Slavery, Colonization AND THE INQUISITION

On April 25, 2023, Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that his country needed to apologize for its role in the slave trade from the 15th to the 19th century. It is estimated that 6 million Africans were kidnapped and sold as slaves, transported by Portuguese ships. Portugal has said little about its role in enslaving Black people until now.

Rebelo de Sousa made his comments after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addressed the Portuguese parliament. Brazil – along with Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, East Timor and Goa (India) – were Portuguese colonies. The president said the colonization of Brazil also had positive factors, such as the spread of Portuguese language and culture, but “on the bad side, the exploitation of Indigenous people…slavery, the sacrifice of the interests of Brazil and Brazilians.”

Two years prior, in March 2021, Europe’s top human rights group said that Portugal needed to do more to confront its colonial past and role in the transatlantic slave trade in order to help fight racism and discrimination in the country today. The Council of Europe said that “further efforts are necessary for Portugal to come to terms with past human rights violations to tackle racist biases against people of African descent inherited from a colonial past and historical slave trade.”

At that same time, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, a native of Portugal, marked the “International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade” saying that “while the transatlantic slave trade ended over two centuries ago, the ideas that propelled it remain alive today. In Europe, the United States and elsewhere, White supremacists are organizing and recruiting across borders. We must counter all lies of racial supremacy. By tackling inequities and inequalities, by building inclusive communities and economies, and by educating about history, we truly honour the memory of the victims of slavery.”

Global organizations have correctly pointed out the evils of slavery and colonization, crimes against Blacks and indigenous people in the Americas which went on for centuries. The abuse of both groups has only become a focus in recent times.

But not for the crimes against Jews. There has been no discussion of the Inquisition which decimated the Jewish population in Portugal, Spain and their colonies, as well as much of Europe. No discussion about the ingrained hatred that continues to make Jews the most persecuted minority in the world.

The Inquisition

Textbooks and encyclopedias have the Inquisition running from 1478 to 1834 but the church’s persecution of “heretics” ran much longer, going back to the 12th century. In 1391 in Seville, Spain, a preacher by the name of Don Fernando Martinez lectured his congregants that Jews were evil and were infiltrating Spanish society. While the riots that broke out that March were put down, the mob gathered strength and plundered the Jewish Quarter of the city in June. Roughly 4,000 people were killed. The synagogues in the city were either destroyed or converted to churches and the Jewish community was decimated.

The Spanish forced their Jews to either leave the country or die in 1492. Many fled to Portugal, Morocco, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands or took ships to the New World. In 1497, Portugal followed suit in persecuting the Jews but also gave Jews the choice of converting. Those converts became known as New Christians or conversos. Not believing that the conversos really believed in their new religion, and looking for an alibi for a drought, the Christians of Lisbon, Portugal butchered over 2,000 conversos on April 19, 1506.

Marker in front of church of Sao Domingos de Lisboa

The Spanish and Portuguese took the Inquisition to the New World shortly thereafter, including to Brazil in 1536 and to what is now Mexico in 1571. Not satisfied with driving the Jews out of the Iberian Peninsula, they persecuted the New Christians in Central and South America. One example was the whipping and burning at the stake of the de Carvajal family – a mother with four of her children – in the middle of Mexico City on December 8, 1596.

António José da Silva (1705-1739), was a famous Brazilian-born playwright, nicknamed “the Jew.” As a young child, he was forced with his family to flee to Portugal because of the Inquisition. It did not provide him sanctuary. As an adult, he was accused of being a Jew and was garroted and burned at the stake in front of his wife.

By some estimates, as much as 10-20% of people living in Portugal today are actually descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity. The percentage is estimated to be much higher in Brazil and around Latin America as Jews fled from persecution but were still reluctant to publicize their Judaism.

There are only about 1,000 public Jews left in Portugal today.

Summary

The Portuguese president called out the terrible history of his country in its participation of the slave trade and colonization. The Portuguese head of the United Nations echoed the sentiment and drew a line from that history to the persecution of Blacks and indigenous people today. But no one even mumbles about the horrors inflicted on their own resident Jews during that same period as part of the Inquisition, and the antisemitism still prevalent today.

Quite the opposite. Even as he denounced Portugal’s history, President Rebelo de Sousa said that the “colonization of Brazil also had positive factors, such as the spread of Portuguese language and culture,” meaning a purely Christian society devoid of Jews.

The Jews remain outside the perimeter of Victims of Preference around the world then and today.