Jews in Latin America

Week 8 of my course on Religion in Latin America. This week we read a chapter by Judith Laiken Elkin on the historical context of Jewish immigration to Latin America, initially from Spain and Portugal, and later in the nineteenth century from Syria, the Ottoman Empire and Northern Africa (Sephardim) and Northern Europe (Askenazim). We follow the Inquisition from 1480s Spain to the Western hemisphere as a political and religious tool to bring social control to Jewish and Muslim conversos and "Marranos."