For Marcela Meza
The NAME De Meza certainly seems to have originated in Spain. Have a look at the Sephardim Jewish pages as a link from www.jewishgen.org and you'll get lots of historical information. From the looks of it the family probably changed their name from the original Jewish one to a Spanish name as many Jews apparently did before or after the 1492 expulsion edict. It seems that there were also numerous cases of them apparently embracing Christianity (as "conversos") whilst secretly maintaining their Jewish origins. But even so, lots fled to France, Portugal and North Africa. In 1497 Portugal also expulsed Jews (one of the family names listed there is "Mezas") and these fled to Holland, UK and other destinations. There are several good books on the subject of Sephardim and you can even get CD's of their music!