Abstract

In this piece we present a critical edition of a document hold in the Archivo Romano de la Compañía de Jesús, written by the jesuit Diego de Rosales in Arauco, Chile, the 20th of April, 1643. The recipient of the letter was the jesuit Luis de Valdivia, who had passed away in Valladolid the 5th of Nov-ember, 1642. Rosales, who had no information regarding the death of Valdivia, transformed implicitly his text in a portrait of Valdivia’s absence through an evocation which recalls his presence by the reference to the fruits of the project of defensive war Luis de Valdivia had devised between 1612 and 1626 in the southern borders of the Peruvian Viceroyalty