Buenaventura Suárez (1679-1750), a Jesuit from Santa Fé (in present-day Argentina), spent most of his life as a missionary in the Río de la Plata Basin, where he composed these lunar ephemerides, published in Lisbon in 1748. This specific copy is a poignant reflection of the social structure within what would become the largest Jesuit mission in history, ultimately destroyed during the Guaraní Wars in the mid-18th century. Returning to South America, initially the copy belonged to Suárez himself, and later it was owned by Juan Sixto Mbiti, the Guaraní deputy "corregidor" of the village of San Lorenzo Mártir, in what is now Brazil. Besides having been written in Paraguay, printed in Lisbon, sent back to the author, and finally passing into the hands of a Guaraní official—knowledge in circulation in a most literal sense—the book includes a century-long lunar calendar and eclipse canon, along with the longitude differences between various major cities worldwide and the small locality of San Cosme, which effectively becomes the "center" of the world.
