ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a segment of the Jewish people that, several generations after conversion to Catholicism, was still considered Jewish by the society in which it lived. If conversion was not an exceptional phenomenon in the history of the Jews of the Diaspora, in Iberian countries it assumed specific paradoxical features. No matter what the dimensions of their Jewish faith, the descendants of the New Christians wrote a chapter of Jewish history that had repercussions at the national and international levels. In south central Brazil the Jews led a much different life. The Jewish interest in that region was the same as that of the rest of the population: gold. Insofar as the persistence of Judaism is concerned, it is curious to note that in this same eighteenth century a secret Jewish community was discovered on the banks of the Paraiba do Norte river and was accused of heresy.
