ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes the representations of the devil in the texts of the missionaries who worked in the Spanish Amazon, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. European missionaries, especially the Jesuits, understood the process of “spiritual conquest” of the Amazonian region as a narrative of struggle between the forces of good and evil. They presented themselves as those who came to free the Indians who were under the devil’s domination. Fathers conceived that Satan was using shamans to promote all kinds of conflicts and damage, and to inspire celebrations and sacraments that mimicked those of the Christian religion, but at the end only reinforced the submission of the natives to the common enemy’s designs. This paper analyzes in detail the various constituent elements of the narrative. This paper analyzes in detail the various constituent elements of the narrative. Contrary to what some studies suggest, the demonization was not just a form of disqualification of indigenous cultures. Jesuits called “diabolical” customs and rituals that they tried to know and whose meaning escaped them. The image of the demon was used, therefore, to translate one culture into another, to make intelligible a native culture. Demonization was not the absolute rejection of the Other. Demonization was an attempt to build bridges and analogies through which intercultural dialogue and the negotiation of the sacred could flow.
Jesuit missions; Maynas; demonology