Living in Silverado

Secret Jews in the Silver Mining Towns of Colonial Mexico
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8263-6442-5
Verlag: University of New Mexico Press

Buch, Englisch, 432 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

In this thoroughly researched work, David M. Gitlitz traces the lives and fortunes of three clusters of sixteenth-century crypto-Jews in Mexico's silver mining towns. Previous studies of sixteenth-century Mexican crypto-Jews focus on the merchant community centered in Mexico City, but here Gitlitz looks beyond Mexico's major population center to explore how clandestine religious communities were established in the reales, the hinterland mining camps, and how they differed from those of the capital in their struggles to retain their Jewish identity in a world dominated economically by silver and religiously by the Catholic Church.

In Living in Silverado Gitlitz paints an unusually vivid portrait of the lives of Mexico's early settlers. Unlike traditional scholarship that has focused mainly on macro issues of the silver boom, Gitlitz closely analyzes the complex workings of the haciendas that mined and refined silver, and in doing so he provides a wonderfully detailed sense of the daily experiences of Mexico's early secret Jews.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One. Beginnings in the Raya de Portugal
- Chapter Two. Going to Mexico
- Chapter Three. The Castellanos's Jewish Life in Mexico City in the 1530s and 1540s
- Chapter Four. Tomás's First Mine: Ayoteco
- Chapter Five. Tomás de Fonseca's Pachuca Mine and the Mining Revolution
- Chapter Six. Tomás's Mine in Tlalpujahua
- Chapter Seven. Tomás de Fonseca Reconnects
- Chapter Eight. The Portuguese Come to America
- Chapter Nine. From Solitary Worship to Community
- Chapter Ten. The Taxco Miners
- Chapter Eleven. The Jewish Life of the Taxco Miners
- Chapter Twelve. Pachuca and Manuel de Lucena's General Store
- Chapter Thirteen. Lucena's Judaizing Community in Mexico City and Pachuca
- Chapter Fourteen. Judaizing from Tlalpujahua
- Chapter Fifteen. Destruction and Survival
- Chapter Sixteen. Some Conclusions
- Appendix One. Origins and Arrivals
- Appendix Two. Holiday Observances
- Appendix Three. Enríquez-Lucena Holiday Attendees
- Bibliography
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

David M. Gitlitz is a professor emeritus of Hispanic studies at the University of Rhode Island. His publications include Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews and The Lost Minyan (both from UNM Press).