from a “profound hypochondria and a grave melancholy,” López de

Estremoz testified that it was Claver’s prayers that freed him from this infirmity.66 From that

64 Ibid., 98. 65 Ibid., 125. 66 “de una profunda hipocondría y de tan grave melancolía.” Ibid., 160.

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time on, the Portuguese became a devoted follower of the Jesuit, conversing with him at length and benefiting from “his holy example and exhortations.”67

López de Estremoz was far from Claver’s only Portuguese disciple. The saint also established close friendships with the family of Vicente de Villalobos Tovar, the son of the elder

Vicente de Villalobos, who was discussed in Chapter 5. Villalobos Tovar’s wife, Micaela Heras

Manrique owned a slave named Agustina, who fell ill and died. Calling her name multiple times,

Claver miraculously revived Agustina and began speaking to her. In the midst of a lengthy conversation, he discovered that she was not baptized, despite having gone to confession, hearing

Mass, and doing “all other acts of the Christian.” Claver quickly baptized the woman, and then proceeded to leave the house. Agustina died shortly afterwards, which left everyone astounded at

“the providence of God for having called Father [Claver] to baptize Agustina, granting her salvation.”68 After his death, Claver performed a second miracle for the Villalobos household.

Heras Manrique’s nephew, Domingo de Betancur, fell ill with a severe fever. Seeking divine succor, Heras Manrique prayed to Pedro Claver for the healing of her nephew. According to

Villalobos Tovar, the fever immediately diminished, which the doctors attributed to the intercession of the Jesuit saint.69 These miracles would become staples in later hagiographies of the indefatigable saint from Cartagena.70

Yet, Claver’s engagements with the Portuguese residents of the city and their families were not limited to the miraculous. Much more mundane encounters emerge as well in the

67 “su santo ejemplo y exhortaciones.” Ibid., 160. 68 “todos los otros actos de cristiana,” “la providencia de Dios por haber llamado al padre para que, bautizando a Agustina, ésta se salvara.” Ibid., 421. 69 Ibid., 496-502. 70 Josef Fernández, Apostólica y penitente vida de el V.P. Pedro Claver, de la Compañía de Jesús (Zaragoza: Diego Dormer, 1666), 191-95; Longaro degli Oddi, Vita del venerabil servo di Dio P. Pietro Claver della Compagnia di Gesù, detto l’apostolo degli Etiopi (Rome: Generoso Salomoni, 1748), 66-67.

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proceso. For example, during a Marian feast day when there was an opportunity for gaining an indulgence, Claver went to all the workshops and encouraged the artisans and workers to confess their sins and gain an indulgence. After the feast day was concluded, Claver asked José

Villalobos, a relative of Vicente, whether he had confessed. José Villalobos lied and said that he had confessed, but Claver responded, “You lie, scoundrel, because you did not confess yesterday.” Ashamed and fearful, Villalobos confessed his transgression to Claver, whom he now believed had “a prophetic spirit” that enabled him to know “the hidden thoughts of men.”71

Like López de Estremoz, José Villalobos became a strong admirer of Claver, declaring that the

Jesuit was a man of “rare and apostolic virtue.”72

This opinion was shared by other Portuguese, such as Matías Suárez de Melo, who was born in the Azores, served as a calificador for the Cartagena Inquisition, and eventually became an interim bishop of Cartagena in 1651. When Claver died, Suárez de Melo went to the saint’s body, kissed his hands, and touched a rosary to the lifeless body—a sure sign that Suárez de

Melo believed that Claver was a powerful, saintly intercessor before God.73 Suárez de Melo also served as the celebrant for Claver’s funeral Mass.74 The corpse of St. Pedro Claver also provided further evidence to Manuel López de Estremoz that the Jesuit was indeed a saint, since in death, his face still held a beautiful and serene expression.75 Vicente de Villalobos Tovar kissed

71 “Tu mientes, bellaco, porque tu no te confesaste ayer,” “un espíritu profético y que conocía los pensamientos ocultos de los hombres.” Splendiani and Aristizábal Giraldo, Proceso de beatificación, 398- 99. 72 “hombre apostólico y de rara virtud.” Ibid. 398. 73 Ibid., 473. 74 Ibid., 456. 75 Ibid., 483.

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Claver’s hands, which he declared were so soft and gentle that they seemed to be of someone still living.76

Both López de Estremoz and Villalobos Tovar represent a second generation of

Portuguese, who were born in the New World and continued the trajectories of complete social integration begun by their parents. Like his father, Villalobos Tovar married into one of the leading local families in the region, and he continued holding the same political offices that his father had acquired. In particular, Villalobos Tovar took over his father’s seat on the city council in 1636, and he continued to serve as a regidor for over two decades. The cost of the regimiento, combined with the offices of alguacil mayor and alcaide de cárcel, totaled 14,000 pesos.

However, this was still 7,000 pesos cheaper than what his father paid for the same positions.

Like many elites in the city, Villalobos bore witness to his Catholic religiosity through performative public actions, such as the kissing of Claver’s hands. Unfortunately, the proceso reveals less about how López de Estremoz’s strategies of social ascent. Nonetheless, multiple testimonies reveal the interpersonal dimensions of López de Estremoz’s personal piety. As other examples have shown, the religious piety of Portuguese residents in the circum-Caribbean can be discerned institutionally—often through cofradía membership, as well as patronage of local monasteries and hospitals. Yet, the influence of local holy men and women should not be discounted, despite not often showing up in the surviving sources. In the case of López de

Estremoz, it can be seen how St. Pedro Claver’s spiritual zeal and ability to work miracles greatly influenced the Portuguese merchant. The testimonies given by López de Estremoz demonstrate a close familiarity with the saint, in detailing how Claver prayed both publicly and

76 Ibid., 482.

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privately, as well as the spiritual reading that he valued most.77 Of all of Claver’s many virtues, it seems that one of the things that particularly struck López de Estremoz was how the Jesuit

“said the Mass with much devotion, contemplating the mysteries that are commemorated in it with much ardor and great devotion.”78 While institutional patronage and membership are sometimes dismissed by historians convinced that most Portuguese were crypto-Jews, the example of López de Estremoz, who was undoubtedly a converso, proves even more credible in establishing the genuine Catholic piety of this Portuguese.

Within the Sephardic Orbit

The 1640s and 1650s marked a period of significant realignment between the Spanish

Empire and the Portuguese Sephardic diaspora. Life was becoming much more difficult for the

Portuguese in Spain, due to a wide range of negative developments: the fall of Olivares in 1643, increased inquisitorial persecution, and the suspension of payments by the Crown to the

Portuguese bankers in 1647. These factors, combined with more general economic difficulties, such as the poor harvests experienced in Castile during the late 1640s, led to a marked increase in Portuguese emigration from Spain.79 As a result, Portuguese communities in Amsterdam,

Livorno, Bayonne, and Bordeaux were forced to find ways of providing these new arrivals with resources and employment. Yet, despite the short-term challenges, this influx of persons and capital benefited the Sephardic diaspora as a whole. As Jonathan Israel has observed:

The infusion of new resources from Spain and the strengthening of trade links both with Spain itself and, via Seville and Cadiz, with Spanish America, were two of the most important factors in the dramatic expansion of the commercial activity of

77 Ibid., 76. 78 “decía la misa con mucha devoción y contemplando los misterios que se conmemoran en ella, manifestando su mucho espíritu y gran devoción.” Ibid., 83. 79 Jonathan I. Israel, “The Sephardi Contribution to Economic Life and Colonization in Europe and the New World (16th-18th Centuries),” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1992), II.385-86.

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European Sephardi Jewry in the twenty years after 1647, and it was this which helped to surmount the difficulties of these years and to stabilize a major Sephardi role in the world economy.80

Furthermore, with Dutch Brazil in decline due to armed resistance led by Portuguese planters, it was imperative for the Dutch to find alternative bases of operation in the New World. It was within this context that the tiny island of Curaçao would become one of the most profitable locales anywhere in the circum-Caribbean.

From the beginning, Portuguese Jewish merchants were vital to the success of Curaçao.

In 1651, Juan de Yllán became the founder of the first Jewish congregation in the Caribbean, when he and fifty Jewish families agreed to settle on Curaçao, in order to farm and cultivate the land. However, with little prospect for agricultural success on an island as barren as Curaçao, the

Portuguese Jews almost immediately began cultivating commercial linkages with the Spanish, despite the repeated prohibitions by the Dutch directors of the West India Company.81 Without question, for men like Yllán, international commerce was always the goal. Yllán was the cousin of the “staunch Catholic” García de Yllán Barraza, who had brothers in Cartagena (Gonzalo

Barraza Falcón) and Luanda (Diego Barraza). As with so many other Portuguese, this family made its mark through the slave trade, and Juan de Yllán looked to profit from these familial

80 Ibid., 386. 81 Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of the Jewish Settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s,” in Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800, eds. Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 42. Part of the unhappiness on the part of the West India Company also derived from the perceived high prices charged by Yllán and his associates. For example, in a 1654 letter, the directors complained about “the extensive disruption caused there [i.e., Curaçao] by the Jewish nation and Jan de Yllan in the sale of their produce and old trifles at such excessively high prices, which your honor [Lucas Rodenborg, the Vice-Director on Curaçao] is instructed and ordered to prevent by all means and not allow any longer.” Charles T. Gehring and J.A. Schiltkamp, eds. and trans., New Netherland Documents, Vol. XVII: Curaçao Papers, 1640-1665 (Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1987), 61.

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connections.82 In 1648, three years before his establishment in Curaçao, Yllán was an unsuccessful candidate for the position of “general factor of royal finance and Spanish trade” in the North Sea region. After trading in Curaçao for a few years, Yllán petitioned Philip IV to grant him an asiento contract “to supply ships and soldiers to Spain.”83 This proposal also failed.

Yet, where Juan de Yllán did succeed was in opening up new commercial possibilities between

Curaçao and Spanish America.

It was in the late 1650s when Curaçao truly came into its own. The Anglo-Spanish War of 1655-60 had disrupted the usual trading networks to Spanish America, and contrabandists from nearby Curaçao were quick to fill the void. As one Jewish observer noted, “With the war which His Majesty had with England, as the galleons and fleets were unable to cross, the Dutch managed to introduce many consignments of goods in the [Spanish] Indies, making Curaçao a shop for the entire coast of Tierra Firme.”84 Following the path blazed by Yllán and others, the number of merchants (both Jewish and non-Jewish) operating out of Curaçao increased substantially. By the early 1660s, the economic standing of the island was secure.

These economic and geo-political changes occurred at a propitious moment for the

Sephardi diaspora, as important messianic developments were spreading rapidly throughout all the Jewish communities in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire. One important source for this messianic fervor was the imagined discovery of Jews among the Indians in Spanish

America.85 In 1644, Antonio de Montesinos arrived in Amsterdam and related the strange things

82 Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs,” 40-44. 83 Ibid., 41. 84 Quoted in Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World Maritime Empires (1540-1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 513. I have adjusted Israel’s translation slightly. 85 Richard H. Popkin, “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory,” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, and Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 63-82.

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that he had experienced in Spanish America. According the testimony that he gave to Menasseh ben Israel and others in Amsterdam, Montesinos encountered some Indians in the province of

Quito, who talked strangely about God and his “holy people.”86 It was only sometime later, while Montesinos was imprisoned by the Cartagena Inquisition on suspicions of judaizing, that this Portuguese Jew realized the true identity of his spiritual kinsmen.87 According to the account published by Menasseh ben Israel:

Montezinos went to Cartagena, a city of the Indies, where he being examined [by the Inquisition], was put in prison; and while he prayed to God, such words fell from him; Blessed be the name of the Lord, that hath not made me an idolater, a barbarian, a blackamoor, or an Indian; but as he named Indian, he was angry with himself and said, the Hebrews are Indians; then coming to himself again, he confessed that he doted, and added; can the Hebrews be Indians? Which he also repeated a second, and a third time; and he thought that it was not by chance that he had so much mistaken himself.88

With this epiphany, after being released by the Inquisition, Montesinos set out to find these

Indians again. Upon meeting them again, Montesinos confessed that he was a Jew of the tribe of

Levi, while the Indians revealed themselves as Jews from the tribe of Reuben only gradually, over the course of many days. At one point, Montesinos reports that two Indians came up beside him and recited the Shema in Hebrew: “Shema Israel, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ehad; that is,

86 “The Relation of Antonio Montezinos,” in Menasseh ben Israel, The Hope of Israel: The English Translation by Moses Wall, 1652, eds. Henry Méchoulan and Gérard Nahon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 105. 87 Montesinos’s brief difficulties with the Inquisition produced the only outside source yet found concerning Montesinos’s narrative: a trial summary that relates that Montesinos was imprisoned in Cartagena in 1639 and was released in 1641. However, Montesinos reported in 1644 that these events recounted all began two-and-a-half years previously (i.e., circa March 1642). As Henry Méchoulan and Gérard Nahon suggest, the most plausible explanation is that Montesinos was simply mistaken in his chronology. Other details from the trial summary, however, do match up with Montesinos’s account, such as the fact that he was born in Villaflor, Portugal. Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.85-86; Henry Méchoulan and Gérard Nahon, “Introduction,” in Menasseh ben Israel, The Hope of Israel: The English Translation by Moses Wall, 1652 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 74-75. 88 “The Relation of Antonio Montezinos,” 105-06.

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Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God.”89 By the end of his journey with these mysterious

Indians, Montesinos has not only learned about the presence of his “brethren” living in a most remote location in Spanish America, but he has also become a prophetic messenger, entrusted with a message of liberation.90 To be sure, Montesinos’s account was not some curious tale, but a powerful portent of future redemption. As Montesinos’s indigenous interlocutor, Franciscus, tells him at the very end: “As for the country, be secure, for we rule all the Indians. After we have finished a business which we have with the wicked Spaniards, we will bring you out of your bondage, by God’s help; not doubting, but he who cannot lie, will help us; according to his

Word.”91

To a man like Menasseh ben Israel, whose own father had been tortured at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition and who had long been a champion of Dutch efforts to weaken the

Spanish, this message of liberation resonated strongly.92 Putting great faith in Montesinos’s account, Menasseh ben Israel’s messianic speculations became inescapably intertwined with affairs in the New World. Of course, this is most clearly evidenced in his great work, The Hope of Israel (1650), where, based on scriptural prophecy, the testimony of Montesinos, and rational conjecture, the renowned rabbi argues that “the Western Indies were anciently inhabited by a

89 Ibid., 108. 90 Ronnie Perelis, “‘These Indians Are Jews!’: Lost Tribes, Crypto-Jews, and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Antonio de Montezinos’s Relación of 1644,” in Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, eds. Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 200-01, 209-11. 91 “The Relation of Antonio Montezinos,” 111. 92 As Menasseh ben Israel wrote in his Conciliador, “We were protected from Spanish tyranny, and for that neither I nor my co-religionists will ever be able to thank you enough.” Jonathan Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians, and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 386-87. Quotation on p. 387.

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part of the Ten Tribes, which passed thither out of Tartary, by the strait of Anian.”93 For

Menasseh ben Israel, it was essential that not only members of the Ten Tribes be in the New

World, but that Jews of the tribe of Judah (and Benjamin) also inhabit all “four quarters of the

Earth,” in order to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah (11:12): “And he shall set up a sign for the nations, and he shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.”94 Thus, it was of singular importance to Menasseh ben Israel that there be synagogues in all four quarters of the earth: “for the fulfilling of that [prophecy], they [i.e., Judah and Benjamin] must be scattered through all the corners of the world. … And this appears now to be done, when our synagogues are found in America.”95 All of these developments helped to fuel a “sudden rapid accumulation of messianic expectation” in

Amsterdam throughout the 1640s and 1650s.96

It was within this millenarian context that a great wave of “Sephardic colonization” (to borrow Jonathan Israel’s phrase) took place. Of course, the Sephardic expansion into the burgeoning Dutch and English Atlantic is well known. What is far less frequently studied is how this “Sephardic colonization” encompassed not only the island colonies of Holland and England, but also the New World domains of Spain and Portugal. Regarding the Portuguese Atlantic,

Jonathan Israel has observed how the Dutch-Portuguese Truce of 1641 appeared to some Jews in

Holland as “a heaven-sent opportunity, and almost a divine command, to begin to proselytize among the New Christians, activate latent crypto-Judaism, and draw distant relatives back to

93 Menasseh ben Israel, The Hope of Israel: The English Translation by Moses Wall, 1652 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 126-28, 141-42, 159-64; quotation on p. 159. 94 I use here the translation of Scripture given in the original text. Ibid., 142. 95 Ibid., 158. 96 Jonathan I. Israel, “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement of the Mid- Seventeenth Century (1645-1657),” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, and Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 140.

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Judaism from Christianity.”97 The most famous such proselytizer was Isaac de Castro Tartas, who in 1644 traveled to Bahia in Portuguese Brazil “for the express purpose of spreading his spiritual message among the New Christians of Rio de Janeiro.”98 Arrested and sent to Portugal to be tried before the Inquisition, Castro Tartas stubbornly clung to his faith, despite numerous attempts to convert him to Christianity. He was eventually burnt alive—a martyr to Judaism at the age of only twenty-four. According to Jonathan Israel, Isaac de Castro Tartas gave

“expression to a general impulse then permeating the western Sephardi world.”99

Yet, this “impulse” of Jewish proselytization was not limited to Portuguese America. I argue that it appeared in the Spanish Indies as well. The most striking example of this phenomenon is the case of Luis Méndez Chávez. If the 1641 truce between Portugal and the

Dutch Republic spurred on the efforts of Isaac de Castro, then it is quite plausible that the arrival of Antonio de Montesinos in 1644 was a central catalyst for the organization and dispatch of

Méndez Chávez, who arrived in Venezuela in 1648 with a small library of Jewish books and a veritable “liturgical arsenal” at his disposal.100 The broad outlines of the life of Méndez Chávez are this: born in Portugal around 1609, he moved to Brazil as a teenager to trade in sugar. After living in Brazil for eleven years, he returned to Portugal to get married. Subsequently, he sailed back for Bahia, only to be captured by the Dutch and taken to Middelburg, Holland. After a few days in jail, he traveled to Amsterdam and proceeded to convert to Judaism, even agreeing to be circumcised. After a few years, Méndez Chávez was sent to the New World, backed by several

97 Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora, 368. 98 Ibid., 368. 99 Jonathan I. Israel, “Dutch Sephardi Jewry, Millenarian Politics and the Struggle for Brazil, 1650-54,” in Jonathan Israel, Conflicts of Empires: Spain, the Low Countries, and the Struggle for World Supremacy, 1585-1713 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1997), 156. 100 Ricardo Escobar Quevedo, “Los Criptojudíos de Cartagena de Indias: Un eslabón en la diáspora conversa (1635-1649),” Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 29 (2002): 55.

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financiers in Amsterdam. He first went to Guinea to purchase slaves, and then he took them to

Barbados, where he found an English captain who agreed to take him to Venezuela. Arriving in

Venezuela in 1648, he was arrested on his way to Caracas for having counterfeit paperwork, along with the confiscation of several books from Amsterdam and Jewish liturgical items.

Because of his possession of these prohibited items, he was put on trial the following year before the Inquisition tribunal in Cartagena.101

For literate individuals with crypto-Jewish proclivities, reading religious—often

Catholic—literature was one way to learn more about the “Law of Moses.” Works by Catholic mystics and alumbrados, as well as the ubiquitous devotional tracts, were a key source for Old

Testament prayers and psalms, as well as stories of Jewish heroes, such as Moses, Esther, and

David.102 Occasionally, conversos were able to obtain explicitly Jewish literature. For example, one Portuguese man was arrested by the Lisbon Inquisition in 1617 with five pages of Sabbath prayers from a Jewish prayerbook stuffed in his hat. These pages were included in his file as evidence against him.103 Interestingly, this same prayerbook (published in 1612 by Isaac Franco, a central figure within the Amsterdam community) was brought by Méndez Chávez to the New

World. Yet, the case of Méndez Chávez stands in sharp contrast to this. Instead of settling for indirect gleanings from Catholic works or a few pages torn out of a book, Méndez Chávez (and his backers in Amsterdam) brought explicitly Jewish books and liturgies to Spanish America—

101 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 9, ff. 30r-33v. 102 Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), chs. 1-2. 103 Adri K. Offenberg, “Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Books Published in Northern Netherlands before Menasseh ben Israel (1584-1627),” in Dutch Jewish History: Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, ed. Jozeph Michman (Van Gorcum: The Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry, 1993), 83; I.S. Révah, “Fragments retrouvés de equelques éditions amstelodamoises de la version espagnole du Rituel Juif,” Studia Rosenthaliana 2 (1968): 108-110.

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works that were published in Amsterdam and reflected the wider religious practice of the

Sephardic Diaspora as a whole.

In addition to prayer books, Méndez Chávez brought apologetical works. A few of these books were written or edited by Menasseh ben Israel, including two volumes of his Conciliador, one published in Latin and the other in Spanish. This work of apologetics “expound[ed] scriptural prophecy and trie[d] to reconcile the various inconsistencies found in the Bible.”104

Menasseh ben Israel also served as a commentator for another volume, Orden de las oraciones del mes con lo más necesario y obligatorio de las tres fiestas del año (1637), to which he provided glosses and commentary. A couple of more recent works were published by Menasseh ben Israel, his brother-in-law, Jonah Abrabanel, and his close friend, Ephraim Bueno (who was the subject of Rembrandt’s painting, The Jewish Doctor [c. 1647]).105 It is interesting that

Méndez Chávez brought a book in Latin, a work that he likely could not read, given his shaky knowledge of even some of the basic Catholic prayers and creeds. The notary recorded that he only knew part of the Credo and part of the Salve Regina, although he did know all of the Ten

Commandments and the Padre Nuestro.106 To include a lengthy work in Latin suggests that certain individuals in Amsterdam believed that it might be persuasive for more well-educated conversos in Spanish America.

However, it was not just books that Luis Méndez Chávez brought with him to the New

World; he also possessed various liturgical instruments. These included a “scapular” of

104 Susanna Åkerman, “Queen Christina of Sweden and Messianic Thought,” in Sceptics, Millenarians, and Jews, eds. David S. Katz and Jonathan I. Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 154. 105 Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat [1934] (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 115-117. 106 AHN, Inq., 1620, exp. 9, f. 32v.

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“different colors”107 (which was probably a prayer shawl, or tallit); a knife “without a point,”108 which was likely a sakin used for ritual preparation of “bird or animal”; and phylacteries (or tefillin)—i.e., small boxes worn by Jews during weekday morning prayer.109 Beyond any single book or item, it is important to ask a fundamental question at this point: why would a circumcised Jew make an already risky voyage even riskier by bringing a trunk full of incriminating evidence in the form of Jewish books and liturgical instruments? It has been well documented by historians that merchants who needed to return to Spain on multiple occasions for business proved quite unwilling to submit themselves to circumcision.110 Indeed, the

Amsterdam mahamad had to use the full force of their powers to bring these long-distance traders into full membership with the Jewish community. Yet, despite the heavy insistence on the ritual requirement of circumcision, there was still resistance by some merchants. Thus, for

Méndez Chávez to agree to be circumcised and then agree to travel to the New World was already a bold move. To heighten the risk so substantially by bringing a large trunk of books requires some sort of explanation. It seems quite implausible that someone would take on those extra risks unless there was an expressed purpose for bringing those books and liturgical items to the New World.

From the surviving evidence, it appears that both religious and economic motivations inspired this voyage. During his trial, Méndez Chávez named six benefactors from Amsterdam by name and the amount that each of them donated, although there certainly could have been

107 “escapulario de diferentes colores.” Ibid., ff. 40v, 49v. 108 “cuchillo sin punta.” Ibid., f. 10v. 109 Ibid., f. 49v. 110 Yosef Kaplan, “Wayward New Christians and Stubborn New Jews: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity,” Jewish History 8 (1994): 27-41.

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additional contributions from other Jews. Easily the most generous donor named was Menasseh ben Israel’s own patron, Abraham Pereira, who donated 8,000 pesos.111 Well-known for his devotion to the false messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, Pereira also met with Montezinos during his stay in

Amsterdam.112 As a man of millennial expectations, Pereira no doubt listened closely to

Montezinos’s descriptions of those Jews whom he met during his travels in Spanish America, and although it is not included in his account, Montezinos would also have been able to share with Pereira the difficulties facing devout crypto-Jews in the New World. It is quite likely that his interactions with Montezinos helped to encourage Pereira to invest more substantially in efforts to reach out to the conversos in Spanish America. Without question, Menasseh ben Israel was deeply concerned about the spiritual well-being of those conversos who lived in the Iberian

Peninsula, as well as the New World, and the same can almost certainly be said for Pereira.113

As one of the wealthiest Sephardic merchants in Amsterdam, who gained his wealth from the lucrative Brazilian trade, Pereira was able to make a large contribution to Méndez Chávez’s voyage. Another significant sum came from Joseph Bueno, the father of the aforementioned

Ephraim Bueno, who donated 1,200 pesos.114 Both Bueno and Jonah Abrabanel were listed as publishers on the title pages of three books that Méndez Chávez brought to the New World, and

Abrabanel, like Pereira, was heavily involved in the Brazil trade.115 The backing of prominent

Amsterdam merchants with investments in trans-Atlantic commerce suggests that more secular motivations for this voyage may have been at work as well. Méndez Chávez landed in Venezuela

111 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.246. 112 Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel, 331 n.5; Méchoulan and Nahon, “Introduction,” 70. 113 Méchoulan and Nahon, “Introduction,” 27-28. 114 Splendiani, Cincuenta años de Inquisición, III.247. 115 David S. Katz, “Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Queen Christina of Sweden, 1651-1655,” Jewish Social Studies 14 (1983): 70 n.16; Méchoulan and Nahon, “Introduction,” 39.

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with a boatload of slaves to sell, perhaps to the same conversos that he hoped to proselytize.

Starting in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, Portuguese Jewish trade to Spanish

America relied heavily on converso business partners. At this early date (1648), enterprising merchants, such as Pereira and Abrabanel, must have been pleased at the prospect of expanding into lucrative markets on the peripheries of Spanish America.

Although the expedition ended in failure at the hands of the Holy Office—Méndez

Chávez was eventually sentenced by the Cartagena Inquisition to reconciliation—Spanish

America was successfully brought closer into the economic and religious orbit of the global

Sephardic Diaspora. For instance, in the 1690s, Felipe Enríquez, a Portuguese Jew on trial before the Cartagena Inquisition, testified to the presence of a ritual slaughterer (shochet) in Santa

Marta.116 By the early eighteenth century, semi-clandestine Jewish communities were established in Tucacas and Coro with the assistance of Jews from Curaçao.117 In particular,

Tucacas became a veritable Dutch enclave. According to one local commander in nearby Coro,

“Tucacas [is] a place in the hands of the Dutch.”118 As de facto Dutch territory in the early eighteenth century, the Jewish presence became quite conspicuous. The governor of Caracas,

José Francisco de Canas, reported to the king that “the Jews participate actively in this settlement

[Tucacas], where they have built houses, raise cattle, have constructed a fortress and even a synagogue.”119

116 Isaac S. Emmanuel and Suzanne A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1970), I.82-83. 117 Ibid., I.125, 141. According to one nineteenth-century writer, the congregation in Tucacas was established in 1693, although there are no sources given to confirm this. Joseph Corcos, A Synopsis of the History of the Jews of Curaçao (Curazao: Imprenta de la Librería, 1897), 16-18. 118 Quoted in Mordecai Arbell, “Rediscovering Tucacas,” American Jewish Archives 48 (1996): 37. 119 Quoted in ibid., 36-37.

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Throughout the 1710s, multiple Spanish governors and commanders attempted to recapture the town from the Dutch, but met with little success. By the end of the decade, the synagogue in Tucacas was flourishing, as evidenced by a gift of 340 pesos sent by the Jews of that town to their kinsmen in Curaçao “for the purpose of purchasing a Torah scroll with ornaments for the use of the Curaçao congregation—a gesture of appreciation for the help the

Tucacas community had received from the Curaçao congregation.”120 However, in 1720, the

Spanish succeeded in taking back the town and destroying the synagogue, according to a report by the viceroy of New Granada. This victory would be short-lived, as the Dutch quickly returned to engage in contraband trade. Reporting to the king in 1722, the local governor complained that

“Dutch ships practically block every port. Worse than that, Jews and Dutch are not only doing business on the coast, but are present at the fairs in January and July, when cacao beans are collected, sleeping in farms and valleys, and local women sleep with them. The population has to trade with them, as there is a lack of textiles and other merchandise.”121 Even if the Jewish synagogue was not re-established (a point that remains unclear), it is certain that an explicit

Jewish presence remained not only at Tucacas, but throughout the Caribbean coast of New

Granada during these years.

Yet, as novel as these developments were, they depended on long-established patterns for their success. The first was the goodwill of local officials, including those of the Inquisition tribunal in Cartagena. This can be evidenced in the fascinating case of Felipe Enríquez, mentioned above. A merchant of great importance, Enríquez counted local officials among his clientele. For instance, in 1697, Enríquez sold the governor of Cartagena “5,000 pesos worth of

120 Ibid., 39. 121 Quoted in ibid., 41.

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arms and ammunition.”122 Furthermore, it seems that Enríquez befriended his customers.

According to Isaac and Suzanne Emmanuel, Enríquez “had been a guest of the ex-governor of

Cartagena and even of the ex-Inquisitor General. He held excellent recommendations from the

Bishop of Santa Marta. During a three months’ stay in Cartagena in 1698, he was known to be a

Jew.”123 Of course, such relationships were hardly a new phenomenon. Wealthy Portuguese merchants during the early years of the seventeenth century likewise enjoyed amicable relations with many governing elites. For instance, Jorge Fernández Gramajo cultivated friendships with the president of the Audiencia in Santa Fe de Bogotá and the bishops of both Cartagena and

Popayán.124 Unlike Fernández Gramajo, however, Enríquez did fall into trouble with the

Inquisition in 1699, but he was eventually released with only a minor fine and a reprimand.

It is quite striking that Jews from Curaçao sometimes also utilized the court system in

Spanish America for their own ends. For instance, Moses Henríquez sought to reclaim an enslaved mulata, Mariana, in a Coro court. In the end, Henríquez proved successful in gaining his slave back. As Linda Rupert notes, “Sephardic merchants seemed to have no qualms about appearing openly in a Spanish American court to exercise their ownership rights.”125 In part, some of this confidence must have been due to the diplomatic power that the Dutch could leverage in Spain, as well as the importance of these Jewish merchants to the local economies of

122 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, I.73. 123 Ibid., I.82. 124 Enriqueta Vila Vilar, “Cartagena de Indias en el siglo XVII: Puerto negrero internacional,” in Redescubriendo el Nuevo Mundo: Estudios americanistas en homenaje a Carmen Gómez, eds. María Salud Elvás Iniesta and Sandra Olivero Guidobono (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2012), 68. 125 Linda M. Rupert, “Contraband Trade and the Shaping of Colonial Societies in Curaçao and Tierra Firme,” Itinerario 30 (2006): 43.

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these Spanish imperial peripheries.126 Nevertheless, it should not be imagined that there were no dangers for Jewish traders. In one case, Spanish sailors killed two Jewish merchants after seizing their boat off the coast of Tierra Firme. The killers declared that they would not bother taking

“the trouble of sending them to the Inquisition.”127 Nonetheless, incidents like these were hardly the norm. Much more common was collusion by local officials to the illicit trade, assisted by perennial bribes.

Felipe Enríquez also exemplifies the second critical continuity that allowed Portuguese

Sephardic merchant activity to flourish in New Granada and Venezuela during this time: the ability to move between Christian and Jewish worlds by taking on Christian or Jewish personas.

Although he was an openly practicing Jew in Curaçao and a member of the Santa Companhia de dotar orphas, Enríquez died as a Catholic in Havana in 1718.128 This ability to shift from being an openly practicing Jew to a New Christian was also critical for Portuguese like Baltasar de

Araújo, who had lived in various Jewish communities in the Old World before moving to New

Granada. Although few Portuguese in the region were as well-traveled as Araújo before 1640, the numbers of individuals that relied upon such flexibility increased noticeably as Spanish

America became more dependent on Jewish trade networks, especially from Curaçao.

Perhaps the most striking examples of this movement between religious worlds are the multiple instances of Catholic priests who openly embraced Judaism once they had left Spanish

America. One Dominican friar arrived in Curaçao and took the name Abraham de Paz upon

126 For three examples of Dutch diplomatic intervention regarding captured Portuguese Jews, see: Zvi Loker, Jews in the Caribbean: Evidence on the History of the Jews in the Caribbean Zone in Colonial Times (Jerusalem: Institute for Research on the Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage, 1991), 72-73.

127 Rupert, “Contraband Trade,” 42. 128 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, I.83, 129, 334 n.21.

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converting to Judaism; a second priest, from the Franciscan Order, also converted in Curaçao around the same time.129 The most-studied of all of these “Marrano priests” is Joseph Díaz

Pimienta, whose wanderings and misadventures were the subject of a journal article by Richard

Gottheil.130 Born in Havana, Díaz Pimienta became a priest in 1708 at the age of 22. A member of a monastery in Cuba, Díaz Pimienta fell into conflict with his confrères and eventually fled the island, which marked the beginnings of his travels. After passing through various locales, including Caracas, Veracruz, and Puebla, Díaz Pimienta finally journeyed to Curaçao, arriving there in 1715. Declaring his mother and grandmother to have been Jews, Díaz Pimienta sought to become a Jew, eventually undergoing circumcision and taking the name Abraham. After some time, Díaz Pimienta grew lax in his Jewish observances. Remonstrated by a Protestant Dutchman for abandoning Christianity, Díaz Pimienta began to have second thoughts about his conversion—or so, at least, is what he subsequently told the inquisitors. Leaving Curaçao for

Jamaica, he testified that he associated with many Catholics there, and even baptizing two Jewish children. Moving on from Jamaica, he eventually arrived in Río de la Hacha, where he was arrested. He openly declared that “if he came before the Tribunal, he would be a Christian, [but] if he could escape to Curaçao he would be a Jew.”131

As it would turn out, he was indeed taken to Cartagena, where he was punished by the

Holy Office and sentenced to live in a monastery in Spain permanently. Arriving in Cádiz in

1718, he managed to escape his captors and after still more misadventures, he eventually came to

Seville, where he was arrested by the Inquisition. Declaring himself to be a Jew, he remained

129 Ibid., I.118-19. 130 Richard Gottheil, “Fray Joseph Díaz Pimienta, alias Abraham Díaz Pimienta and the Auto-da-Fé held at Seville, July 25, 1720,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 9 (1901): 19-28. 131 Ibid., 25.

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unrepentant and was sentenced to death. Two days after this announcement, he once again switched sides, embracing Catholicism. Díaz Pimienta was even allowed to say Mass the following day. Only some hours later, the peripatetic, apostate priest was strangled with his body being delivered to the flames. The inquisitorial summary of this auto de fe reported that “no bad odor resulted from [his] burning, as happens in other cases.”132 Perhaps this served as an encouraging sign to surrounding observers that Díaz Pimienta had truly achieved salvation in the

Law of Christ.

What is striking is how from a local perspective, many of the social and political dynamics regarding the Portuguese in Spanish America endured throughout the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth. Of course, from a broader trans-Atlantic frame, profound geo- political and commercial changes occurred after the dissolution of the Union of the Crowns.

Nevertheless, these ruptures should not obscure the important continuities that survived these tumultuous years, whether involving complicity in contraband trade, strategies of social ascent, or Spanish perceptions of Portuguese (dis)loyalty. Without question, much more remains to be done on the Portuguese in Spanish America after 1640. Despite important scholarly contributions by Isaac and Suzanne Emmanuel, Linda Rupert, and others, the Portuguese in Spanish America still tend to be largely ignored after 1640, due to the assumption that the Portuguese disappeared through assimilation and inquisitorial persecution.133 Certainly the Portuguese community in

Amsterdam remained very interested in Spanish America after 1640, as evidenced by the failed expedition of Luis Méndez Chávez. Furthermore, during the 1640s and 1650s, Portuguese soldiers continued to make up sizeable components of local militia garrisons throughout the

132 Ibid., 28. 133 For example, see: Wim Klooster, “Communities of Port Jews and Their Contacts in the Dutch Atlantic World,” Jewish History 20 (2006): 131-32.

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Spanish Caribbean. Throughout the rest of the century, small handfuls of Portuguese would also be put on trial before the Holy Office for a variety of offenses, most of them rather trivial matters similar to those examined in Chapter 4. Taken together, these all remain but glimpses of

Portuguese life in Spanish America after the breakup of the Union of the Crowns. It remains for future scholars to form a more comprehensive picture.

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CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION

Both the Portuguese and the Inquisition came to Cartagena as outsiders. Both sought to plant roots in the local community. Both oscillated between the foreign and the familiar. In one sense, this dissertation is a story of how outsiders attempted to become insiders—the Portuguese largely succeeded in doing so, while the Inquisition proved largely incompetent in this regard. At first glance, this seems strange. After all, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the

Portuguese were perennially suspected of political perfidy, religious infidelity, and economic injury. This dissertation has not minimized such dimensions. Indeed, the entire study is structured around different crisis moments where anti-Portuguese sentiments across the Spanish

Monarchy were at their peak. Nevertheless, by adopting a local perspective—from Cartagena de

Indias—it becomes clear that these various geo-political anxieties and prejudices did not influence local actions or decisions in a direct or straightforward way. Other considerations and factors were necessarily taken into account within distinct communities across the Spanish

Indies.

For both the Portuguese and the Inquisition, one of the most important factors for success was the cultivation of partnerships with local residents. Neither Portuguese mercantile networks nor the various tribunals of the Holy Office were self-sufficient and autonomous institutions.

Even if their scope was genuinely trans-Atlantic, they continually depended on smaller-scale alliances with local vecinos. Most Portuguese sought to become rooted in a local community for a number of possible reasons—e.g., economic access to local markets, increased potential for social ascent, protection against royal investigations into illegal residence (and often contraband trade as well). Potential routes of local integration were legion in cities like Cartagena. Marriage to a local woman was a long-standing strategy, but it was far from the only one. Cofradía

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membership and religious patronage were also quite popular among the Portuguese. In the

Spanish circum-Caribbean, militia service, whether as a full-time occupation or not, was a powerful indicator of individual commitment to the local community, and dedicated militia service was often rewarded. For those who were employed in skilled occupations, establishing oneself in a local community was even easier. Medicine was an especially common occupational route for the Portuguese, and despite connotations with Jewish ancestry, skilled doctors, surgeons, and pharmacists were always sought by city leaders.

As the Inquisition in Cartagena never conducted independent investigations, it relied upon the denunciations of local residents. For the inquisitors, however, denunciations of judaizing activity in Cartagena was almost completely non-existent. Only four judaizante cases emerged from the city between 1610 and 1634, and during the multi-year investigation into the so-called complicidad de judíos, only one non-Portuguese witness came forward to denounce various Portuguese individuals for following the Law of Moses.1 Almost from the very beginning, the inquisitors were stymied in Cartagena due to local political divisions, the economic importance of the Portuguese, the lack of qualified candidates for various inquisitorial posts, as well as the general arrogance and personal vices of the inquisitors themselves. As men from the Peninsula, the inquisitors always began as outsiders to the local community.

Interestingly, in seeking their own beneficial partnerships with local residents, the inquisitors turned frequently to the Portuguese. It was not uncommon for inquisitors to pay personal visits to the haciendas of wealthy Portuguese residents like Blas de Paz Pinto. During the visitas into inquisitorial conduct during the complicidad de judíos, multiple friendships between inquisitorial

1 This does not count the jailer of the Inquisition prison and his assistant, who did testify before the inquisitors whenever they heard or saw anything that merited the alerting of their superiors.

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officials and the Portuguese were revealed. For example, through his friendship with the accused judaizer Luis Franco, the inquisitor, Juan Bautista Villadiego, bought and sold merchandise along the Cartagena-Zaragoza trading route. Villadiego also had a “strong friendship” with another Portuguese, Luis Jorge, which was said to have caused much scandal in the city.2

Another inquisitor, Juan Pereira, was said to have warm affections for “all Portuguese” and was reputed to be an “intimate friend of Captain Diego de la Torre.”3 Another witness believed that

Pereira was related to a certain Portuguese named Gabriel Pereira, although I have not been able to confirm this.4 Similarly, in order to operate fully staffed, the inquisitors positively recommended the approval of Portuguese residents of Bogotá as familiares. Even in what was arguably the Cartagena Inquisition’s most successful moment—the 1638 auto de fe—the depth and strength of Portuguese integration was on full display, as the Portuguese archdeacon and a

Portuguese city councilor were allotted prestigious positions during the public ceremony.

It is also important to consider that the Inquisition was a belated arrival in Cartagena, whereas the Portuguese had been present from the very founding of the city in 1533.5 Portuguese merchants contributed to the economic success of the city and the surrounding region throughout the sixteenth century. Portuguese doctors and pharmacists likewise provided for the city’s medical needs, and numerous soldiers, sailors, and artisans from Portugal all made positive contributions to the local community in various ways. As Chapter 3 demonstrated, Portuguese pilots especially proved to be vital assets for the Spanish, even if questions of trustworthiness

2 “mucha amistad.” AHN, Inq., 1603, N.3, ff. 51r-52r, 130r, 133v, 138r, 169v-170r; quotation on f. 51v; 3 “muy afecto generalmente a todos los portugueses e íntimo amigo del dicho capitán Diego de la Torre.” Ibid., f. 558v. 4 Ibid., 190v-191r. 5 For more on the Portuguese soldiers who participated in the conquest of New Granada and the founding of Cartagena, see: Maria da Graça A. Mateus Ventura, Portugueses no descobrimento e conquista da Hispano-América: viagens e expedições (1492-1557) (Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 2000), 81-95.

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were never fully resolved. All in all, when the inquisitors first arrived in Cartagena in 1610, the

Portuguese had largely erased their foreignness by successfully integrating into local society at every level. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, multiple Portuguese had seats on the city council, as well as the cathedral chapter. During most of the 1650s, the local bishop was a Portuguese born in the Azores, although he had received a carta de naturaleza from the

Crown. If the Inquisition in Cartagena sought to go after the Portuguese for suspected crypto-

Jewish practices, it had to attack not an isolated enclave of foreigners, but a thoroughly integrated and highly successful component of local society.

Yet, the actions of the inquisitors during this period seem to undermine this assumption that the inquisitors were keen on going after all Portuguese for crypto-Judaism. As shown in

Chapter 4, the inquisitors received many cases involving Portuguese defendants for a wide range of offenses, including blasphemy, propositions, bigamy, and sorcery. However, in none of these cases is there any evidence that the inquisitors suspected these Portuguese of being crypto-Jews, based solely on their nationality. Even when there existed certain circumstantial evidence regarding this possibility, the inquisitors never transformed the case at hand into one of judaizing, even though this could have potentially led to greater profits for the Holy Office. In general, the Portuguese accused of these minor crimes were treated in the same way as their

Spanish counterparts. In this way, the Cartagena inquisitors provide compelling, if unintended, commentary on how most Portuguese differed little from the average Spaniard in matters of faith. Despite certain popular perceptions to the contrary, early modern Spain and Spanish

America was hardly a bastion of either Catholic orthodoxy or orthopraxy. Blasphemies, sexual improprieties, heretical ideas, vulgar superstitions, and skeptical attitudes all formed part of the

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religious landscape of the age. The Portuguese participated in this early modern religious culture as much as their Spanish neighbors.

Taking this complex history as a whole, it is striking how easy it was for most Spaniards in the Spanish circum-Caribbean to see the Portuguese as culturally and religiously familiar, despite any stereotypes to the contrary. Indeed, throughout this period, many Iberian observers argued that “españoles” was a label that encompassed both Castilians and Portuguese. For example, the Portuguese writer, Luís Coelho Barbuda, argued in 1624 that the Portuguese “were the first Spaniards, who ousted the Moors by force of arms.”6 For his part, the Castilian Jesuit,

Pedro de Rivadeneira, wrote in 1581 that any war between Castile and Portugal would be a conflict of “Christians against Christians, Catholics against Catholics, and Spaniards against

Spaniards.”7 Philip II seconded this opinion when he argued that the Portuguese were just as

Spanish as the Castilians, and since the two “differ so little in language, behavior, and customs,” only a “vain and false man” would argue otherwise.8

Despite these opinions, the Portuguese were still legally considered as foreigners to the kingdoms of the Crown of Castile, which included all of Spanish America.9 Thus, in the Indies, it became necessary at times to figure out an individual’s naturaleza. However, these considerations encompassed not only the seemingly more “objective” criteria of birthplace and

6 Quoted in Pedro Cardim, Portugal unido y separado: Felipe II, la unión de territorios y el debate sobre la condición política del reino de Portugal (Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid, 2014), 179. 7 Quoted in Tamar Herzog, Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 57. 8 Fernando Díaz-Plaja, ed., Historia de España en sus documentos: siglo XVI (Madrid: Cátedra, 1988), 494. 9 An exception to this rule was (at least theoretically) granted to natives of the Algarve. Cf. Maria da Graça A. Mateus Ventura, Portugueses no Peru ao tempo da união ibérica: mobilidade, cumplicidades e vivências. 3 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 2005), I.66-67; David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 105, 116.

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ancestry, but also more “subjective” factors, such as reputation and public behavior. In this way, the Portuguese merchant Jorge Gramajo could admit that he was “an extranjero of the

Portuguese nation,” but nonetheless appeal to the king to recognize his true Castilian naturaleza, since he “has established himself in this city [Cartagena] with [his] wife and children” and was

“reputed as a natural of these kingdoms [the Castilian Indies], which Your Majesty must declare as such.”10 Gramajo was the nephew of Jorge Fernández Gramajo, one of the most famous

Portuguese merchants in the entire New World, and his Portuguese background was impossible to hide. Nonetheless, Gramajo could argue that he was “reputed” to be a native of the Castilian kingdoms of the New World, due to a combination of public behavior and social standing, which he argued outweighed any disadvantage brought about by his Portuguese birthplace and ancestry.11 This study has emphasized these social contexts as essential for understanding not only the relations between Spaniards and Portuguese in the New World, but also how ideas about

“Spanish” and “Portuguese” became established in the first place. In contrast to the traditional scholarly emphasis on “Portuguese” as being synonymous with “Jew,” this dissertation has demonstrated that “Portuguese” could take on a number of positive or negative associations.

These complex dynamics opened up opportunities for close partnerships between

Spaniards and Portuguese, as well as bitter antagonisms and rivalries. Any history of the

10 “soy extranjero de nación portugués,” “ha vecindado en esta ciudad con mi mujer y hijos y demás familia porque debo ser tenido y reputado por natural de estos reinos y así debo ser por V.M. declarado.” AGI, Escribanía, 589B, pieza 32, f. 17r. 11 These fluid understandings of what constituted nativeness/foreignness did not apply only to the Portuguese. For example, in 1620, Cristóbal Ferrer was accused of being a Genoese foreigner to the Indies, to which he responded with a multi-part defense. First, he claimed that he was a native of Barcelona and therefore, a “native vassal of [Philip IV’s] kingdoms, even in the Crown of Castile” [yo soy su vasallo natural de sus reinos inclusos en la corona de Castilla]. Second, Ferrer claimed that he was “reputed” [reputado] by others to be a Spaniard [español], arising out of his many years of service as an “infantryman for more than twenty-two years in the city of Milan” [soldado infante más tiempo de viente y dos años en la ciudad de Milan], a position that Ferrer claimed was only given to “natives of the kingdoms of Spain” [los naturales de los reinos de España]. AGI, Escribanía 589B, pieza 34, ff. 13r-13v.

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Portuguese in Spanish America must include both sides of the coin. Likewise, the Inquisition, even in Cartagena, enjoyed some genuine successes, but the dimensions of ineptitude, weakness, lethargy, and indecision must all become part of the story as well. This is not to say, however, that each of these characteristics were present in equal measure. Cartagena’s economic centrality and political marginality greatly advantaged Portuguese residents who sought to integrate themselves into local society, while many of the same dynamics created difficult obstacles for the Inquisition. Even in moments of highest anxiety, the Portuguese as a whole were able to remain planted in the local community, despite broader imperial threats and suspicions.

Similarly, even in the best of times, the Cartagena tribunal was hindered greatly by a continued lack of local support and cooperation. Both instances testify to the importance of specific municipalities and regions in understanding the complex histories of these controversial groups.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Brian Hamm received his B.A. in history, summa cum laude, from Pepperdine University in 2010. Two years later, he earned his M.A. in history from the University of Florida with a major field in colonial Latin American history. His master’s research concerned Cartagena’s complicidad de judíos, which subsequently expanded to become this dissertation. Brian received his Ph.D. in the summer of 2017.

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