Lopez Penha Family Chronicle, Moseh de Daniel Lopez Penha, Curacao: 1826

16 leaves (9 3/4 x 8 in.; 245 x 200 mm). Including 10 blanks; ink on paper, written in Portuguese cursive script; ff.1extended at gutter with some cracking, f. 6 extended margin, trimmed, not affecting text; modern endpapers. Modern morocco, gilt titles.

Mordechai Arbell, "The Annals of the Lopez Penha Family—1660–1924," in Pe'amim, 48 (1991)

In 1654, Jewish refugees from the colony of Recife created the first permanent Jewish settlement in Curacao.  The Dutch colonizing authorities granted them the right to freely exercise the Jewish religion and form a community. With the establishment  of the  "Mikve Israel" congregation and the consecration of a Jewish cemetery in 1659, a constant flow of Jews arrived in Curacao—immigrants from Amsterdam as well as refugees from abandoned Jewish settlements elsewhere in Latin America.  By the end of the 17th century, numerous Jewishly-owned plantations raised sugar cane, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and citrus. As ship owners, Jews dominated the shipping in the area and many engaged in large-scale commerce, importing needed supplies from Europe in exchange for tobacco, lemon juice, indigo, ginger, and raw materials and trans-shipping their trade goods around the Caribbean and to the growing markets in North America. The Jewish community grew rapidly and prospered, and by 1780 the Jews of Curacao numbered more than 2000, representing more than half of the non-slave inhabitants of the island.

The Curacao community became the "mother community" of many Spanish-Portuguese congregations in North America and actively supported them. Shearith Israel of New York, Mikve Israel of Philadelphia, and Touro of Newport still mention in their services the assistance received from the Jews of Curacao.  They also maintained close ties with the Holy Land, contributing generously to the Portuguese Jewish yeshivot in Jerusalem and Hebron in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Jews of Curacao also played an important role in the political transformations taking place in the Caribbean and in South America and some of them assisted Simon Bolivar in the liberation of South America from Spanish rule. As a result, Bolivar, who had earlier found refuge and assistance in the home of Jews in Curacao, was instrumental in opening the newly liberated territories to Jews after his successful revolution against the Spanish in Colombia in 1819.  He also played a role in officially abolishing the Inquisition two years later.  Subsequently, a number of Jewish families from Curacao , including the Lopez Penhas, started settling in Barranquilla on the Colombian coast. 

This fascinating family history traces the peregrinations of a Portuguese Jewish family whose members fled from both the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions in the early eighteenth century.  Members of the family relocated across the broad expanse of the Sephardic Diaspora and were widely scattered to Italy, France, the Ottoman Empire (Smyrna), Amsterdam and finally to the Caribbean island of Curacao, where the author of this manuscript, Moseh de Daniel Lopez Penha, was born in 1784.   In these pages Lopez Penha records not only births, deaths, illnesses, professions and other important events in the family’s history but also chronicles, sometimes in great detail, events that illuminate our understanding of historical episodes occurring within the communal life of the Jewish community of Curacao.  The chronicle also recalls the family relations with non-Jews as well, especially the Bishop of Curacao.

Although the chronicle only progresses through 1826, we know that members of the Lopez Penha family later moved to Colombia, where they experienced further successes as well as tragedies.  While many Jews, including members of the Lopez Penha clan achieved success, Colombia, still under a strong Spanish influence, did not adapt easily to Jewish presence and from time to time there were anti-Jewish phenomena. Moseh Lopez Penha, the author of our chronicle is almost certainly the same individual, who in the mid-nineteenth century died a martyrs death, murdered when he refused to bend his knees during a Catholic procession.

The best-known descendant of the Lopez Penha family was the Colombian novelist and poet Abraham Zacarias Lopez Penha.  His brother David penned a treatise on the “Jews and their Detractors.”

For a complete translated transcript of the Portuguese text, please inquire of the department.