Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[marcos]

The man who built the boats for Cortés to destroy Tenochtitlán was a converso, which means he was a jew who had chosen conversion to the catholic faith over emigration from Spain and death, which were the alternatives in the late fifteenth century ... he was then accused, almost certainly falsely, of secretly persisting in pagan rites, and became the first person burnt at the stake under the Inquisition in Nueva España .... can't recall his name, don't know if the story is on the net .... there was a piece written in the mid 1800s with claimed proof that his accusers benefited financially from charging him, and he claimed innocence until he burnt .... trivia factoid

Many jewish immigrants came to México during various periods, there is a fair sized community in el DF today i think ... one of the languages of the country recorded by the SIL people is ladino, which is the language of the sefardi, the jews of the iberian peninsula, mixture of hebrew and spanish, as yiddish is a mix of hebrew and german i guess .... long history there, so it is in no way a conflict that a mejicano would have a bar mitzvah .... a mejicana, yes, that would make the headlines