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Throwback: Inventing New Mexico's Crypto Jews! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: As the people of Medida Yucatan experience increasing urbanization and gentrification, there are fewer opportunities for diverse and intergenerational communities to engage with local culture.
• 0:13
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  SPEAKER_02: Lignum is a haven for culture, rest, and resistance.
• 1:04
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• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now, on with the show.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: You must excuse me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've grown quite aware I.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Strangely a little too too normal here for what's going on elsewhere.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you used to live in the area, so you know how big Dallas is.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's hard to really gauge where you you might think that these goons are going to show up.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there was a report last the week before last that ICE had been in within the vicinity of the college where I teach.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's mainly, you know, Chicano, Mexicanos, um, and uh some African-American uh kids as well, but it's most of course most mostly people of color, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but uh this I learned about this after the supposed uh uh reports had come in.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now all they said was that they had been seen in the area, so there was no reports of whether or not there was any actual activity taking place besides you know the the vehicles being spotted and things like that.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, unfortunately, I mean we're fortunate here in Dallas in that regard, but you know, uh some of our listeners and some of our supporters have been telling us about things that are happening in their neck in the woods, and you know, and just being uh someone who is staying current to the events that are happening, like it's uh I don't I mean it's what what more words can we use, right, Curly?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: To describe the situation that's taking place.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is so fucked right now, and it's it's escalating so rapidly.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like you I go to sleep, I wake up the next day, and like it's hard to keep up on all the shit that's happening.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: They destroyed the east wing of the White House, right?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important that we say this.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know that the this podcast is is you know has a specific uh theme and a purpose, but for posterity's sake, right?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like someone listening five years if if this is still up, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever, if someone downloaded it and shared it, like they they need like what are these guys talking about?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say that they happen to somehow erase the history that happened, because some of that's taking place.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of stuff that's being scrubbed from the internet, uh, especially since you have the techno fascists, the oligarch bros that are on board with uh the current administration and what they're doing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So some a lot of stuff that's that's happening is being quickly uh you know uh erased and scrubbed from from the internet.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this is basically we're right now, as we're recording this, this is late October of 2025.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and and uh we're not even a year into this uh the second Trump administration.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, some people are already saying that we're not headed into a dictatorship, that we're basically already in it, we just don't realize it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: We're just kind of going through the motions.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was interesting, also for posterity's sake, in case this gets erased, but he's going to war with uh, you know, the the escalating the trade war with Canada um based off of Canada running an ad using Ronald Reagan's own words from it was like a radio address from 1987, I think.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right, something like that.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're using that as the pretext to you know cut off all trade negotiations and escalate this trade war.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when reporters asked him about it, he was like, Oh yeah, it was fake.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: They used this fake audio from Ronald Reagan.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: I guess it was AI, and it's like and and and his followers are just gonna go along with that, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, they're gonna be like, oh yeah, they they faked it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was AI.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: When you can just look it up, you can literally look up Ronald Reagan's radio speeches and be like, oh no, they took his exact words and what he was saying, but they're just they're rewriting history on the fly.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: On the fly, yeah.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Just just with the ability of saying, No, it didn't.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't say that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't happen.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that didn't happen.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's fucking scary, man.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh and and and people are just acting like it's normal.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was working up in Taos recently, and um thought it would be fun to go check out some uh some shops in Taos, checked out some uh used bookstores, but also I um I happened to be in the market for some uh some stuff.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I walked into a a store that uh sells uh guns and ammo, and I was just in there kind of like window shopping, and there was this uh parking lot full of cop cars.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it turns out that most of the people who work in this place are also cops, like active duty cops.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm in there and I'm looking around, and uh they were selling Antifa hunting licenses.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Get the hell out of it.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, like a hunting license so you could hunt down and kill Antifa, and it's like also valid for communists, anarchists, and Maoists.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, wow, and these guys are cops.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: These are supposed to be the guys that are like protecting this community.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Never trust a cop, is what I say.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: Bro, absolutely.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing that stuck out the most, which I was surprised by and I probably shouldn't have been, was in their knife case, proudly on display, was a uh uh an SS dagger.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Damn.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: So the belt with the death's head and the SS, and then the dagger with the swastika in the handle, and a little sign underneath that said not for sale.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not for sale.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, then why do you have it on fucking display?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because you must have it on display.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's for historical purposes, don't you know, Curly?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's all it is, it's history.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: See, and then uh we wandered into another similar shop, and this particular shop was selling uh targets of Muslims, but they were zombies, so that's how they were being marketed, right?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right, zombie targets, but then you pull it out because you know me, I'm like, oh, zombie target, that's cool.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I pull it out, and I'm like, why is this zombie a Muslim?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we got the hell out of there, and uh odd place.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Did you give them the finger on the way out?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to get shot.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus Christ.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Weren't you packing too?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um okay, or maybe not.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't own the gun to everybody listening.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: You were just there for research purposes?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was just there for research purposes.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to wander in and see what these shops like were uh up in Taos.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of lives support the local businesses there, right?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: But the used bookstores we found were really good.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I found some uh found some good stuff.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was one used bookstore.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The last time that I was there, uh off of the main strip, um, what's the main road going up uh from Taos to uh Taos Pueblo?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: That main road.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So so as you're as you're headed up from from Taos into Taos Pueblo, like there's this shopping strip uh near the main plaza, the historic plaza.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was it was a used bookstore that was right there.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I got some cool stuff.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I got this large format book um uh that that deals with um uh Mexica Astegmas American uh attire dress and thing.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was by Ana Walt, uh the author.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Anna Walt, yeah.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: You showed me that book.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, god damn it, how did he find this?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I got it for a good price too, and it was in really good condition, too.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I still have it.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I always love going to the the the small.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not that there's a lot uh left now, but whenever I can when I when I'm somewhere, I like to seek out the uh local bookstores and see what they have, and you'd be surprised the stuff that they have there that you'll find.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I found some good stuff.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: I found a lot of uh I was I was in the market for some Hunter S.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thompson, and they had uh they had a handful.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: So walked out with all of them.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Cleaned them out.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: This uh this episode today, sir, I've been wanting to get done for a long time.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: I've been I've been writing this for a very long time.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'll write it and then I go back and I edit it and then I go back and rewrite.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know how it is.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: But finally, I think I hammered it into shape.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Although, right before we started this episode, I sent you another revision that I made like five minutes ago.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: So this is the one that's going in the historical record.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's uh something that uh it's it's it was pretty popular here in New Mexico for a while, and then it sort of died down, and then now I'm noticing it's on the rise again.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought it would be a propos to uh get this episode out there.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, dear listeners, sit back and relax as we regale you with the tale of inventing New Mexico's crypto Jews.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Part one: A Myth is Born.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: In the blistering heat of New Mexico's sun-baked earth, under the protective gaze of Ocupine, the Turtle Mountain that majestically stands guard over Albuquerque, a strange and persistent legend has taken hold.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's a story of hidden Jews, of ancient rites disguised as Catholic rituals, and of shadowy ancestors who supposedly hid their true faith during the Inquisition.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: This is the tale of New Mexico's crypto Jews, a myth so tangled in folklore, mistaken identities, and selective memory that it could only have been born in the fevered heart of the American Southwest.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: The modern crypto-Jew craze began, as many myths do, with an eager academic and an over-reliance on confirmation bias.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: In the 1980s, historian Stanley Hordes launched a search for what he believed to be the long-lost Jewish roots of New Mexico's Spanish-speaking residents.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Descendants, he claimed, of an elusive and mysterious population that had secretly kept the flames of Judaism alive for centuries, hidden beneath the Catholic veneer imposed by the Spanish Empire.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: But when we scratch the surface and look closer at what Hordes and his followers were really chasing, the myth becomes apparent.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: A myth so potent it gave rise to an entire identity-bending industry steeped in false history.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now, let's be clear.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: The fact is that Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal did indeed flee the Inquisition, hiding their faith and spreading across the globe, including the Americas.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: However, the legend claiming that Nuevo Mexicanos represent a significant part of this ancient Jewish diaspora, just doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Cracks in the mythology began to emerge in 1992, when Judith Newlander, a Jewish folklorist and graduate student from Indiana, decided to investigate the matter for herself.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: She approached Hordes' work with the fervor of an outsider trying to fit the pieces together.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yet, as Newlander dug deeper into the fieldwork, visiting cemeteries, interviewing families, and investigating so-called Jewish symbols, the facade began to grumble.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: The first sign that Hordes and his disciples were playing fast and loose with the facts came in the form of a particular cemetery in Albuquerque.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: There, Newlander found a star of David on a gravestone, which seemed to confirm the legends.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: But upon further investigation, the details began to unravel.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: The family of the deceased were puzzled by the notion that they might possibly be Jewish.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Their priest, an Irishman, had chosen the six-pointed star design himself.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it had no particular religious significance to them, them being the family.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: And this is like a common trait that we're finding is Judith Newlander's research.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: She would find stuff that appeared to be Jewish on the face.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: And but when she spoke to the actual families involved, they were like, I don't know, man.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: We like that's just a symbol.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like it we we don't think we're we're secret Jews, you know?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: And this this tended to happen a lot.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: I should uh note that for part of this research, I uh I'm using an excellent article from The Atlantic um that came out quite some time ago, and I was really happy to find it for this episode.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: The year 2000, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the year 2000.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's called Mistaken Identity, The Case of New Mexico's Hidden Jews.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I I provide a link to it in the show notes.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say that we used to talk about that article back in the early MES days.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I remember uh had posted it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it triggered some memories.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because this was just one of those things that that that keeps popping up, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I continue.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: The plot thickened when Newlander witnessed Hordes manipulating testimonies during his field work.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: One of his interview subjects, Nora Garcia Herrera, was persuaded to declare that her father was part of a secret Jewish heritage because he had been circumcised by a neighbor.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: A neighbor.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would have been like, wait, how old was your dad when this happened?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And was this actually a circumcision?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um and he prayed before slaughtering sheep.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: The trouble was these customs uh were not exclusive to Jews.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And Newlander noticed the subtle nudges Hordes gave to his interviewees, gently steering them towards conclusions that fit the narrative he hoped to construct.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: When Garcia Herrera admitted that she didn't know which language her father prayed in before dispatching the sheep, Hordes began reciting the Kaddish in Hebrew.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Then he suggested that the old man might have called God Yahweh.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Garcia Herrera quickly agreed.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: He used to call him Yahweh.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: To which oh sorry.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: To which Hordes added in Spanish because it's Hebrew for God.
• 19:03
  unknown: Okay.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: So just like leading, you know, leading, leading interviews.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it didn't end there.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Newlander also dug into other customs that Hordes pointed to.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: He thought things like celebrating Saint Esther's Day, burning hair and nails, or playing dreidel were clearly Jewish.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: But her research showed otherwise.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Saint Esther, it turns out, has been a Spanish folk saint for centuries.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Burning hair and nails is common in many European folk traditions, not just Jewish ones.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it was widespread even during the Inquisition era.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not something that was hidden during the Inquisition.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: And dreidels, well, they aren't Sephardic at all.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: They're Ashkenazic.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And they came long after the Inquisition.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: What kids in Mexico actually played with was the trompita, a simple spinning top found in every community, regardless of religion.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: And this is another story.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: If if you go into Newlander's research, she talks about meeting somebody who's like, oh yeah, I still have my grandfather's dreidel.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then they show it to her and it's a trompita.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So is the trompita the same as what we used to call the pirinola, where it's like pondos, ponuno, you spin it, and then string?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: The the the dra it's an actual dreidel.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Dra how do you say dreidel?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Draydle.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and this it's about about an inch big, and you spin it, and and each side has uh it says ponuno, like put one, take one, put two, take two, something like that.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was thinking you were referring to because the trompo, that's that's the trump, right?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: That you yeah, with the cord that you that you spin.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my uncles used to play with them.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's so I was thinking that that trompita was a different name for like the pirinola, which is what I yeah, it could be, it could be.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'll I'll have to dig it.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: You've given me more stuff to dig into, sir.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because that makes sense too, because I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a little game.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, good.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Fascinating.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Advances in DNA studies drove what should have been the final nail into the coffin.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: A 2004 study published in the Annals of Human Biology titled Toward Resolution of the Debate Regarding Purported Crypto Jews in a Spanish American population by Sutton et al.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: found no significant Jewish ancestry among New Mexico's Hispanos.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Aside from indigenous and Iberian roots, which they expected to find, the genetic profiles showed nothing unusual.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: The authors concluded.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's say you've got the Mexica Cal.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Calendar for the upcoming year, se tochtli, and you want to know a little bit more about the philosophy and worldview associated with the ancestral calendar system.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you're curious about the individual feasts that are held in connection with each of the months.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, dear listeners, I've got you covered, because my new book, Never Will It Be Lost, is now available.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: It features beautiful cover art provided by the amazing artist Mi Corazon Mexica, and it's packed with full color images from the codices.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: In it, I go over each of the monthly feasts and I provide some guidance and suggestions on how these feasts can be celebrated today.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: I also go into the Mexica worldview, cosmovision, and philosophy, and I talk about how we, as modern-day Mesoamerican descendants, can connect with and actualize this philosophy in the modern world.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm super proud of this book.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Again, it's called Never Will It Be Lost: Ritual, Remembrance, and the Aztec Calendar by yours truly, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: And if you order it using the link in the show notes, you get$5 off.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to support independent indigenous Chicano media, please consider picking it up.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: The crypto-Jewish scenario proposed by Hordes is refuted by these results.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: The criticisms of Newlander are well founded.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that should have been it, right?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like in my mind, that should have been it.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, the myth persists despite all contradictory evidence.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Hordes was not the first to entertain such ideas.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: At the University of New Mexico, sociologist Tomás Satencio had long pondered his Hispanos family's past.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: His father, converted to Presbyterianism at age 12, became one of New Mexico's first Hispano Protestant ministers, an unusual path in a Catholic culture.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: The identity grew complicated in the 1960s, when many young Hispanos inspired by the civil rights movement rejected what they saw as their white heritage and turned toward Chicano politics.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: The Protestant church to them symbolized Anglo-colonial influence.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: So Atencio struggled to understand why his father had embraced that faith.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: When he asked, his father replied that Protestantism wasn't just for Anglos, but that answer didn't satisfy him.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: He also recalled a moment, and this is fucking amazing.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: He also recalled a moment in the early 1950s when a distant relative boasted about seizing family land because his own kin, his part of the family, were mejores julios que ustedes, better Jews than all of you.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: When Atencio questioned his father about it, the old minister simply said, Yes, there's been talk that they're Jewish.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm sorry.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is just like a fucked up racist thing to say.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you rip somebody off and you're like, bro, why did you rip me off?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: And they respond because I'm a better Jew than you.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then for you to be like, holy shit, we're Jewish.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're Jewish.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is from a sociologist?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is someone who presumably has an advanced degree in the field of sociology.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing, man.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't know about you, but to me this seems less like some hidden lineage and more like the sour stench of good old-fashioned anti-Jewish bigotry dressed up as genealogy.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just batshit insane.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Anything goes with these folks, I guess.
• 26:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Part two.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Anything but indigenous.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: So let's not get bogged down in the details of academic fraud, because this isn't just a story about a few misguided researchers.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's a story about a much larger myth, one that stretches back to the heart of New Mexico's colonial history.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: The idea that New Mexico's Hispanos, those fiercely proud descendants of Spanish settlers, were secretly descended from Jews wasn't just a curiosity for academics.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: It became a tool for shaping identity.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: A major part of the allure was the rejection of indigenous roots.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: You see, despite the shakiness of his research, Hordes helped peel back the layers of identity that so-called Hispano communities had been carefully curating for generations.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: As he discovered, Hispanos preferred their own brand of Spanish heritage, distinct from the dirty, confusing mix of Indian blood that was associated with the term Chicano.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so the identity of the crypto Jew emerged as a protective origin myth, a way to distance themselves further from the indigenous past that was for many a source of shame.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: They could now proudly claim Jewish roots, an exotic European lineage, instead of acknowledging the intermingling of Spanish and Native American bloodlines that had given birth to their cultural identities.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: This wasn't just historical revisionism.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was cultural reinvention at its most cynical, a desperate grab for dignity in a world that prized whiteness and European bloodlines.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, the myth was less about religion than about race and respectability.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's important to recognize that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: Here in New Mexico, there's, you know, for our listeners, we've done a lot of episodes about this in the past.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: I encourage you to go back.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: One of our more popular ones is the uh New Mexico has a uh Hispano white nationalist problem.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that in in that episode we we really delve deep into the confused identity politics.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that um after we're done with the script, uh we get into the difference between those who call themselves Chicanos and those who call themselves Hispanos.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is a distinction there.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I think that should be uh noted.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Part three The Curious Case of Juan Sandoval But the Crypto Jewish fantasy wasn't just confined to the work of a few scholars or hopeful geolog genealogists.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was fertile ground for self-mythologizing, as demonstrated by Juan Sandoval, one of the more colorful characters in the Crypto Jew saga.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Sandoval, a man who gained attention for his own purported Jewish heritage, spun a tale so elaborate that his own son Luis eventually blew the whistle.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: The more Juan weaved his the more Juan Huived Juan huived.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Juan huived?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: God damn it.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: The more Juan weaved his stories of hidden Jewish ancestors, the more he seemed to fabricate the details.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Hold on, hold on.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Juan hueved Jewish.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Juan Juan Huived Huish.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Juan Huived Huish.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: Say that three times fast.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: The more Juan weaved his stories of hidden Jewish ancestors, hidden, the more he seemed to fabricate the details, even drawing on the histories of others.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: His need for validation was a perfect microcosm of the broader obsession with the crypto-Jewish theory.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hypothesis.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: In 1995, Sandoval was running a small gallery in Scottsdale.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: So he was originally from New Mexico and he had moved to Arizona at some point.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: Arizona, yeah.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: So in Scottsdale, he ran a gallery called Hannah's, named after his granddaughter.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: He presented himself as a hidden Jew, forced to convert to Catholicism during the Inquisition.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: His tale was full of dramatic episodes, a childhood kidnapped by his Catholic father from his Jewish grandmother, a star of David tombstone on his property, and suffering at the hands of bigots that mirrored the trauma of Jews in Eastern Europe.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: He even claimed to have lost his ranch, his family, and his wealth, presenting himself as a martyr.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So wait, so who is the person who is supposed to have been forced to convert to Catholicism?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: His ancestors.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: So he was a descendant of hidden Jews who had were forced to convert during the Inquisition.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: However, his story began to draw scrutiny.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: Women, rabbis, and family members started questioning certain details.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Sandoval faced accusations of fabricating elements of his past, possibly borrowing others' experiences, experiences and allegedly forging tombstones.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Luis, his son, eventually expressed doubts.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: We realized the story wasn't true when it started changing and becoming more elaborate.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Luis said.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: He'd say, it's like show business.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I tell them what they want to hear.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: And people did want to hear it.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Sandoval's persona as a lost Jew, rediscovered in the desert, captured the imagination of many in the Jewish community.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Sandoval's family painted a different picture.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: They described him as a drifter, constantly moving from place to place, dodging responsibility.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: He reinvented himself as a romantic figure, courting women in the Jewish community.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Inca Hauser, who met him at a Jewish Federation event, learned that he had been engaged to another woman.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, art dealer Cynthia Zimmerman helped him set up an art business only to be stiffed for$3,000 in unpaid orders.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder what the term for Casanova in the Jewish community is.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: I was wondering the same thing because I wanted to include that in here, but I just ran out of time.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: If we have any uh speakers of Hebrew, please let us know if there's a equivalent.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is a Casanova?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: Journalists Barbara Ferry and Debbie Nathan discussed the scandal in their excellent article, Mistaken Identity: The Case of New Mexico's Hidden Jews, in the December 2000 issue of The Atlantic.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: So this is the the article that we were talking about earlier.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sandoval also appears to have manufactured for Jews what they wanted to see.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: His son showed a reporter a styrofoam mock-up of a gravestone with a Star of David on it, painted gray on three sides.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: He said he came across the object after Sandoval had discarded it, presumably following a photo shoot.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: After Sandoval was exposed, a number of Jewish women compared notes and discovered that he had been hinting at marriage with each one of them and had also built some of them of money.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, so this guy was straight up pimping them.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then this gravestone, this alleged gravestone, he would famously show in his slideshows and be like, Yes, here's this tombstone with the star of David on it from my family's land.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then his son finds it and he's like, This is fucking styrofoam.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: It says Walmart, Walmart on the bag has gotten it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: And during Halloween that he just like carved in a freaking Star of David.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Even Rabbi Plotkin, who performed Sandoval's Rite of Return conversion ceremony, so this guy went all in, later admitted he wouldn't have done so had he known the full extent of his deceit.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: Publicist Ruth Silverman, who initially helped him with media appearances, later became one of his loudest critics, maintaining a list of his alleged victims, many of whom were women he was accused of manipulating.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: So where is Juan Sandoval now?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no one knows.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: His phone is disconnected and he's vanished from the public eye.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: Rumor has it, he's living with a messianic woman in rural New Mexico, continuing his blend of faith and fabrication.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: He wasn't just a man chasing an identity, he was a master at monetizing it.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: He crafted his life as if it were art, half truths, full drama, and endless hustle.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: In a world hungry for belonging and myth, he gave people exactly what they wanted.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: So so here I'm thinking, like, if this guy is the true hustler, I feel like there's an opportunity here.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where's like where's Waldo?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Where's Waldoval?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Where's Waldo?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: That could be a whole thing.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: That could be a whole thing.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I kid Juan Taldoval, I kid.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Part four.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Venta Prieta and the Church of God.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is Venta Prieta?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll tell you, buddy.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like what does the word actually mean?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or what is the place?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know what it means, but I'm thinking like those words put together Venta Prieta and the Church of God.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Judith Newlander's like the black market?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what it's a reference to?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's a place.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's an actual place.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: Judith Newlander's research led to a much larger question.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: How did seemingly Jewish rituals and customs end up in a place like New Mexico in the first place?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: The trail led straight to the work of Rafael Patay, an anthropologist who'd stumbled onto something strange in the outskirts of Mexico City back in the 1940s.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: A place called Venta Prieta, where the locals, short, dark, and devout, claimed that they were Jews, real ones, descended from Sephardic families who dodged the Inquisition by diving deep underground and passing on rituals and whispers and shadows.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: When Patai arrived, things were already weird.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: They had a synagogue of sorts, and Passover cedars with unleavened bread and Hebrew prayers.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: The whole scene reeked of something out of a bad movie.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: But Patai, ever the professional, poked deeper.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: And what he found was a theological mishmash stitched together by American fundamentalists.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: According to Patai, these quote unquote Jews weren't Jews at all, but spiritual runaways from a splinter sect called the Church of God Seventh Day, a doomsday huffing outfit with Midwestern roots and a raging heart on for the Old Testament theater.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: They left Mexico City sometime in the early twentieth century, drifting out to the spiritual badlands to convert the heathens.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: Some landed in Veta Prieta, wrapped in stars of David and clutching Sabbath doctrine like it was a golden ticket to the second coming.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: These were not Reformed Jews or even Reform Christians.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: These were straight edge Jesus worshipping Protestants who happened to mimic Jewish customs.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: No Christmas, no Easter, no pig's blood, Saturdays off for the Sabbath, unleavened bread at Passover, and Rosh Hashanah in the desert.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: They turned religion into performance art.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Newlander followed the echoes of this madness across the border to a Church of God service on the US Mexico line.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: The place looked like a synagogue if you squinted.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: The walls tattooed with stars of David, the congregation wearing them like badges of holy confusion.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Years ago, some real Jews had wandered in by mistake and nearly fainted from joy.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: They thought they had found long lost brethren.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: The congregation panicked and scrubbed off the Hebrew.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: But the stars never really left.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: They're still there on the walls, on the gravestones, burning symbols of some half remembered dream.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: But make no mistake, these people are Christian.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus reigns supreme.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: Every prayer ends with his name.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: The Old Testament is just a costume they wear to prepare for the end times.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because here's the kicker.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: A Protestant fever dream says Christ won't return until the Jews, all of them, gather to greet him.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: But since most Jews aren't biting, some fundamentalists invented a workaround.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: If real Jews won't play ball, maybe God will settle for substitutes.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: Jews who believe in Jesus, crypto Jews, lost tribes, the ultimate theological cosplay.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: What Newlander uncovered wasn't a line of crypto Jews, it was the echo of Protestant apocalypticism, dressed up in Hebrew stars and biblical theatrics.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: The crypto Jew myth fits neatly into a long tradition of Christian appropriation.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: Since the Reformation, religious movements have claimed to discover the lost tribes of Israel among Britons, Africans, Native Americans, and now Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: From Herbert Armstrong's British Israelism to Mormon theology and American evangelical fascination with restoring the Jews, these movements blur the line between faith and fantasy.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: In the American Southwest, this obsession fused with local folklore, identity politics, and racial anxieties, creating a uniquely New Mexican myth.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: The crypto Jew is both victim and redeemer, both chosen and hidden.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: But none of this makes it into the glossy Santa Fe tourist books, those tidy little eyes filled with cochina dolls and wooden saints.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: The real story was buried.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe your own grandparents were part of it before the neighbors got hostile or the preachers pulled out and decided, ah, sorry, folks, Nuevo Mexicanos aren't chosen after all.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what Newlander suspects: that generations later, the grandchildren of these abandoned believers are digging through their families' forgotten rituals, half-remembered Hebrew and misfiring memories and calling it Judaism.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: That they've been misled by outsiders like Stanley Hordes, who see crypto Jews under every sandstone slab, not realizing they're actually staring at the ghost of a Protestant apocalypse cult.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: When the dust settles, the story of New Mexico's crypto Jews isn't about secret synagogues or hidden Torah.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's about the human need to belong, to trace one's roots to something grand, tragic, and mysterious, just long as it isn't indigenous, right?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a tale of misinterpreted customs, academic ambition, and cultural yearning spun into legend.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because in the minds of New Mexican Hispanos, anything is better than being indigenous.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: And this group, that Church of God, Seventh Day, they had like a really interesting history of just so are they from the Seventh day Adventists?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: They they broke off.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: They splintered off from them.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then they were like, we're just gonna do all like Jewish stuff, quasi-Jewish stuff.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: And a big part of it was they had this um uh Spanish language, like this bilingual uh program of of uh missionizing people.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so they sent all these people out in Mexico to start converting people to their particular flavor of Seventh day, right?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: And they would keep all these Jewish customs and they made their way into New Mexico, and then they eventually just kind of left.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: But behind, they left behind all of these quasi-Jewish customs that people are still remembering, right?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, I think my grandma she would wear something on her head when she prayed, or you know, like things that they're they're confusing as Jew of being um authentically Jewish traditions, but it's actually like it's not crypto-Jewish, it's like it's crypto Protestant apocalyptic style teachings.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's really, really interesting and bizarre.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: That guy, Patay, wrote a whole book about it.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's all in Spanish, so I couldn't like read the entire theme.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he's focusing mostly on Patay.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is he focused on uh Mexican communities?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or he's also looking at New Mexico as well.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: He focused almost exclusively on Mexico itself.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was Judith Newlander who like expanded the research.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: Expanded right.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the things that really struck me about about all this is that that um Sandoval, Juan Sandoval, is he the one that gets converted to Judaism?
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or which was the one?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, did a right of the riba, the rabbi is then like regretting having done it, and it's interesting because uh one of my colleagues actually, he's um, I'm not gonna say like where his background, but he's not originally a Jewish person, right?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: He converted to Judaism as an adult.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he was telling me, because we've we've talked about this before, and he was telling me that when you're trying to convert to Judaism, that that you get discouraged by the rabbis that that they tell you, no, you shouldn't be a you shouldn't convert to our religion.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because the whole thing about uh Judaism is that they're not out there like Christians trying to proselytize and convert people into their religion because it's it's very strict and it all it all operates under a certain uh set of um rules that are almost uh antithetical to the way that Christianity uh operates, right?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Christianity is mainly about belief in in a God and and fearful of that God because they don't want to go to hell, right?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do the certain things and and repent and accept Jesus out of fear from going to that bad place, right?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: To put it in simple terms.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and in Judaism, like that's not really uh a concept that they're really too concerned with.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like for them, it's it's really about um uh trying to uh rationalize the existence of God and what it means for them as a group and as an individual.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of the way that he was explaining it uh was that there's a lot of logical processes that take place uh through a lot of the theological conversations that they have, and so uh it's very difficult to just simply become uh a Jew, adopt a religion, and so oftentimes rabbis will try to discourage people who want to convert, and then once they have uh made it a point to say, okay, fine, you know, you want to convert, then there's this whole process that has to take place for them to become adopted into the Jewish faith.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious, like, what was the process taking place for Mr.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sandoval that the rabbi was I don't I'm not gonna say he was quick to do it, but it it doesn't seem to me like there was this concerted effort on on the part of the rabbi to really look into the background of this individual and try to discourage them from becoming the Jewish or adopting Judaism and just simply taking what like his account uh as gospel, like to put it in certain terms, like I mean that that would be something that that I don't know if um who who was it Ann Rackham who who um did the story on Don Juan?
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like yeah, yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Does that come up at all?
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: That does does that even figure into the discussion?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, I mean they they interview the rabbi and he's like, yeah, I was if I knew he was so full of shit, I wouldn't have ever done it, but it doesn't really get into the the meat of um what his conversion process was like, right?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that that would be interesting to so you would you have to wonder like I mean, how many other people has this person converted or whatever, whatever they call it in Judaism?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean, it must not be that rigorous for at least this and this particular rabbi.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't mention it in this story, um, and I should have.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think in an earlier version I did, and then I lost it in the editing process.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: But Stanley Hordes was actually the uh the New Mexico State historian.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: Get out of here.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: So he had, you know, when he came here, he had a very specific goal in mind um as to how he was going to interpret this stuff.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems like he just played a little fast and loose with the facts.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of confirmation bias for sure.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, I'm I'm also wondering here because when I was out in El Paso um teaching uh as a visiting professor, I met, I had a student in my in my um Borderlands class that I taught in in the fall of that of 2018, I think it was, yeah.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um one of one of the things that I gave the students to read was an article that that talked about the different identities in the southwest and and the crypto, well they didn't call them crypto crypto Jews, but this this idea of the the the Jewish strain within a lot of uh communities in not only in Mexico but in in the southwest.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so she like was like, yeah, I'm I'm actually a Jewish Sephardic Jew from the area, right?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this is uh Chihuahua, northern Chihuahua, uh uh and uh West Texas, and she was telling me that there's this community in the area that's you know, both sides of the border in Juarez and El Paso, and how they have the rabbi and how they can trace their their roots and their lineage, you know, to Jewish ancestors.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't want to like debate her, like, okay, fine, that's that's who you are, that's who you say you are, fine.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I I always wondered uh going back to this idea of the crypto Jew within you know the Mexican-American community.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many of these people who are part of actual communities uh who are recovering their their crypto Jewish ancestry are part of this uh group of people who are being misled by what you've uncovered, right?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: The the the apocalyptic uh strain of Christianity.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: The church of God.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: The church of God.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many of these people have actually like done that kind of research, or is it is it confirmation bias?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: They they want to be.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's the benefit of being a crypto Jew?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like that that's the first question, right?
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, as opposed to just being um calling yourself a Mexican-American or calling yourself a Mexican or a specific uh identity, like if you have indigenous roots, like at what point do you determine that being someone who has discovered their crypto-Jewish ancestry is more important than their indigenous ancestry?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is what's in it for these folks, right?
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's what I've always wondered that.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that that's a good question.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I should note that here in New Mexico at least, and parts of southern Colorado, it became a uh a little cottage industry for a lot of people.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like Juan Sandoval, he went from making, you know, being a Santero and making like traditional tin type, you know, New Mexican art to producing Jewish art and and promoting that.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then people would pay money to go on like these crypto-Jewish tours of New Mexico and pay money to have these guys show up and speak at their events, and they would make books, you know, they would write books.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one dude did a documentary about it.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um like that there was money to be made here.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: There was a reason to like really sell it, but not all of them did that.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, like like what about the ones who were just like, oh, well, I yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm a crypto Jew.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: And they they're not trying to like monetize it in the way that these other guys have.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: But what do they get out of it?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, other than being able to say, well, no, we're not Mexican, we're not right indigenous.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I really think that's what it is.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh I think I agree with you on that part because I know personally some people here in Dallas who have traced their lineage, and of course they're always tracing it back to Spain, right?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: Forget the indigenous and so they just jump back 500 right.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: They just jump across the pond and so they trace their lineage back to Spain, and then they do a little bit of research and they discover that you know they might have someone who could have been a crypto Jew of some sort or a Sephardic Jewish person.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then I've I've known people who actually even like not only became uh Spanish citizens, so they have that dual citizenship.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know how Mexicans have dual citizenship, or you can if you live in the US, you can have dual and and I believe it's also extended to the the the first offspring of of the immigrant, like for instance, you know, you can have dual citizenship in in the US and Mexico.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: But some of these people who have been here for generations, uh some Tejanos from South Texas, I'm not gonna uh name names, but they're from that specific area, right?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: And these folks, like not only can they trace their ancestry all the way back to those original settlers uh in in South Texas, but in the process of doing that, they've uncovered you know their Spanish ancestry and they trace it back to Spain, and then they realize, oh, guess what?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also Jewish.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: So then they apply for Spanish citizenship, and within that Spanish citizenship, they apply for Sephardic Jewish uh citizenship or identity or like there's a specific something like that.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've known something as well.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's so weird because and then you ask them, well, what about your indigenous?
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, I'm also indigenous, but you know, whatever.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's that important to them, right?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's like on the back burner, like, ah, sure.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and what's interesting is they're approaching it as if, okay, so it's sure.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you go back that far, you've got a lot of fucking ancestors.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: And a couple of them, sure, could have been Sephardic Jews, but then to take that and be like, pretend it was my unbroken tradition that's stretched across time, and that's your identity and your culture, like just totally ignoring your lived experiences if you're a Chicano.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that of your family, exactly.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's what I tell people.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you you can be an admixture of whatever you want to be, but what is your lived experience?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: How did you grow up as?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: Did you grow up as a white person, as a Chicano, as a Mexican-American, as an indigenous?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: What was that?
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's your identity.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not this, you know, uh selective uh identity that you're picking at random from the various uh ethnicities and racial trunks that you have that comprise who you are as a person.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, which one of those is the one that you grew up as, right?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's kind of like almost the equivalent of someone saying, I have a great great Cherokee grandmother, therefore I'm I'm Native American.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, did you grow up here?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is that part of your lived day-to-day uh experience that you grew up with?
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_02: And getting back to what you wanted to talk about, which was like the Hispanos and the Chicanos of northern New Mexico, this is a big part of the argument we have because I'll bring that argument up with people, and they're like, Well, my experience is Spanish.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, How?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: You and like, what what food did you grow up eating?
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what were the customs you grew up?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because they're overwhelmingly indigenous.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just because you've been told that these are Spanish customs doesn't make them Spanish customs, you know, we're we're crypto Indians in northern Mexico.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm also thinking in terms, I I think I've told the story before where when I was uh one of the times that I was up in in Taos and uh at at the place where uh my institution has a connection to, they have a uh a satellite campus out there, and uh some of the people who were there who part of the staff and and the you know people who worked in the kitchen and the maintenance ground uh employees, like some of those folks, I I would talk to them from time to time.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: And like I had a conversation with one of them once, and it turns out that they identified as Chicano and they recognized me as a chicano.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't say hispano, they said they they literally said you're a chicano like me, like us.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that threw me off guard because I had always just assumed that everyone in northern New Mexico, like their primary identity was was Hispano and not Chicano.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: So so do you know uh like if what what the difference is in some of those communities up there, like in Taos and Santa Fe, like between those who call themselves Hispanos as their primary identity and those who like see themselves and call themselves Chicanos as their identity?
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a lot of it something going on there?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a lot of it came out of the Chicano movement, right?
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: Civil rights struggle.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um but so in New Mexico, you have to understand that in order to become a state, the United States was like, there are too many fucking Indians in this state to make you a state.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like we don't want this many Indians, like we want the land, we just don't want the people.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in response to that, the population of New Mexico was like, Well, how do we convince them that we're not really Indians?
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: How do we convince them that we're not Mexican Indians?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so they fabricated this idea, this identity of like, well, we're Spanish, you know, we're descendants of conquistadors, we're not descendants of of the savages from from Mexico.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so this became this really unfortunate way of dealing with the Anglo, you know, racism and bigotry of the time.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then that just kind of stuck.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: So here in New Mexico, you almost saw overnight Mexican restaurants becoming Spanish restaurants.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so, oh, this is Spanish food, you know, it's not Mexican food.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: And there's like this it's this uh myth, you know, it's this fantasy, this fantasy that they've created.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it was in response to the United States being full of a bunch of racists.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: And if you look at the writings at the time when they were discussing statehood for New Mexico, you know, people in Congress and senators, they were very vocal about, you know, we do not want these mixed blood Indians to be part of our country.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to hold off on allowing them to become uh a state.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so this was the response to that.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so you got this myth that that was created, and then you have the civil rights struggle, you have the Chicago movement where people really started reconnecting in a meaningful way of like, well, now wait, that's bullshit, man.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and realizing like we have roots that that matter, that the food that we grew up eating.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_02: We don't eat paella in fucking northern New Mexico, you know.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_02: We don't speak sorry, northern New Mexicans, you don't speak an ancient form of Castilian.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um you speak uh a regional version of Spanish that is highly influenced by indigenous languages that indig that come from indigenous peoples that we descend from, both from Mesoamerica and the tribes here in New Mexico.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's it's become, especially in the 1980s, I remember this very distinctly.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_02: There was like fights that would happen between Hispanos, people who call themselves Hispanos, and people who call themselves Chicanos, like political fights, community fights, fights over what should be taught in schools, uh, how should what statues should go up, you know?
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: And these all became ingrained.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_02: There was a an organization called the New Mexico Hispano.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_02: What the hell were they called?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: They started calling themselves the Hispanic, they started off as the Hispanic or the Hispano Anti-Defamation League.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then the anti-defamation league was like, nah, you gotta fucking knock that off.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: So then they renamed themselves like the New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Preservation League or something.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: And they used to have a message board.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: Remember the old school websites with the message board, you can get on there and leave messages.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_02: I am proud to say that I your boy right here was the reason that their message board got shut down.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: No more public comment.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: What was your pseudonym on there?
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have one?
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, I was like, I used to I used to get on the the old uh um what was the name of it?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um the something storm, the the white nationalist that was Stormfront?
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: Stormfront.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: I used to get onto some of those sites and I would go as uh Greg uh uh Curtis as Gregory Cortez, right?
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: I would be Greg Curtis.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hell yeah.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just like uh just you know, I was I was their troll, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would be trolling them.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this this place, they still do, you know, here in New Mexico, they still do their little fucking uh cosplay where they all people will dress up like Spaniards and parade through the streets and celebrate Juan Leonate, yeah, and you know, the the peaceful reconquest of New Mexico.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's just so it's a fight that still happens.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um every every year.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: It usually takes place once or twice a year around the times of the Santa Fe fiestas.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_02: So it's that's when it all comes back.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, the Chicanos and the Hispanos just go at it.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's our flower wars.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: The flower wars.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I need to go up for that, man.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let me know.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, these guys, man.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_02: So remember, kids, when you don't know your history, you wind up cosplaying as white people.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you should stop doing that, maybe.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: Womp, womp, womp.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a fun episode.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: Got to I've been wanting to do this one for a while.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: Every time I thought I was done, I would find something new.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot more.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: But like the Venta Prieta stuff could be its own episode.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: That, yeah.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what is what is the Venta Prieta?
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_02: So dear leader, dear leaders, dear leader, dear leader.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow, I'm I'm rehearsing the rehearsing indoctrination right there.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: Subconsciously.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's happening already.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: Dear listeners and leaders, for those of you who are premium members, you'll be getting an entire extra segment to this episode in your premium feed.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I decided this.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is actually not going in the premium feed.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's bonus content, but I want the listeners to hear the bonus content so they could decide, like, oh shit, I want to hear how this ends, you know?
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: So you'll get this content.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm happy to announce that the people have spoken, our listeners have spoken, and the first chapter of my fictional novella, the Juan Diego Code, was a hit.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: They said they liked it and that it should be bonus content.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: So if you haven't heard chapter one, I suggest you go back, check it out in episode 86, because I have completed chapter two and it's a fun one.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_02: So this is the last time you're gonna get to hear the Juan Diego code for free.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to hear the the continuing chapters, please consider kicking in five bucks a month, a mere five bucks a month, and you'll get ad-free episodes with bonus content.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_02: You'll get premium episodes, and you'll get access to our Discord server where you can interact with us and other fans of the show.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: Go premium, and most importantly, support independent indigenous Chicano media because who knows who's gonna be telling our history, our own history in the foreseeable future, because things are getting bad fast.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_02: And until next time, remember the truth is like medicine.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't always taste good, but it is always good for you.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_02: Crypto indigenous and now We're going to continue with some bonus content The Juan Diego Code Chapter two The Bones of Tepeac The storm hadn't let up.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_02: Sheets of rain turned the Sokalo into a mirror, distorted, monstrous, alive.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_02: I ducked beneath an aw near Calle de Moneda, lungs burning with fear and urgency.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_02: The satchel hung heavy against my chest, a constant reminder of the risk I was taking.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere behind me, a door slammed.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it was just thunder.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_02: My heart raced, unable to tell the difference.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_02: I needed to disappear.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: Fast.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_02: I cut through an alley choked with the smell of wet trash and exhaust fumes.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: Emerging near the old Colegio de San Ildefonso, I paused.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: The city at night was a living organism, breathing, watching, remembering.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_02: Every cobblestone here had absorbed the blood of empire and rebellion.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_02: I found refuge in a small cafe that was somehow still open.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_02: Its neon sign flickered like a dying star.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: The waitress didn't look up when I walked in, she just waved me toward the back.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_02: I slid into a booth, shook the rain from my coat, and unlatched the satchel under the table.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_02: The painting was still there, wrapped in oil cloth and newspaper.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: The faint smell of varnish mixed with the stale coffee air.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't sure what scared me more, the thought that the custodians might find me, or that Elena was already dead.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: Fear twisted in my gut.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_02: Her note had been written in a rush, the ink a little smeared.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_02: My hands shook as I traced her initials with my thumb.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_02: E.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_02: M.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_02: She was the first to tell me about the Custodios del Tepeac, a group that rose from the ashes of conquest and swore to defend the sacred illusion of Juan Diego.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_02: Some archivists still whisper their motto: protect the faith, not the facts.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_02: A shadow fell across the table.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: Still drinking black curly.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: My heart stopped.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: I looked up.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was Father Miguel, Elena's mentor and a Jesuit scholar who had once lectured me about the ethics of uncovering dangerous truths.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_02: He wasn't wearing his cassock anymore.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, he had on a soaked trench coat, but the crucifix around his neck still gleamed like an accusation.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: I thought you were in Rome, I said.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was, he said, sliding in across from me.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_02: News like yours travels fast.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_02: My stomach twisted.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't be here.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_02: He smiled, tired, but genuine.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: Neither should you.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_02: The waitress appeared, poured him coffee, and vanished.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_02: For a moment the cafe was quiet except for the gentle patter of rain against glass.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_02: Where's Elena?
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_02: I asked.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_02: He exhaled slowly, sorrow darkening his face.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: Gone.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_00: But she sent me something before she disappeared.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: From his coat pocket, he produced a small wooden cross, rough, handmade, the kind sold by street vendors outside the basilica.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_02: He set it on the table between us.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_02: I frowned.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted you to have this.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: He said.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: He twisted the cross open at the base.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_02: Hidden within was a microfilm capsule.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_02: My pulse kicked into overdrive.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_02: What is this?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: Something older than the myth.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've just shattered, he said.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Elena found a reference to a lost document, a letter written by Sumarga himself, dated 1531.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It suggests the Virgin's image was not a miracle, but a commission ordered by the bishop, painted by an indigenous artist named Marcos Sipac.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_02: The name hit me like an electric shock.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_02: One of the first native painters trained by the Spanish, rumored to have worked on early Christian iconography.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_02: If Zumaraga had commissioned the Virgin's image, then the entire narrative of Juan Diego was a colonial invention.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_02: All of it.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to laugh or scream or both.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_02: My mind spun with shock and disbelief.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Then it's true, I whispered, my voice shaking.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Everything, the miracle, the Dilma, it's all theater.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Father Miguel's expression darkened.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Careful, Curly.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Truth and blasphemy are cousins who wear the same face.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Before I could respond, the cafe lights flickered.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_02: A door creaked open.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Two men entered, shaking umbrellas, their silhouettes framed by the rain.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_02: My gut told me before my mind caught up.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Custodians.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Father Miguel saw it too.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Go, he muttered.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Through the kitchen.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'll hold him off.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: I can't just.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_02: He cut me off with a look.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Go, Forelena, for the truth.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: I hesitated just long enough to see one of the men glance in our direction, eyes narrowing.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Then I grabbed the satchel and the wooden cross and bolted through the swinging door into the kitchen.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Pots clanged.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Someone shouted.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_02: I shoved past a cook and burst into another alley, the rain colder now, sharper.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Behind me, the cafe door crashed open.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Voices shouted in Latin.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_02: I sprinted toward the main avenue, almost slipping on the wet stones.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_02: My mind raced with fragments.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_02: Zumarraga, Sipak, the painting, Helena's warning.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_02: The puzzle pieces fit together too perfectly.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_02: At the far end of the alley, I caught a glimpse of a black sedan idling by the curb.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: A figure stood beside it, holding an umbrella.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_02: For a heartbeat, I thought it was Helena.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Then lightning flashed, and I saw the ring on his hand, engraved with the symbol of Fepeyac.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_02: A serpent coiled with a cross.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_02: A custodian.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_02: He smiled at me through the rain, calm, almost pitying.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_02: You can't hide from the faith, he called out.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Faith hides from the truth, I shouted back and ducked into the maze of side streets before he could answer.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: By the time I stopped running, dawn was breaking.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Grey light spilled over the city's spires.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_02: I stood beneath the crumbling archway, drenched and shaking.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_02: I stared at the wooden cross in my hand.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Inside it, the truth waited, recorded on microfilm, sealed by a dying woman who had trusted me to finish what she had started.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere in the distance, church bells began to ring.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Not a summons, a warning.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wanna be starting something.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wanna be starting something.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that, dear listeners and dear leaders, was chapter two of the Juan Diego Code, The Bones of Tepeyac.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to continue listening where this adventure goes, please consider kicking in.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, please consider kicking in.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Five bucks a month, and you'll be regaled with the adventures of the fictional curly Tlapoyawa.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it fictional?
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Did this all really happen?
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_02: You'll have to find out.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to Tales from Ostlantis, a project of the Chimalli Institute of Mesoamerican Arts.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_02: If you enjoy the show, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_02: You can do this by visiting TalesFromostlantis.com and clicking support the podcast.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Your continued support will help keep the podcast ad free and independent.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, Timo Itase.