Esperanza Across the Atlantic

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 Havana, Mexico City, Acapulco, Cartagena, and Guadalajara. She gained freedom, worked as a domestic servant and seamstress, married, raised a family, and was widowed. She was part of at least two secret Jewish communities, and she also maintained the Catholic sacraments. Esperanza’s story involves categories that might seem contradictory at first glance—Judaism and Catholicism, slavery and freedom, mobility and community, public and private. Esperanza’s story blurs these categories, revealing the contextually specific nature of individual identity in the early modern Spanish empire and highlighting the significance of personal relationships in identity construction.