Chris:

The Carvajales are certainly a well known family in Mexico among genealogists. Because the records of the inquisition are so clear in their condemnation of them as Jews and their pivotal role in the foundation of Monterrey and several other northern Mexican cities.

I imagine that there are plenty of descendants of Carvajales that have traced their lineage back. If your research is well documented, I would suggest sharing it with the general public through Mimo Lozano's Somos Primos publication.

I have done some reading on the Sephardim of Mexico. My strict paternal lineage is somewhat problematic because I get back to about 1770 and I have an ancestor who was "expuesto" and adopted and therefore I am unable to go back any further. It is certainly a great enigma that I would like to resolve... where Joseph Ramon Aranzazu came from and who his parents were. Some in the group have told me that it is possible his adoptive father was in fact his illegitimate father. There are Aranzazus around Tlaltenango today who are probably descendants of the adoptive father Bartholome Aranzazu and a Y-DNA test of one of them would prove or disprove that theory.

The cronista of Totatiche seems to think that the early Spanish families around the region were Sephardim and because the region was a frontier where the indigenous people had been given autonomy it was a good refuge. It certainly attracted many escaped slaves. That is pretty well documented in early litigation between the "naturales" and some of the espanoles who were trying to claim their land under the pretense that they were not in fact "naturales" of the region but rather slaves that had escaped their masters and indigenous people who had escaped their encomiendas. Early records in Tlaltenango, Colotlan and Totatiche certainly show many negros and mulattos, many of them free and mostly marrying into the local indigenous population.