Esperanza Across the Atlantic: A Eurafrican Crypto-Jew in the Spanish Empire

In a gripping narrative, Bristol explores the life story of a single woman, Esperanza Rodriguez, as a window into the intersections of religious and racial identities in early modern Spain and Spanish America.

Esperanza Across the Atlantic tells the story of Esperanza Rodriguez, a Eurafrican crypto-Jewish woman born enslaved in Seville in 1579 and convicted of Judaizing by the Mexican Inquisition in 1646. In between these events Esperanza lived in several Spanish American cities, including H...