A webpage salvaged from Geocities. Hispanic Jews tried by the Roman Catholic Church in the Mexican Inquisition 1528 - 1815. A listing of surnames that if you were born with, might get you killed. This helps explain why some of our ancestors "dropped" certain surnames and adopted others.

An example is Pedro ENRIQUEZ TOPETE. ENRIQUEZ, HERNRIQUEZ, was a common jewish surname in Spain/Portugal. When that family arrived in Mexico from Anthwerp, a Jewish enclave for those seeking refuge after being expelled from Spain, the ENRIQUEZ TOPETE family began to drop the paternal ENRIQUEZ and continued utilizing the maternal TOPETE surname which to date survives as we do.