Adaptations and appropriations in a textual culture of the borderlands: Mission prints in Jesuit´s Paraguay

Abstract

In 1700, the Jesuits established the first printing press in the Rio de la Plata region, which operated in the Guaraní missions for twenty-seven years, printing several doctrinal, linguistic and historic books. Only half of the books have been located in different libraries and archives throughout the world. Recent findings suggest that these books used to circulate throughout the South American provinces of the Society of Jesus and were used in different regions of missionary action. An exhaustive typology of the books printed in the Guarani missions does not exist to date. First, this article presents a general characterization of the activity of the missions’ press in the Guarani reductions. Second, it explores the corpus and proposes an approach for its classification and analysis. Third, it proposes some interpretations about the circulation and reception of these texts in the context of the missions’ cultural production.

Keywords: Jesuit missions, textual culture, mission printing press.