Life Story: Esperanza Rodríguez (ca. 1590-after 1647)

Esperanza Rodríguez was born in Spain around the year 1590. Her mother Isabel was an enslaved woman from the area known today as Guinea in West Africa. Her father Francisco Rodríguez was Isabel’s enslaver. The laws governing slavery in Spain meant that Esperanza inherited the status of her mother.

Isabel died when Esperanza was about six or seven years old, leaving Esperanza alone and enslaved in her father’s household. When she was nine or ten, Esperanza’s grandmother Ynez Lopez let Esperanza in on their family secret: the Rodríguez family was Jewish. This was very risky choice in Spain in the 1500s. The Spanish Catholic monarchs Isabella I and Ferdinand II had banned Jewish people from living in Spain in 1492. After 1492 many Jewish people chose to flee Spain to avoid being punished for their beliefs. Others were forcibly converted. This community, called conversos, remained in Spain. It was difficult to know which conversos became genuine Catholics and which still secretly practiced Judaism, so the monarchs also established a religious court called the Inquisition. The Inquisition had the authority to arrest and punish anyone who did not follow the rules of Catholicism. The families or individuals who were secretly loyal to Judaism in one form or another came to be called crypto-Jews or marranos. Esperanza’s family were part of the crypto-Jewish community in Spain. 

Practicing Judaism put Esperanza at risk for imprisonment, torture, or even death. But it also brought her closer to her father’s family. Soon after embracing her Jewish heritage, Esperanza was transferred to the household of her aunt Doña Catalina Enríquez. Catalina and her husband Pedro Arias Maldonado were pleased that Esperanza shared their faith. 

Esperanza achieved self-emancipation when she was about seventeen or eighteen years old. There are no records of how Esperanza won her freedom, but it is likely that Catalina supported her change in status because the two continued to live together afterward. In the early 1600s Pedro travelled to Havana for business. During his absence, Esperanza and Catalina moved into a Catholic convent together. This might seem like a strange choice for two secretly Jewish women, but it was common for crypto-Jews to participate in Catholic rituals to avoid suspicion. As many Spanish women spent time in convents at different points in their lives, their choice reinforced their image as upstanding Catholic ladies. Esperanza learned to read and write at the convent. 

Pedro died in Havana, so Catalina and Esperanza travelled there to settle his affairs. Esperanza met and married a German immigrant named Juan Baptista del Bosque in Havana around 1606. Some members of the crypto-Jewish community looked down on her choice because Juan was not Jewish. The couple stayed in Havana for a year before moving to Cartagena, where Juan worked as a sculptor.

Esperanza and Juan moved frequently, probably in search of work. They travelled from Cartagena to Veracruz to reunite with Catalina. The trio then moved together to Mexico City, where Esperanza found work as a seamstress. After four or five years, Esperanza and Juan moved to Guadalajara, where Esperanza opened a store. Over this time, Esperanza gave birth to three daughters and two sons. For all of their movement, Esperanza and Juan had never achieved prosperity. They were often included on charity lists in their communities.

Juan died around 1629, leaving Esperanza solely responsible for supporting her children. The work of providing for her family must have put an enormous strain on Esperanza. Sometime between 1634 and 1636 she moved back to Mexico City to be closer to Catalina and her extended family. But she did not let her economic woes diminish her faith. She developed strong relationships with a wide network of crypto-Jews. She hosted fasts and participated in important funeral rituals for community members. Many members of the extended clan considered her a leader and kind of prophetess. Her blessings were sought after. Even so, as a biracial Black woman and former enslaved person, some within the community looked down on her and treated her with suspicion, referring to her as a mulata, emphasizing her difference.

Like most conversos, Esperanza was very careful about sharing her secret faith with her children, which may indicate that her husband did not know about it. It appears she never taught her sons about her faith. Her eldest daughter Juana did not learn about her mother’s faith until she herself married a crypto-Jew, although it may be that the match was encouraged by Esperanza without her daughter fully understanding why. She did teach her two younger daughters Ysabel and Maria the religion when they came of age, possibly because at that point their father was no longer living.  

In the summer of 1642 disaster struck. Esperanza, her daughters, and many other members of the crypto-Jewish community in Mexico City were arrested by the Mexican Inquisition. Esperanza was accused of being a judaizer, a person who pretended to be a Catholic while secretly practicing and spreading the Jewish religion. The Inquisition had received reports that Esperanza observed Jewish fasts and followed the laws of Moses. Judaizing was a serious crime in the eyes of the Inquisition, punishable by death.

Early in her imprisonment, Esperanza denied that she was Jewish. She probably hoped she could convince the Inquisition that she had been falsely accused. But Inquisitors used torture to secure confessions, and eventually Esperanza gave in. She claimed that her interrogation had caused a delirium that led her to deny her Jewish identity. She confessed that she was Jewish and named more than seventy other crypto-Jews to satisfy her Inquisitors. One of the people she named was her aunt Catalina. Catalina was sentenced to death but died in prison before her sentence could be carried out. 

Esperanza’s experience with the Inquisition was complicated by her race and class. The Inquisition experience was terrible for everyone, but wealthy white people could receive certain privileges that made it more bearable. Esperanza was part of a well-off and well-connected family, but as a mixed-race Black and formerly enslaved person she did not receive the privileges that well-connected white people did. In fact, when Esperanza’s extended family were called to be witnesses during her trial, many claimed not to have known or spoken to her.

The Inquisition sentenced Esperanza to death by fire for her many years of observing and sharing her Jewish faith. Esperanza apologized for her crimes, expressed remorse for having shunned Christianity, and begged for mercy. The Inquisitors decided that Esperanza was sincere and declared that she could be reconciled to the Church. They changed her sentence from death by fire to life in prison and exile from Mexico. She was ordered to leave for Spain immediately and report to the Inquisition in Seville. The Inquisition court of Seville would determine how she would serve the rest of her life sentence. Esperanza was also forbidden from ever wearing or owning any precious metals, stones, or fabrics, as well as from riding a horse. 

Esperanza’s daughters also confessed and begged for mercy. They were sentenced to six months in prison, a hundred lashes, and required to renounce their Judaism in a humiliating public ceremony called an auto-da-fé. On October 29, 1646 Esperanza wrote a petition asking the court to allow her to serve her life sentence in Mexico to be close to her daughters. Her petition was granted. She was also granted permission to leave prison to attend mass regularly. 

There is documentation that indicates Esperanza may have been one of the prisoners of the Mexican Inquisition who traveled to Spain for an Inquisition tribunal in 1647. The record notes how much older Esperanza looked. Her five-year ordeal had taken a toll on her health. She died in the port city of Veracruz not long after.

• auto-da-fé: A public ceremony where the sentences of people arrested by the Inquisition were announced and carried out.
• Catholic: A Christian who follows the pope in Rome.
• convent: The home of a community of nuns.  
• converso: A formerly Jewish or Muslim person who converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution from the Spanish government.
• crypto-Jew: A Jewish person who hides their faith by outwardly observing the rituals of another religion to protect themselves from harm. 
• Inquisition: A Spanish religious court that had absolute authority to try any citizen of Spain for crimes against the Catholic Church.
• Inquisitors: The people who were appointed to carry out the interrogation of people arrested by the Inquisition.
• Jewish: Refers to a person who believes in and follows the teachings of Moses, or to an aspect of the religion or culture that is based on the teachings of Moses.
• judaizers: People who publicly identified as Christians but secretly practiced and shared the Jewish faith. 
• mulata: The word used in Spanish-speaking colonies for a woman of mixed African and European ancestry.
• petition: A formal written request sent to an authority figure.

• Pair this Life Story with Casta Paintings to learn more about the racial hierarchy in the Spanish colonies. 
• Compare and contrast this life story with Life Story: Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche and consider the following questions: why was each woman targeted by the Inquisition? How did race and class impact their experiences and outcomes? Together, what do these stories reveal about the role of the Inquisition courts in the Spanish colonies?
• For a larger lesson about the role of the Catholic Church in the Spanish colonies, pair this Life Story with any or all of the following resources:
  • A Nun Challenges the Patriarchy
  • Petition for Freedom
  • Diary of Úrsula de Jesús
  • Life Story: Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche
  • Life Story: Isabel Hernández
  • Life in the Mission System

POWER AND POLITICS

• For more information and resources about the history of the Spanish colonies in North America, see our curriculum guide Nueva York: 1613-1945.