But, did I say Cortes, Pizzaro or DeSoto were Jewish? Obviously I didn't. On the other hand, did I suggest that some of these guys might have been Spanish Protestants ~ try digging into that mess of worms, and when you're done explain why one Conquistidore named Carvajal (Pizzaro's half brother) was a priest while another Conquistidore named Carvajal (Pizzaro's cousin) refused absolution prior to his execution.
(BTW, the priest went on to sail down the Amazon from one of its tributaries in the Andean lowlands. His diary is extant. In it he reported on the people who lived there. His report is highly unpopular with environmentalist whackos because he described the Amazon as being heavily populated and farmed, far from the untouched pristine jungle imagined by Ben and Jerry's running dog lackeys.)
Why I did say was that Spain had many tens of thousands of Jews in the period before the Discovery of America. It also had many tens of thousands of descendants of Arabian and North African immigrants who'd come to Spain after the Islamic conquest in the 700s.
Not everybody got kicked out ~ many people accepted the terms set by the Christian king, Ferdinand, and became Christians and stayed.
However, all was not sweetness and light for them in the new combined kingdom so they had every motive to emigrate to the Americas.
This information is public and available in every library, and any history book about Spain from Roman times to General Franco.
You will be interested in my novel of the "Aztlan reconquista" of the American Southwest. It features a converso/cryto-Jew named Luis de Carvahal, who meets the same fate (well, almost) as his namesake.