BE IT OLD WORLD OR NEW -
THE INQUISITION PURSUES THE JEW…

...and burns some at the stake and causes others to flee and to settle in what is today Texas and New Mexico. Modern historical research establishes that some of the Conquistadors who accompanied and/or followed Cortez in Mexico were converted Jews who return to their true faith in the freedom laden air of a new society in a new world. Parts of the land that became the United States were settled by these Jews more than a hundred years before the landing at New Amsterdam In 1654.

The Province of the New Kingdom of Leon

Burned at the stake In Mexico City: sister of Governor Don Luis de Caravajal. Dona Francesca Rodriguez Caravajal and 3 daughters and one son, Luis de Caravajal. The son’s autobiography establishes him as the first Jewish author in the New World. Mariana de Caravajal, another sister, was burned later In 1601.

Isabel Rodriguez de Andrada, niece of Don Luis de Caravajal, Governor of a province called The New Kingdom of Leon, is tortured by an Inquisition court into naming many other fellow colonizers as judaizers. The subsequent conviction of the Governor himself is thought to have triggered a flight of some of the original colonizers into and beyond the northern reaches of the province into land that is today part of Texas and New Mexico.

These pictures are from Harriet & Fred Rochlin's book: Pioneer Jews.