ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: In what year was the Inquisition abolished in Peru?

Luis Esteban González Manrique is a journalist, author and editor of the weekly foreign policy journal Informe semanal de política exterior. When he was growing up in his hometown of Arequipa, Peru, he was fascinated by the history of his grandmother’s family, the Malagas. They were descendents of Jews from Spain who had converted to Catholicism and settled in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. He has traced his family’s roots from the town of Arequipa to the small isolated village of Yarabamba, where they settled, keeping some of their old Jewish traditions. Eventually they became an eminent family of intellectuals and people of great relevance in the history of the Republic of Peru.

Mr. González Manrique told us about the history of the Jews in Peru, the present-day Jewish community there, and his own family’s history.