For almost three centuries the Chuetas married among themselves. Partly it was because no one outside the street would marry them. Partly it was their own choice, and the files reveal their rules.
One woman explained hers to the tribunal: she had resolved «not to marry any man who had not been reconciled». In other words, only someone who had been through the same process as she had, someone from the community and someone she could trust.
But even within the community there were classes. Gabriel wanted to marry Margarita Martí, and his father refused because she was «of the lesser flock, which among those of the street means of lower quality, by the families' own reckoning». They argued, and the argument ended with the father laying hands on him.
Not even a persecuted minority escaped hierarchies of lineage. For anyone tracing their family tree today, these rules explain why the same fifteen surnames cross again and again, generation after generation.
