Translating Guarani Artefacts in Antonio Ruiz de Montoya's Conquista Espiritual

Antonio Ruiz de Montoya's Conquista espiritual (Madrid, 1639) is one of the few early colonial sources depicting the life and customs of the Guarani in the Río de la Plata region. In this paper, I look at how he interprets the Guarani's engagement with their art objects, with particular attention to their bodies-as-artefacts. I argue that while the chronicle primarily offers a cultural translation of ephemeral indigenous artefacts and performances, traces of the distant voice of the religious other - and, therefore, a concealed thread of the Guarani's translation of Catholicism - could also be disentangled on the written page when read against the grain. The Conquista espiritual represents the remnants of a resisting Guarani aesthetic regime which heavily relied on acts of inversion and mockery - and which Montoya discredits by evoking the sense of disgust in his readers and by situating it within demonological frameworks. Ultimately, the author's main goals with the chronicle's contrasting imagery are to claim governance over the Guarani's spiritual life and to highlight the successes of the Paraguayan mission to the Spanish court which supported the chronicle's publication and financed the Jesuits' missionary activity overseas.