Spanish Inquisition in New Spain

A permanent tribunal of the Holy Office was established in Mexico City in 1571. It investigated alleged heresy, forbidden books, blasphemy, crypto-Judaism, Protestantism and other offences defined by Catholic authorities.

Most Indigenous people were formally outside its ordinary jurisdiction, but the tribunal shaped colonial culture through censorship, denunciation and public punishment. Its reach was uneven and often intertwined with social, ethnic and political conflict.

This context supports fiction about religious policing, imprisonment and the use of the Inquisition within the unequal society of colonial Mexico.