Professor Emeritus David Gitlitz is one of the world’s leading experts on Jewish-Catholic interactions in Iberia and the Americas. While initially drawn to the literature of the Spanish Golden Age as a student at Oberlin and Harvard, the history and culture of Spanish and Latin American Jewry later caught Gitlitz’s interest. He has since written extensively on Iberian Jews, the conversos, and pilgrimage. His Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews, fruit of extended visits to Inquisition archives in Madrid and Mexico City, won the Jewish Book Council’s 1996 National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Studies. Gitlitz’s latest publication, Living in Silverado: Secret Jews in the Silver Mining towns of Colonial Mexico, traces the unusual lives and fortunes of Jewish migrants working in colonial Mexico’s silver mining towns during the 1500s. James Blake Wiener spoke to David Gitlitz from his home in a village in the Mexican state of Oaxaca about those Jews who found adventure and mixed fortunes in Nueva España.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original content at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1821/interview-living-in-silverado-secret-jews-in-the-s/.