The Webb County Heritage Foundation will present an online screening of the documentary film, Children of the Inquisition, a film by Peabody Award-winning director, Joseph Lovett, on June 23 and June 24.
The public will be asked to register to receive a link to access the film, which will be available for viewing from 5 p.m. on Tuesday, June 23, until midnight on Wednesday, June 24. The film is presented in English with Spanish subtitles.
The public is also invited to join a panel discussion taking place by Zoom on Wednesday, June 24, at 7 p.m. featuring the film’s director participating from New York and former Laredoan Anna P. Guerra from Houston.
To register and receive a link for both events, please visit the Webb County Heritage Foundation website at www.webbheritage.org. Admission is based on donation levels starting at $1. Deadline to register is 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 23.
Children of the Inquisition is a reconsideration of history and identity that takes its viewers on a 500-year trek across continents, oceans, and political landscapes when intense religious persecutions forced Jews to convert, flee, and hide in order to survive.
The film follows more “openly Catholic and inwardly Jewish” families from Portugal to Brazil and the Caribbean to the United States and from Spain and Portugal to Mexico to the American Southwest.
It features a diverse international cast in search of what happened to their Jewish Spanish and Portuguese ancestors as they were pressured to convert to Catholicism or flee during the Inquisition.
The film’s revelation of treacherous journeys and conflicting identities leaves audiences to question assumptions about their own family histories and identities. During today’s unprecedented social, ethnic, and racial divisiveness, Children of the Inquisition breaks down barriers between people and re-establishes a shared history.
The Webb County Heritage Foundation acknowledges the generosity of Lawrence Friedman Real Estate Brokerage and Investments and Able City Architecture for making this film available to local audiences.
Director Lovett, a Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, first learned of the Inquisition in 1958 when Rabbi William Braude of Temple Beth El in Providence, Rhode Island gave a sermon “Todos Catolicos – Everyone is Catholic” about Spanish Catholic families who had been converted from Judaism in the years prior to and during the Inquisition. Thirteen-year-old Lovett was fascinated that something that happened 500 years ago could still affect people today.
Guerra, a 9th generation Laredoan and a psychotherapist in private practice in Houston, became interested in the Sephardic history of Northern Mexico and South Texas after learning from her father of her Jewish great grandmother, Benigna Martinez Montemayor, who moved to Laredo from the Monterrey area in the 1880s. “She was a milliner who had a shop on Iturbide Street and was married to José María Montemayor,” Guerra said. “Though Benigna had been baptized in the Catholic Church, she declared herself Jewish, and in Laredo belonged to a group that studied Judaism. More than once I had heard among my aunts the refrain, ‘We were Jewish.’ I had always gravitated to Judaism as though through a subliminal transmission. I felt the pull to know more about its people and rituals. The more I read and researched, the more I began to understand the complexities of our family history,” she said.
Guerra said the original colonizers of the northern reaches of New Spain, including Nuevo Santander, were from the province of El Nuevo Reino de Leon (later Nuevo Leon), which was established in the late 1500s by the Portuguese Luis de Carvajal and other conversos, ethnic Jews who had converted to Catholicism under duress of the Inquisition.
Guerra said that in rural areas across northern Mexico and the borderlands vestiges of Jewish rituals and tradition persist, such as the lighting of candles on Friday nights, sweeping toward the center of the room, and draining blood from slaughtered animals.
Her quest to understand her Sephardic history prompted studies in Judaism and Hebrew at Congregation Beth Yeshurun in Houston. She converted in 2018.
Guerra is a frequent lecturer and workshop presenter in topics related to psychological functioning, relationships, and the role of art and imagination in mental health.
She is a regular instructor at the Jung Center of Houston where many of her lectures are available online, including a lecture about the often-untold story of the Sephardic history of Northern Mexico and South Texas.
For more information, call the Webb County Heritage Foundation at 956-727-0977 or visit www.webbheritage.org.
