Judaism in Mexico

Mexican Jews
judíos mexicanos
יהודים מקסיקניים

Map of Jewish population by state in 2010
Total population
67,476 (2010 census)
Regions with significant populations
Mexico City Metropolitan Area
Languages
Mexican Spanish, Hebrew
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Jewish diaspora

Judaism in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of “Marranos” or “Crypto-Jews,” those forcibly converted to Catholicism due to the Spanish Inquisition. Over the colonial period, a number came to Mexico despite Mexican Inquisition persecutions in the late 16th and mid 17th centuries. However, most Conversos eventually assimilated into Mexican society with no immigration of practicing Jews allowed into the country until the 19th century. Religious freedom was established in the second half of that century and around that time, Jews began immigrating to Mexico from Europe and later from the crumbling Ottoman Empire and what is now Syria continuing into the first half of the 20th century.

Today, most Jews in Mexico are descendants of this immigration and still divided by diasporic origin, principally Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim and Ladino-speaking Sephardim. It is an insular community with its own religious, social and cultural institutions, mostly in Guadalajara and Mexico City. However, since the 1880s, there have been efforts to identify descendants of colonial era Conversos both in Mexico and the Southwestern United States, generally to return them to Judaism.

The first Jewish presence in Mexico, was the arrival the Conversos which accompanied Hernán Cortés in 1519. These were members of Jewish families which had been forcibly converted to Christianity in order to avoid expulsion from Spain after the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors . The reconquest was followed by the Spanish Inquisition which made the Conversos one of their targets, with accusations of reverting to Judaic practice. Converso migration to the new Spanish colony began in 1530 after most of the violence from the conquest of the Aztec Empire had subsided and the Spanish Inquisition continued. For several decades these families were able to live peacefully, integrating into Mexico’s elite, with some become prominent Catholic clergy and some returning to Jewish practice.