Before joining up with Cortés, Alonso and Diego were in Cuba, but on far different rungs of society. Alonso was a blacksmith in town, while Diego and his sisters lived in the governor’s mansion, where he served as majordomo. Despite this all-important class difference, Beatriz married the blacksmith. Apparently decisive was the one thing they did share: a common ancestry. Cortés’s captain wound up gathering pearls off the Venezuela coast, only to be poisoned by rivals in 1532.21 Although much is written about him, nowhere is it mentioned that he was a converso, much less a secret Jew. Like most conversos, Diego passed himself off as an Old Christian, and went to his grave with his masquerade intact.
Señoritas were a rarity throughout the New World. With fewer than one Spanish woman for every ten men, to marry one was considered a feather in the cap for the mostly poor, aspiring hidalgos. After Mexico’s conquest, some ladies felt the same about them. Most were servant girls who journeyed to New Spain to find themselves a newly rich husband. Exceptions were the four daughters of the royal treasurer Alonso Estrada, the natural son, or so he claimed, of King Ferdinand. Few women were as desirable as the Estrada sisters, who could choose from among many suitors, and it is therefore not surprising that they all married well. What is surprising is that their mother was from a well-known Jewish family and that their husbands would have known of their wives’ blemished ancestry. That their progeny would also be stigmatized seems not to have mattered. Despite the aggressiveness of the Holy Fathers, and repeated decrees against conversos, they were able to keep their wives’ and children’s Jewish heritage secret. The same held true of Beatriz and Diego Ordaz’s surviving sister. Only now is their story being told.
FRANCISCA ORDAZ
As Beatriz, the wife of the heretic Jewish conquistador, lay dying during the siege of Mexico, her sister, Francisca, was by her side. The two were among only six Spanish women known to have accompanied the conquistadors during the fighting in Mexico. After the final victory, Francisca was observed enjoying a wild night of celebration. According to an eyewitness, Francisca and three other “adventurous women went gaily to dance with men still in their quilted armor.” It may well have been that night that she danced with her future husband, the son of Ponce de León, one of the legendary figures of the New World.22
After Alonso’s undoing, Diego Ordaz was not about to fix Francisca up with another Judaizer. Instead he found Juan González Ponce de León, a valiant suitor of noble, unblemished credentials. His father, the conqueror and governor of Puerto Rico and discoverer of Florida, is forever known for his quixotic search for the fountain of youth. His son was distinguished in his own right. Serving as a soldier under Ordaz’s command, Juan was the first man to reach the top of the main temple of Tenochtitlán and, despite being badly wounded, led a vanguard force that captured Montezuma. When Cortés asked him why, considering his injury, he had not withdrawn, but instead led the fight up the steps to Montezuma’s quarters, Juan answered: “Señor, this is not the time for men to be in bed.”23
Juan was aware of Francisca’s lineage even before Alonso’s trial had exposed her sister as a Judaizer. For years he and Alonso were friends, and up until Alonso’s flaming death the two men were partners.24 They shared a royal land grant, an encomienda, in Actopan in the modern state of Hidalgo, about sixty miles north of Mexico City, where Alonso had his farm.25
ALONSO ESTRADA’S WIFE AND DAUGHTERS
In 1522, King Charles V appointed his alleged uncle Alonso Estrada as Mexico’s royal treasurer, perhaps the most important position in the rich territory. In Cortés’s absence, Estrada served as acting governor and for a year (1529) was governor. It was a common belief that he was the bastard son of King Ferdinand, the result of a liaison with Doña Luisa de Estrada, the daughter of Don Fernan, Duke of Aragon, when both were teenagers.
Raised in Ferdinand’s court, Alonso inherited the title Duke of Aragon and sided with Charles V when he was contending for the throne. While some speculate that Alonso himself had Jewish ancestors, his wife certainly did. It was widely known that Marina Gutiérrez Flores de la Caballeria was from an old Jewish family whose wealth has been compared to the Rothschilds’. Although both sides of her family had converted to Catholicism, for three generations they were condemned as Judaizers by the Inquisition. Some who were already dead before sentencing had their bodies exhumed and burned. Doña Marina, having secured a forged affidavit attesting to her pure blood, followed her husband to Mexico.26
Following his death in 1531, Doña Marina cemented her place in colonial society by marrying off her daughters to two of Mexico’s prominent conquistadors. The youngest, Beatrice Estrada, married Vásquez de Coronado, who (with his wife’s money) set off to find the fabled Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola. Although the object of his search was never found, Coronado was the first to explore America’s southwest and discovered the Grand Canyon. Luisa, the oldest, became the wife of Jorge de Alvarado, a conqueror of Mexico and governor of Guatemala. The two other Estrada sisters likewise married nobility.*1
What do these marriages portend? Since the Jewish ancestry of those noblemen’s wives’ mother was known (as was the fact that her Old Christian certification was a sham), it apparently did not overly concern them that their children would no longer be of pure blood.
In the first four decades of the Age of Discovery, known conversos were involved in nearly every venture as explorers, pilots, and conquistadors, or behind the scenes as financiers, shipowners, and administrators. Those mentioned here are but a few of the known Sephardim who participated. How many others there were is unknown. Since all Spanish conversos were forbidden in the New World, it made no difference if one was a true convert, an atheist, or a covert Jew. All were there illegally and therefore subject to prosecution. Today, with the advent of genealogical Web sites, the Jewish roots of other early pioneers are being disclosed in postings by their descendants.27
Hernando Cortés, like Columbus, had the support of many conversos. He had grown up across the street from the synagogue in Medellín, home to influential Jews. Some were friends of his family, and that may have been a reason he trusted and favored them. Their sad and sudden exodus in 1492, when he was seven years old, was a major event in his childhood. A leading historian of the conquest of Mexico, Hugh Thomas, puts the number of conversos who served with Cortés at more than a hundred.28
As early as 1501, the Crown published an edict that “Moors, Jews, heretics, reconciliados [repentants—those who returned to the church], and New Christians are not to be allowed to go to the Indies.” Yet in 1508, the bishop of Cuba reported, “practically every ship [arriving in Havana] is filled with Hebrews and New Christians.”29 Such decrees banning them, followed by letters home complaining of their continued arrival, were a regular occurrence. Conversos with the aptitude and capital to develop colonial trade, comfortable in a Hispanic society, yet seeking to put distance between themselves and the homeland of the Inquisition, made their way to the New World.30 No licenses were required for the crew of a ship, and as many were owned by conversos, they signed on as sailors and jumped ship. Servants also didn’t need a license or exit visa, so that a Jew who obtained one by whatever means could take others along as household staff.31