Some time between January and April 2027 I will put in a brief appearance on PBS. No, I am not about to become a TV celebrity; my appearance will be only by way of a credit on a programme called Finding your Roots, hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates. PBS describes the programme thus:
“For more than a decade, renowned Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has helped to expand America’s sense of itself, stimulating a national conversation about identity with humor, wisdom, and compassion. Professor Gates has explored the ancestry of dozens of influential people from diverse backgrounds, taking millions of viewers deep into the past to reveal the connections that bind us all.”
A researcher contacted me after consulting my book Indigenous Culture and Change in Guerrero, Mexico. She was investigating a priest called Alonso Gómez de Castañeda who in 1595 applied to be appointed comisario (a local investigating official) of the Inquisition in Sultepec, a mining town southwest of Mexico City. Gómez de Castañeda had been married to Juana Cerezo de Vicuña, who had died aged 50, leaving Alonso with an unspecified number of children. The widowed Alonso then became a priest and sought suitable employment.
In order to determine whether there was any impediment to appointing Alonso, the Inquisitors ordered that his genealogy be examined to discover whether in his parents, grandparents, his wife’s parents and grandparents were “Old Christians, pure and of clean blood, without lineage, stain of descent from Moors, Jews, converts or any other recently converted sect, and as such they have been regarded, held and commonly reputed, and such is the public voice and fame, and common opinion, and there has been no fame or rumor to the contrary … [and that] none of them have been punished or condemned by the Holy Office of the Inquisition.” After what seems to have been a fairly perfunctory examination, Alonso was duly appointed comisario of Sultepec, where one of his duties would have been to hunt out Jews, “Lutherans” (Protestants) and any other heretics he might come across.
The records of Inquisition trials tell us that Jews were particularly harshly punished, often sentenced to death. “Lutherans” tended to be let off more lightly with a good few years in the galleons and perhaps a few hundred lashes. As you read the lengthy transcripts of the trials of some of the unfortunates rooted out by the likes of Alonso Gómez de Castañeda, one cannot help reflecting on the sheer waste of time and resources devoted to hunting down people whose crime was to be different.
About the same time as I was contacted by the PBS researcher, a publishing friend, Stephen Lustig sent me a link to an article written by his brother Robin, who has just published a book, And the Cello Came Too: A Story of Survival, about his father Fritz, a non-observant Jew who arrived in Southampton as a refugee in April 1939.
As Robin comments, Fritz was “An unaccompanied male of fighting age, seeking asylum and hoping for a chance of a better life. Sound familiar? He was the sort of undesirable alien referred to by a London magistrate, and quoted approvingly in the Daily Mail, in 1938: “The way stateless Jews and Germans are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage … Then, as now, the outrage was unwarranted. In the years leading up to the second world war, between 70,000 and 80,000 Jewish refugees were allowed into the UK. But up to 10 times as many were refused entry. Among them was my maternal grandmother, who was shot by a Nazi execution squad in 1941.”
Fritz was interned on the xenophobic orders of Winston Churchill to “collar the lot [German refugees].” However, he volunteered for service in the British Army, initially in an army orchestra, then in a military intelligence unit eavesdropping on the bugged conversations of German prisoners of war. While listening for secrets Fritz met his wife Susan, who worked in the same unit.
Fritz’s contribution to his adopted nation would not qualify him as truly British as far as today’s ethno-nationalists are concerned since for them “Britain is a people defined by indigenous British ancestry and Christian faith.” Nor would my friend Stephen or his brother meet their criteria.
Jan and I feel the current treatment of fellow humans who have come to our country because we invited them to work here in jobs some of our fellow Britons do not want to take, or in search of refuge and a better, safer life, is inexcusably intolerant, racist and unjustified. This applies not just to thugs who circulate the addresses of people who happen not to look like them so that they can drive them from their homes. A number of political parties, including the ruling Labour Party, of which I am a member, espouse policies and rhetoric that portray immigrants as breakers of the rules and a threat, ignoring the contributions they make to our society.
We feel it particularly personally because two of our sons are also immigrants. Chris, arrived in Mexico some seven years ago, initially with a work visa, then with a permanent resident’s card. He has contributed to Mexico working for a charity for disabled children, and now at a botanic garden.
John works for a Japanese company in Tokyo, bringing his expertise in international relations to a small Japanese business. He is also currently working exceptionally hard teaching a class of 49 students at Kanagawa University in Yokohama a course about Britain’s exit from empire.
Neither Chris nor John would pass the Do they look like one of us? Test. Nor would Chris’s partner, who teaches English in a secondary school. But, at least in our opinion, they make Mexico and Japan better places. Long may they do so.
