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Family Rupture among Conversos and the Inquisition Tribunal in 1640s New Spain

Abstract:This article examines the lives of two Portuguese conversos, Gaspar Robles and Francisco Home, a nephew and his uncle, both tried by the Inquisition tribunal in seventeenth-century colonial Mexico during the decade leading up to the Gran auto de fé of 1649. However, their trajectories were vastly different. Gaspar Robles voluntarily approached the Inquisition tribunal confessing his own and his family's secret Jewish practices. He incriminated his father, his three uncles, and many other acquaintances who formed part of the converso community in New Spain precipitating the mass prosecutions of many in the converso community. In contrast, his uncle Francisco Home was also arrested soon after Gaspar's confession. He was tried and tortured, and he eventually confessed to his own crypto-Judaism. However, he protected some in the converso community in sharp contrast with his nephew's voluntary confession. Through close examination, this article explores the role of individual and community identity among conversos in New Spain to explain why the nephew confessed to the tribunal sealing the fate of his immediate family and that of a whole community. It argues that in cases such as that of Gaspar Robles familial ties proved more a liability than a protection and the final outcome was contingent on a combination of religious and ethnic identity, the process of migration, and individual circumstances.