What does DNA evidence reveal about the conversos in the Southwest United States?
For years a host of anecdotal reports have appeared about people in the American Southwest and northern Mexico who practice Jewish rituals such as lighting candles on Friday evenings and covering the mirrors after a family member has died. Occasionally some claimed they were descendants of Jews, but few people took them very seriously. Cultural anthropologists tended to believe they had adopted the rituals from Jewish traders. Thanks to genetic research, however, we can now confirm that many of these individuals and pocket communities do, in fact, have Jewish roots. In my book I tell the story of William Sanchez from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had always wondered about the Jewish-like rituals in his family. After he saw a story on genetic genealogy on PBS he sent in a DNA sample for testing. When the lab reached him on the phone and said, “Mr. Sanchez, we found some interesting results from your DNA; you may be descended from or closely related to priests,” Sanchez replied, “That mak
