ABSTRACT
The quest of Luis de Carvajal the Younger, from his birth in Benavente, Spain, to his death at the stake of the Inquisition in Mexico, is emblematic of the pattern followed by crypto-Jews in the Americas. The one against him, in fact, is one of the most famous inquisitorial cases in the continent. Carvajal was the nephew of the governor of the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León. The uncle was the one who had brought a portion of the family to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where it was thought that the Inquisition would be less stern. In the "Autobiographical Essay," which Carvajal began in 1591 or 1592, he chronicles his awakening as a Jew that came from an environment in which only through innuendo were New Christians able to know their true ancestry. The character Joseph in the text is the narrator himself. He chooses the third person as a device to establish a sense of distance and objectivity toward the story. Carvajal was arrested for the first time in 1589, but somehow he convinced his victimizes of his innocence. The final entry of the essay is from 1594, shortly before his second and final arrest. It stands as an invaluable document of the oppression under which so-called Judaizers lived in New Spain, the name that referred to Mexico before it acquired its independence in 1810. In prison, he corresponded secretly with his mother and sister, also incarcerated, by sending them hidden messages which, unfortunately, were intercepted by his opponents and used as evidence against him. The director Arturo Ripstein loosely based his film El Santo Oficio (The Holy Office) on the essay.
