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The Jesuit Diego de Torres Rubio was born in 1548 in Alcázar de San Juan (Ciudad Real), Spain and died on April 23, 1638 in Sucre (Chuquisaca), Bolivia. He was a deacon when he arrived in Lima on April 4, 1578 on the expedition led by Father José Tiruel. Ordained a priest he was sent to the Aymara doctrine of Juli. From 1586 until his death, he worked in regions of present-day Bolivia: he lived in Potosí, La Paz, and Chuquisaca (now Sucre), where – in addition to learning Quechua – he held the Aymara chair for thirty years.
Torres Rubio was fluent in Quechua, Aymara, and Guaraní. Of all these languages ​​he published vocabularies, such as the Arte de la lengua aymara with prayers and a small vocabulary, in Lima in 1616. According to Raúl Porras Barrenechea, Torres Rubio’s texts reflect «la habilidad didáctica y la sencillez de la experiencia directa. Son brevísimos, sumarios, de una concisión sorprendente, pero certeros y útiles…»; For this reason, he enjoyed popularity in the seventeenth century and his work was reissued in the eighteenth century in 1701 and 1754.

Daphne Cornejo
Proyecto Estudios Indianos
Digital Resources
Porras Barrenechea, R. (1999). El legado quechua. Lima: Fondo Editorial Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos