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“Was he a crypto-Jew?” – frequent question about Don Tomás Sánchez at RRG Museum; Tracing the lead of my ancestress Benigna Martinez Montemayor to discover my own Jewish ethnic identity

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“Was he a crypto-Jew?”  I overheard this question being made to the museum assistant, Andrea Ordoñez, while I was visiting the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum in Laredo. “We get that (question) a lot,” she responded. 

The museum, which is housed in one of the oldest structures in downtown Laredo, is located on San Agustin Plaza. The museum was once the home of Bartolomé García, a former alcalde (mayor) of Laredo, my 3rd-great-grandfather, and a descendant of Don Tomás Sánchez — the founder of Laredo.

I don’t live in Laredo any longer but was in the city attending the Texas Jewish Historical Society’s (TJHS) winter board meeting, January 10 – 12. The TJHS is an organization formed to preserve the Texas Jewish experience. The meeting was being held at La Posada Hotel located just next door to the museum. 

The question asked of Ms. Ordoñez was of great interest to me. The Sephardic roots of my forbearers is something that I have been curious about since I was told of my “Jewish” gg-grandmother, Benigna Martinez Montemayor. Benigna left the Monterrey area and came to live in Laredo in 1885. 

I heard about this ancestress when a friend at the University of Texas who happened to be Jewish, said to me, “You are Jewish.” I must have looked confused. My friend looked very different to me. Seeming to read my mind she told me that she was an “Ashkenazi Jew,” and I was “Sephardic.” Later, I called my father, who was deeply knowledgeable about our family’s history, and he told me that his great grandmother had come from the Monterrey region and was Jewish. 

For years after that, when I was asked if I was Jewish — a question that I was periodically asked — I would respond that I had a Jewish ancestor.

Like my father before me, I have been deeply interested in our family’s history. This particular “Jewish” ancestor was of particular interest because she was an enigma. I didn’t know much about Judaism or about Jewish people at the time, and for the most part what I did know was of the Ashkenazi Jews, which are the Jewish ethnic identity most readily recognized in the United States. My gg-grandmother was also an enigma because she belonged to a religion that was different to the overwhelming majority of my family. The family, with a few exceptions, is mostly Catholic. 

Over the years, I discovered that Benigna was a milliner and had a hat store on Iturbide Street. The 1910 census records show that she lived at 1113 Iturbide Street and owned a “milinary store (sic)”. She declared herself to be Jewish, and for a time organized a study group dedicated to Judaism and philosophy. I also later discovered that she had been baptized in the Catholic Church in Monterrey which at first really confused me: How could someone be baptized and be “Jewish?”   

The answer to this question really started to make sense after extensive research on the early “pobladores” of Nuevo Leon whose descendants came to settle along the Rio Grande. It was not until later in life that I learned about my own history, which is also a history I share with many of the current inhabitants of Laredo. I wasn’t taught the rich history of Laredo, the borderlands, or Nuevo Leon in school. Nor was I taught about the specific religious background of the early Nuevo Leon “pobladores.” It is not surprising that the books focused on the religious background of these founding ancestors are sometimes titled  “Hidden Heritage,” “Silent Heritage,” or sometimes have the word “crypto” in them.

The early Spanish incursion into Northeastern Mexico includes a very large land grant given to Governor Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva. It was a grant that spanned what is now Laredo and San Antonio. Carvajal was a converso, as were many of the people that he brought with him and many of the people who were already in the area. A converso was a person whose family had once lived openly as Jews in Spain and had converted to Catholicism, either by choice or under extreme duress. It has been shown that the early “pobladores” of Nuevo Leon were overwhelmingly of this ilk.  

Bartolomé García, whose home is now the Museum of the Republic of the Rio Grande, was a converso, according to this definition, but was he a crypto-Jew? A crypto-Jew is a converso but a converso is not necessarily a crypto-Jew. Crypto-Jews were conversos who after conversion to Catholicism continued to practice aspects of their Jewish faith. Researchers looking into the specific cultural practices of the people of Northern Mexico and of Tejanos have identified varied surviving practices that descend from their Jewish background. Some theorists believe that the whole of Tejano culture is peppered with what amounts to an evolution of their ancestors’ Jewish customs.

There is also a varied experience regarding the surviving Jewish identity. It is not something that can be generalized, and the transmission of this identity varies from no transmission, to more purposeful and clear transmission of identity, “we are Jewish,” or “we were Jewish,” to a more haphazard transmission — like when a younger member of the family overhears conversation.

I do not know if Bartolomé García was a crypto-Jew, but I do know that many of his ancestors were conversos. There is genealogical evidence and it also happens that his descendants often find that they are linked to the current population that identifies itself as Sephardic Jews after doing a DNA test. García and his 2nd great grandfather, the founder of Laredo, Don Tomás Sánchez, were themselves descended from a family that includes a well-known Rabbi who converted to Judaism centuries before. This is not the only lineage that links García to known conversos. 

I am grateful to my cousin Will Guerra who provided me with extensive genealogical records in a form that I can easily see the patterns of intermarriage of the early pobladores of Nuevo Leon. What I gleaned was that there was so much intermarriage that we really are a clan, and this clan is significantly of Sephardic descent. I think if I had to classify the people of Laredo who are descended from the early pobladores of Nuevo Leon, I would say that they are mostly Catholics of Sephardic descent. Recently Spain allowed persons with Spanish Jewish ancestry to obtain citizenship. I know of a few persons who have used their connection to the early pobladores of Nuevo Leon to pursue their applications.

Crypto-Judaism did exist in the area. You can read what happened to members of the Carvajal family, including the Governor’s nephew who shares his same name: Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo, along with many of his family were burned at the stake in Mexico City after he and several of his family members were discovered practicing their Jewish faith — an offense called Judaizing. I recommend a book by Martin A. Cohen called The Martyr:  A Secret Jew in Sixteenth-Century Mexico for an in-depth description of what happened to the Carvajals and for a glimpse into the religious oppression of the Inquisition.

I am a new member of the Texas Jewish Historical Society, the Laredo meeting being the first I have attended. In addition to visiting San Agustín Plaza and the museum, we took a tour of downtown provided by the City of Laredo. We drove past locations that housed businesses I recalled were once owned by Jewish merchants. I remember the Spanish names of some that are gone and some still here — “La Victoria, La Estrella, Casa Raul, and El Flor del Dia. 

I was saddened to see the state of so many downtown businesses with shuttered storefronts. 

On Saturday afternoon I participated on a panel that included Laredoans Wolf Hofman, Irving “Pancho” Greenblum, Linda Deutsch, and David Blumberg, each sharing the story of their family’s life in Laredo. 

Blumberg provided a timeline of the Jewish history of Laredo. At the very top of that timeline was “Laredo founded 1755 by Marranos.” Following Blumberg, I spoke to how I came to hear of my Sephardic history. I was an outlier on the panel. I wasn’t raised Jewish, but was glad to have been included.

As in Blumberg’s timeline, the Sephardic background of the Laredo founders is often just mentioned in a footnote, if at all. I would really like to see that particular history fleshed out in greater detail. It is an interesting history, and as a psychotherapist I also think it is very important psychologically. 

Our Sephardic background should not be such a “Silent Heritage.”

(Former Laredoan Anna Guerra is a psychotherapist in Houston, Texas and member of Congregation Beth Yeshurun.)

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