La diáspora judeoconversa en Colombia, siglos XVI y XVII

Describes Converso life in the viceroyalty of New Granada (today Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama) in the 16th-17th centuries. Ch. 3 (pp. 107-155), “El tribunal de la Inquisición en las Indias”, deals with the establishment of the tribunal in Cartagena de Indias and with the persecution of Conversos. Agrees with several historians (e.g. Benzion Netanyahu, Henry Kamen, and Anita Novinsky) that the reason for the creation of the tribunal in 1610 was more social than religious; it was due to the reaction of the Old Christian aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the Church, and the populace against the mass immigration, social progress, and growing influence of Portuguese Converso merchants, especially between 1580-1649 when the Portuguese and Spanish kingdoms were united. The Portuguese Conversos were held responsible for epidemics, for monopolizing commerce, for withholding taxes, for smuggling, and for conspiring with the enemies of Spain against the Crown. The tribunal of Cartagena de Indias became especially aggressive in the 1630s when, together with the tribunal of Lima, it carried out massive detentions of Conversos who were alleged to be part of “la complicidad grande”, a supposed conspiracy of Conversos and the Dutch against Spain. Between 1610-1660, 87 Conversos were put on trial and several were executed. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)