Lecture: Hidden History April 20, 2010

This lecture will be held at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center at the corner of 14th Avenue and Grant Street, 1370 Grant Street. The Crypto-Jews of the Southwest. Discover the hidden history of crypto-Jews in the Southwest with University of New Mexico professor Stanley Hordes. While working as New Mexico state historian in the '80s, Hordes noticed that some Hispano community members had "vestigial" Jewish customs. These cultural and religious practices turned out to be more common than he thought and have roots going back to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain and Portugal, where Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism. Follow their story from the old world to the new, and from the Inquisition to the present day.