New Mexican Sweet Potato Latkes with Lime-Sour Cream Sauce

Eight days before Christmas, some New Mexicans light a luminaria, a candle nestled in a paper sack, then add an additional glowing luminaria every evening until Christmas, when nine burning lights illumine the holiday darkness.

If this process of kindling flames sounds familiar, it is no coincidence. These New Mexicans are crypto-Jews: descendants of converso colonists who practiced Judaism in secret, fearing the relentless persecution of the Inquisition, whose long re