Paraguay Natural Ilustrado by José Sánchez Labrador SJ: Between the American Experience and Exile

This paper analyzes the work Paraguay Natural Ilustrado and discusses the impact that the American experience and the later exile in Italy had in the trajectory and intellectual production of its author, Jesuit priest José Sánchez Labrador. The four volumes have evidence of the scientific advancements in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, due to his contact with other exiled Jesuits and the collection of the Library of Ravenna, along with his observations of American nature and the indigenous populations of the Jesuit Province of Paraguay. His experience for thirty-four years in the Americas, and later in exile, unmistakably are present in Paraguay Natural. It contributes significantly to the reconstitution of the circulation process and appropriation of botanical knowledge and of the intellectual environment in which the Jesuit brothers and priests were in, both in the missions among the natives in America, as well as in Europe in their exile.