In 1767 Charles III ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and its overseas dominions. The decree removed missionaries, teachers and scholars from schools, colleges and Indigenous missions. It was part of a Bourbon effort to strengthen royal control over church and empire.

The expulsions transformed literary life in Spanish America, where Jesuits had recorded Indigenous languages, histories and oral traditions. Exiled Jesuit writers later produced nostalgic histories and poems that preserved local knowledge from afar.