ALTAMIRANO, PEDRO IGNACIO. - Spanish Jesuit, b. at Cártama (Malaga) on 31 July 1693, and entered the Society in 1708, in the province of Andalusia. Around 1725 he passed to the province of Mexico, where he taught philosophy at Puebla and governed the houses of Havana and Puerto Príncipe (Cuba). Sent to Madrid before 1737 for the affairs of his new province, he was appointed (1740) procurator general at the court of Spain for the Jesuit missions of the "Indies."
Copies are found in various archives and libraries of the numerous memorials, manuscript or printed, which in that office he presented to the colonial authorities, and which display great ability and extensive knowledge of law and provide valuable historical information. A. also wrote an apology of the Mexican Jesuits against the accusations (then reprinted) of the bishop of Puebla, Juan de Palafox; it is found in the volume Sacra Rituum Congregatio... Oxomeusis beatificatio... Ioannis de Palafox (part 1, vol. III, Rome 1788, pp. 173-347). He had returned only a few years earlier to the province of Andalusia when the decree of expulsion of Charles III against the Jesuits overtook him at Cordova (1767). Deported to Italy, A. died at Rimini on 7 March 1770.
His brother LOPE LUIS, b. at Cártama in 1698, a Jesuit in 1716, d. at Algajola (Corsica) in 1767, had to settle, as commissioner, the difficulties that arose in the reductions of Paraguay as a consequence of the Spanish-Portuguese boundary treaty of 1750; he showed himself excessively severe toward the Indians and his own confreres.
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Edmonds Lamalle