The fourth of the larger hacienda owners, Juan Griego, is the most enigmatic. We know nothing about him, except that he once said he was from Candia on the island of Crete, that he came with Juan de Oñate in 1595 as a married man, and that he said he was the son of Lazarus.
Stanley Hordes has speculated he may have been a covert Jew, based on an accusation made by Teresa de Aguilera y Roche, wife of Bernardo López de Mendizábal, when she was being tried by the Inquisition in Mexico City for Judaizing. She claimed he “died with a çapote in his mouth, and with his face against the wall, without desiring to reconcile himself, or to be a Christian, even in this hour and as a consequence, they say that he was buried in the hills of Santa Ana.”
David Gitlitz suggests that when Jews in Spain and Portugal were forced to convert, many were able to live with the subsequence compromises until they faced death. Then, many believed “the deathbed reaffirmation of Judaism assured their place in the continuum of the ancestral tradition.” For this reason, the Inquisition was especially mindful of the behavior of the dead, and in the Edicto de Fe issued by the Inquisition in Mexico City in 1639 proscribed these customs.
Gitlitz says “one of the most common and most persistent” rites was turning the heads of the dying towards the wall. Schulamith Halevy found the tradition has persisted among those living in México today. The underlying reference is to Hezekiah, king of Judah, who, when the prophet Isaiah came to warn him to prepare to die, turned his face to the wall to speak directly to God.
As with many things about Griego, so little is known you can draw any conclusion.
When Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492, some went to Candia, a city the Venetians had heavily fortified. In 1574, when Griego was about nine years old, they sent Giacomo Foscarini to reorganize the city. As head of the Inquisition, he was particularly hard on Jews and Greeks who did not accept the Roman Catholic church.
A blogger calling himself Iaonas proposes a different historic background. He notes that when the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, many Greeks joined the Spanish army where they were skilled artillerymen. Among the ones he names were Theodoro Griego who served in Pánfilo de Narváez’s attempt to sabotage Cortés in México, Pedro de Candia and Jorge Griego who joined Pizarro in Peru, and a different Juan Griego who was awarded a small encomienda in México for supporting Cortés.
They could both be right, one right, or both wrong. You’re still left with only two facts. Griego was apparently a commonly accepted nom de combat and, unlike many of the men who came with Oñate, he had “complete armor for himself.”
The most extraordinary thing about him is that, when he was in México, he married an Indian rather than treated her as a mistress to be brought north as a servant. No more is known about Pascula Bernal than she spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs and the tribes of the central valley.
Her name may have come from living in an area assigned to Francisco Bernal or Juan Bernal. Both had come to México with Narváez in 1520 and both were officially citizens (vecino) of Puebla. Francisco had encomiendas for Tanchinamol, Mecatlán and Heusco. Juan had the encomienda of Acatlán south of Puebla, according to Robert Himmerich y Valencia.
The natives in Puebla weren’t Aztec, but groups that had been conquered by them who spoke their language and supported Cortés. According to Wikipedia, Mixtecs were found in Acatlán, Popolocas in Tepexi, the Olmec-Xicalancas and Nahuas in the central part of the modern state, and the Totonacas, Mazatecos and Otomi in the north.
The Huastec of the Indian town of Tanchinamol split from the Maya and migrated to northern Veracruz around 1200bc. The Acatlán shared pottery techniques with the Olmec. Mecatlán is a Xicotepec ranchería in modern Puebla.
Pascula’s cultural heritage could have been that of any of the conquered people, or a mix. However, the fact that it probably was derived from the Puebla-Veracruz border area may explain the presence of çapote. Casimiroa edulis is a subtropical tree with a perishable, sweet fruit that wouldn’t grow here or survive transport by wagon train. More likely it was the large pit Teresa heard about.
About thirty years before the Oñate expedition, Spanish botanist Francisco Hernández found cochiztzaputl fruit produced drowsiness and the seeds were poisonous. In the same years, Florentine Codex compiler Bernardino de Sahagún was told by the Aztec they used it as a sedative and that “it brings, it lowers the star of the night.”
White sapote commonly has been used to treat rheumatism and arthritis in Mesoamerica. The Mayo used the leaves to lower blood pressure, while Costa Ricans used them to treat diabetes.
Griego may have been suffering from any of these ailments and been treated by Pascula, or he may have been in such pain she gave him something to sleep, or, acceding to his request, may have prepared him to die and given him a toxic dose.
Gitlitz says it was common for Spanish conversos “to ease the journey of the deceased with offerings of food and money.” The Mayan placed corn and stone beads in the mouths of the dead for the same reason.
You may take Griego at face value, as have descendants who have identified ancestors for both him and his wife, or you may take his reference to his father as a sign he spoke in riddles. He could have been a Spanish Jew in exile or a Greek. She may have had Mayan ancestors or not.
All we know is that they both died far from their native homes, strangers in a strange, strange land.
Notes: Hezekiah is found in Isaiah 38:2-3 and Kings 20:2.
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, revised 1992 edition.
Gitlitz, David M. Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews, 1996; he mentions a twentieth century Portuguese legend that Jews, to avoid contamination by the last rites, asphyxiated a dying relative so he would be dead before the priest arrived.
Halevy, Schulamith Chava. Descendants of the Anusim (Crypto-Jews) in Contemporary Mexico, 2009.
Hernández, Francisco. Rerum Medicarum Novae Hispaniae, published in 1651 and cited by Morton.
Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555, 1991. Juan Bernal had three sons, one who became a priest, a second Juan who lived on a government pension, and a third who died young. Nothing more is known about Francisco.
Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth, 2005.
Iaonas. “Greek Conquistadors and Explorers in the Spanish Army,” Blogspot website, 11 December 2011.
Morton, Julia F. Fruits of Warm Climates, 1987.
Sahagún, Bernardino de. Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva España, c.1577, translated as Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book XI - Earthly Things by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson, 1963.
Wikipedia. “Puebla” downloaded 5 March 2012.
Yetman, David and Thomas R. Van Devender. Mayo Ethnobotany, 2002.
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