The Hidden Diary of a Victim of the Mexican Inquisition

As Spain began to settle the New World in the 16th century, crypto-Jews were among the colonists; the Inquisition followed soon after. Natasha Pizzey describes the fate of Luis de Caravajal the Younger, a member of a large, prosperous, and originally Jewish family that came to New Spain:

[The Carvajals] governed part of northern Mexico and soon made enemies, including a power-hungry viceroy keen to topple them from power. The ambitious viceroy discovered that Luis de Carvajal was a practicing Jew, a crime [then] punishable by death. . . . Older relatives had urged Luis de Carvajal to convert to Catholicism for his own safety, but he staunchly stuck to his faith.

When he was first arrested, the authorities let him off with a warning but kept tabs on him. Far from giving up his religion, Luis de Carvajal became a leader in Mexico’s underground Jewish community. When the inquisitors caught up with him again a few years later, he was sentenced to death. He was just thirty years old.

Before he was executed, he was tortured so badly that he revealed the names of 120 fellow Jews. . . . His captors forced him to listen as those “heretics,” which included his own mother, were tortured in the cell next to him. . . . We know the excruciating details of Luis de Carvajal’s persecution because he managed to keep secret diaries. But these were not any old notebooks. They were painstakingly crafted, miniature manuscripts with almost microscopic handwriting in Latin and Spanish.

Read more at BBC

More about: Anti-Semitism, History & Ideas, Inquisition, Marranos, Mexico

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy