Dr. Gregory
Lee CuellarDr. Gregory Lee Cuellar is
lecturer/curator for Hispanic Resources at the Cushing
Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University
and subject specialist for Religious Studies at the
Sterling C. Evans Library. He received his Ph.D.in
Biblical Interpretation in 2006 from Brite Divinity
School at Texas Christian University. In 2000, he
aquired a Master of Divinity with Biblical Languages
degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Fort Worth and a Bachlor of Arts from Texas
A&M-Kingsville. Dr. Cuellar is a three-time grant fellow
of the Hispanic Theological Initiative and has presented
at numerous academic conferences in Mexico, Spain, and
the United States. In 2006, he published a monograph
entitled, Passages in the New World: Books and
Manuscripts from Colonial Mexico 1556-1820. He is
currently doing research on the Crytpo-Jewish presence
along the Rio Grand during the 18th century.
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Dr.
Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo
A
current teacher of Humanities and Doctor of History, he
has a little more that forty published books about
history (biography, chronicles, institutional memory),
photographic imaging (19th century photography, lecture
in photography), and literary creation (novels, stories,
theatre). He was story winner in 1980 for his book
“Relatos de Mar, Desierto y Muerte”
(Stories of Sea, Desert
and Death) and in 1987, he received special mention from
the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (National
Institute of Fine Arts) for his first novel “Setenta
veces Siete” (Seventy times seven), the same piece of
work that led him to be registered in the Libro del
Año
(book of the year) of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Some of his works include: “Setenta veces siete”,
“Narcedalia Piedrotas” 1997, “Presas de un lente
objetivo” 1999, “Lecumberri, angel y escorpion” 2000,
“Soplando la niebla del tiempo” 2005. He has also
contributed the dramas: “El indio muerto”, featured by
Compañía de Teatro de Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León
in 2005, and “Chanclas de Oro”, featured by El
Tecnológico de Monterrey en 2006.
He is a member of the
Mexican Comité of World Memory, professor in the Escuela
de Graduados del Tecnologico de Monterrey, and visiting
professor in various universities in Mexico and the
world.
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Dr. Alicia Gojman de Backal
Alica Gojman de
Backal has been a Distinguished Professor of History in
Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México since 1975 and is also the
current director of the library Centro de Documentación
e Investigación de la Comunidad Ashkenazí de México in
México, D.F. She is the former president of La
Asociación Mexicana de Archivos y Bibliotecas Privados,
A.C. in Mexico, D.F. Alicia earned a doctorate in
History from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in
1998 with the thesis La acción revolucionaria
mexicanista los camisas doradas 1934-1940 (defended
with honorable mention).
In 1998, she received the Award for
Academic Merit from theMexico-Israel Cultural Institute
and had previously been awarded an Honorary Fellowship
at University of Tel Aviv, Israel in 1996.
Some of her publications include:
Los Conversos en el México Colonial (1987),
Testimonios de historia oral: Judíos en México.
Dirección de proyecto, (1990), Identidad y
Cultura en Conversos del Siglo XVII en Puebla de Los
Angeles (1995), La inquisición en Nueva España
vista a traves de los ojos de un procesado,
Guillén de Lampart, Siglo XVII. (2000), and
Judaizantes en la Nueva Espana: Catalogo de documentos
en el Archivo General de la Nacion (2006).
She has also
held presentations which involve Judaism: Migration,
Borders & Displacement: The Jewish Diaspora in Latin
America, Latin American Jewish Studies Association
Conference, Princeton University, 14-15 March 1999,
“Ashkenazitas y Sefaraditas en México: Reacciones ante
el antisemitismo" and From Exile to Community: Examples
from Mexico, Jewish Studies Dartmouth College, June 28,
2004, "La creación del consejo comunitario Ashkenazí de
México como respuesta a las necesidades de la segunda
generación.”
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Mrs.
Mercedes Gail Gutierrez
Mrs. Gutierrez has a B.A. from Stanford University
(1966) and an M.A. in Fine Arts from the University of
California, Berkley (1970). She has been a Fulbright
scholar in Spain (1967-1968) and been a California Arts
Council Artist in Residence Grantee (1983-1990).
Her occupations have included being a professional
artist from (1966-Current), Community College Adjunct
Instructor in History and Humanities (1976-1990), and
the California State Arts Administrator (1990-2005). Mrs.
Gutierrez is now retired.
Her qualifications include being a descendent of the
Marrano/Converso/Anusim families as well as the Perez,
Carvajal and Munoz. She has independently studied
Sephardic Jews in the New World Diaspora, including
Mexico and Occupied Mexico (1987-current). In 2007, she
participated in the "Orale Israel: Part I", Anusim
conference in El Paso, TX, as well as "Orale,
Israel: Part II", Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies
conference in Albuquerque, NM. Her paper was titled:
"Lech Lecha: What my mother told me."
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Dr. Stanley M. Hordes
Stanley M. Hordes is adjunct research professor at
the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the
University of New Mexico. He earned his Ph.D. in Mexican
History at Tulane University, where he received a
Fulbright Dissertation Fellowship to perform research in
Mexico and Spain. He is the author of numerous articles
on the history of crypto-Judaism in Mexico and the U.S.
Southwest. Dr. Stan Hordes is currently exploring the
family roots of fifteen families from the Dominican
Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, to trace back their
genealogies to Spain and other regions. The thesis of
this research is to see if these families have converso,
or Sephardic Jewish ancestry.
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Dr. Carlos Montalvo Larralde
Dr. Carlos Montalvo Larralde is an independent
scholar who has written several monographs and articles
in Mexican American studies and Crypto-Jewish Studies.
He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of
California, Los Angeles. Dr. Larralde’s doctoral
dissertation is entitled Chicano Jews in South Texas
(1978). In his dissertation, Dr. Larralde argued for a
Crypto-Jewish presence in south Texas that stretched
back to the colonial period. He is one of three
co-authors of the book Juan N. cortina and the Struggle
for Justice in Texas (2000).
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Dr. Dell Sanchez
In 1973, Dell F. Sanchez received his Master of Social
Work (MSW) degree from the Worden School of Social
Service, Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio,
Texas. Afterwards, he went on to oversee a community
organization and development project for the Edgewood
School District in his native town of San Antonio. He
then became part of the faculty at this same university.
He oversaw graduate social work students at Centro del
Barrio in San Antonio.
In 1977, he became assistant professor of social work
at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University
in Tempe, Arizona, where he collaborated with American
Indian professors in the American Indian Family and
Children Social Services project. During this period, he
worked on his Ph.D. degree in Social Work
Education/Administration through the extension branch of
The Union Institute of Cincinnati, Ohio in San
Francisco, California. He received his Ph.D. in the
summer of 1980 with special focus on the Hispanic family
within the rubric of community mental health.
He was the founding director of Hispanic Community
Educational Television, Inc., KHCE TV-23 in San Antonio,
Texas. He has personally produced and hosted over four
hundred programs in English as well as in Spanish.
Immediately after leaving his post at the television
station in 1996, he discovered the secret of his
family’s Sephardic Anusim roots and heritage. This
launched him into a quest of research, publication and
dissemination on the subject of Sephardic Anusim among
Hispanic-Latinos of the Southwest. As a result, he has
published nine books on the subject, each one is in
English and Spanish and one in German.
His highest award came from his colleagues at the Ben
Gurion Heritage Center at Sde Boker in the Negev and
directorship at the Ladino Center of the Ben Gurion
University in Beer Sheba, Negev. This "award" was the
embracing by his Jewish colleagues during a conference
Dr. Sanchez organized for Hispanic Anusim in the Negev
of Israel in June 2005. He was presented a special book
in Hebrew and Ladino with a dedication that reads in
Ladino: Ken bushka topa (a man who found his
way). He is presently working on a prototype which has
been accepted by the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of
Interior of Israel for the aliyah (immigration) of
Hispanic Anusim as full Jews and full citizens of Erez
Israel.
The topic of presentation: "Challenges and
Opportunities for Hispanic Sephardic Anusim in the Negev
of Israel"
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Dr. Peter Tarlow
Dr. Peter Tarlow is the Rabbi and Executive Director
at Texas A&M Hillel foundation. Besides Hebrew and
English Tarlow is fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese
and lectures extensively throughout Latin America. He
served as the rabbi of the Circulo Israelita in Santiago
Chile. Tarlow wrote his rabbinic thesis on the
Portuguese Inquisition, and has been interested in the
lifes and cultures of Crypto Jews especially in the
northern Mexican states. Among the degress that Tarlow
holds are in Spanish literature, Hebrew literature and
Sociology. He will address the background of the
Portuguese and Spanish immigrants to New Spain and how
their historical baggage impacted their lives once they
arrived in the New World.
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Dr. Samuel Temkin
Samuel Temkin is professor emeritus at
Rutgers University. He graduated from the Universidad
de Nuevo León in 1960, and in 1966 he received a
Ph.D. in engineering from Brown University. From 1967 to
2001 he held various academic and administrative
positions at Rutgers University, including Associate
Provost for the Sciences. He is the author of two
scientific books and more than 40 refereed research
articles in scientific journals. He has held extended
visiting appointments in several countries outside the
US, including Spain, Israel, Italy, Germany, Holland,
and Sweden. Since retirement he has been engaged in the
study of the history of XVI Century New Spain,
particularly the origins of the Nuevo Reino de León.
In this field, he is the author of several refereed
articles dealing with Luis de Carvajal that are based on
original sources.
Title of talk: Luis de Carvajal, his family, and
his recruits.
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Dr. Moníca Marcela Montemayor Treviño
Mrs. Montemayor has a Law Degree (JD)
from the Universidad Regiomontana and a Master on
Private Law (LLM) from the same university. She has
attended courses in World History and Pre-Hispanic and
Colonial History of Mexico at the UANL and ITESM. She is
an expert in paleography of documents from Spain and New
Spain dating from the XV through the XIX century.
Since 1980 she has been an
independent historian and investigator of the history of
the Nuevo Reino de León, focused in the periods of the
first and second government of Luis de Carvajal and
Diego de Montemayor. She has also performed field
investigations regarding traces of crypto-jewish
folklore and customs in the North East of Mexico.
She is a founding member of Amigos
del Archivo Histórico de Monterrey A. C. An association
dedicated to the conservation of historic documents of
Nuevo León and modernization of said archives. She
continuously collaborates with the Centro de Historia
Oral de Nuevo León, A.C.
In addition to her legal practice,
Mrs. Montemayor is a plastic artist who designs stained
glass, makes watercolor paintings and sculptures. She
was coauthor of a sculpture exhibited as a tribute to
Luis de Carvajal and his family. Exhibited from February
2006 through July 2007 on Museo del Obispado. Monterrey
.N.L.
Since 1999 Mrs. Montemayor has been a
lecturer on several topics of the History of Nuevo León
including the Sephardic Heritage on the North of Mexico.
She was also a speaker on the memorial of the 415th
anniversary of the death of Luis de Carvajal de la Cueva
held on the Museo del Obispado on February 13 2006.
She has published articles in local
newspapers and magazines regarding topics that include:
"Marco legal para la Fundación de la
Ciudad e Monterrey por Diego de Montemayor
"Y donde quedó el Acta de Fundación
de la Ciudad de Monterrey"
"Documentos Para la Historia de Nuevo
León, Archivo General de Indias 1579-1691. Tomo I "Capitulación
del rey Felipe II de España con el capitán Luis de
Carvajal de la Cueva" Incluyendo las Reales Cedulas.
2004 digital y 2005 edición especial.
She is currently in the process of publishing "Documentos
par la Historia del Nuevo León Tomo II recopilación y
paleografía"
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