American Jewish Archives Journal, Vol 44, No. 01 (1992)

Secret Jews of the Southwest 453
do Durhn y Chaves in 1692, now known as the Atrisco Grant. In the
landmark Heirship Case of early in this century, her parents were
awarded the claim interest No. 833174. She was brought up in a lead-
ing family of the Atrisco enclave, being told as a teenager by her
mother that Catholicism was superstitious nonsense. She remembers
an oft-told story about an ancestor named Manuel Carrasco who was
tried by the Inquisition in Mexico City in 1648 for the unlikely crime
of being apprehended, while traveling, with a matzo cake hidden
beneath his hat. Although he tried to convince the Catholic authori-
ties that unleavened bread was a popular remedy for headache, he
was tried for Judaism and ended up with his sugar plantations con-
fiscated and himself "disappeared." For many years, Loggie Carrasco
has been a member of the congregation at Temple Albert, where she
assists other crypto-Jews to embrace formal Judaism, and where she
and her brother have long served as teachers in the Sunday school.
With the new openness and appreciation, the possibility of renewal
may be at hand. I recently overheard this brief conversation after a
lecture on the subject of the conversos. One man in the audience said
quietly to another: "Cudles de nosotros son 10s judios?" (Which of us are
the Jews?) The answer was, "Los agudos" (The smart ones).
Notes
I. Floyd S. Fierman, Roots and Boots: From Cypto-Jew in N m Spain to Community Leader in the
American Southwest (Hoboken: Ktav, 1987); Kathleen Teltsch, "Scholars and Descendants Uncover
Hidden Legacy of Jews in the Southwest," New York Times, November 11, 1990, p. 16A.
2. Alfonso Toro, La jamilia Camajal: Estudio hist6rico sobre 10s judios y la Inquisici6n de la Nueva
Espafia en el siglo XVI, basado en documentos originales y en su mayor parte inidutism qye seconsmant
en el Archivo General de la Naci6n de la Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1944).
3. Frances Leon Swadesh, Los Primeros Pobladores: Hispanic Americans of the Ute Frontier (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974); Richard C. Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition of the
Sixteenth Centu y (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969).
4. Swadesh, Los Primeros Pobladores, p. 74.
5. Described in conversation at the Unitarian church of El Paso on May 19,1991.
6. Harry S. May, Francisco Frnnco: The Jmish Connection (Washington, D.C.: University Press of
America, 1978), p. 97.
7. David Nidel, "Modern Descendants of Conversos in New Mexico: 500 Years of Faith"
(unpublished essay), p. 34.
8. Teltsch, "Scholars and Descendants."