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Stanley M. Hordes, Ph.D. is adjunct research professor at the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. He earned his Ph.D. in Mexican History at Tulane University, where he received a Fulbright Dissertation Fellowship to perform research in Mexico and Spain. He is the author of numerous articles on the history of crypto-Judaism in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.
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By Stanley M. Hordes, Ph.D.
December 14, 2006
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I would like to respond to the article that appeared in Israel Insider crypto-Judaism in New Mexico written by Associated Press reporter Matt Crenson, in which I, and my historical research, were prominently featured.
The topic of crypto-Judaism is a complex one, and not easily given to superficial analysis. It is unfortunate that Mr. Crenson missed a golden opportunity to produce an objective and enlightening article on a fascinating aspect of the history of the US Southwest.
Instead, Mr. Crenson mischaracterized my work into the history of certain Hispanics in New Mexico who trace their roots back to people forced to convert from Judaism to Catholicism in 15th-century Spain and Portugal, equating this analysis with belief in Bible stories, and with the acceptance of a present-day manifestation of the mythical Lost Tribe of Israel. By asking his readers to "suspen[d] disbelief" prior to considering the history of these descendants of Iberian crypto-Jews, he denigrated decades of historical and ethnographic research performed by me and other scholars.
In framing the debate among scholars, Mr. Crenson highlighted the work of two academics whose conclusions supported his apparently preconceived notions, while ignoring the work of such scholars as anthropologists Seth Kunin, of the University of Durham (UK), and Schulamith Halevy, of Hebrew University, sociologist Tomás Atencio, of the University of New Mexico, and social psychologist Janet Jacobs, of the University of Colorado, all of whom have performed careful field work in New Mexico, have published extensively on the topic, and have developed conclusions in support of the presence of crypto-Jewish culture in the region. Mr. Crenson was informed as to the availability of these experts, and apparently chose not to consult them.
With reference to Mr. Crenson's treatment of DNA analysis, in which he cited the results of a study indicating that New Mexico genetically looked like Iberia, with no stronger presence of Jewish descendants here than in Spain and Portugal, I had related to Mr. Crenson that I felt that this finding in no way contradicted my earlier findings indicating the historical presence of descendants of crypto-Jews among the early Spanish settlers. I indicated that I had no idea how many such descendants arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries, and I by no means ever claimed the number to represent a substantial percentage of the whole. But in his article, Mr. Crenson turned this assertion on its head, implying some kind of doubt on my part as to such a presence in his statement, "Even Hordes acknowledges that if Jews fleeing the Inquisition actually did settle on the northern frontier of Spain's colonial empire there weren't very many of them . . .. (emphasis added)" Such doubt on my part could not be farther from the truth.
More importantly, during our interview, I told Mr. Crenson that I was far more impressed with the results of medical genetics than the comparatively more basic Y-chromosome DNA work. Over the past decade or so, physicians and geneticists have discovered certain genetic diseases among Hispanic populations, diseases that appear with greater frequency among Jews. Pemphigus Vulgaris, for example, is a rare dermatological disease that strikes Jewish people in greater numbers than the general population. Physicians found an unusually high number of New Mexico Hispanic patients with this malady, relative to the total number of Hispanics in the state. Further, they found that certain of these patients demonstrated the identical genome and protein sequencing as Jewish patients with this disease. I pointed this out to Mr. Crenson. He chose not to include it in his story.
Mr. Crenson concluded his piece by comparing the history of crypto-Judaism to "a religion itself," and observing that "The crypto-Jew story injects fresh mystery into this increasingly humdrum world." What a shame that he chose to focus on "mystery" to the detriment of history.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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