Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala

Agora

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala

c. 1535–1616

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Colonial rule in the Andes is unjust and must be reformed, and Indigenous people are capable of governing themselves well.

Placement

Indigenous Philosophies · Latin America & Caribbean · Politics & Law, Society & History

Andean nobleman from Lucanas – by his own account descended from the Yarovilca lords and, through his mother, from the Incas – who wrote and drew a 1,200-page letter to the king of Spain: a history of the Andes and an indictment of colonial abuse, with a plan for good government.

Key ideas

Indigenous critique of colonial rule
Andean order and good government
Text and image

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Influence

Influenced by 1

Bartolomé de las Casas

influenced by
As Rolena Adorno has argued, Guaman Poma followed, without naming it, Las Casas’s Treatise of the Twelve Doubts in defending Indigenous land titles (Nueva corónica, c. 1615). F. Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615); R. Adorno, Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (1986; 2nd ed. 2000)
Evidence: AI draft
Bartolomé de las Casas › 1484–1566

Influenced 2

Walter Mignolo

influenced
Mignolo read Guaman Poma’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615) as an early example of border thinking (Local Histories/Global Designs, 2000). W. D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs (2000); The Darker Side of the Renaissance (1995); F. Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615)
Evidence: AI draft
Walter Mignolo › b. 1941
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

influenced
Rivera Cusicanqui read Guaman Poma’s drawings as a visual theory of colonial society that says what the written text cannot (Sociología de la imagen, 2015). S. Rivera Cusicanqui, Sociología de la imagen: Miradas ch’ixi desde la historia andina (2015); Ch’ixinakax utxiwa (2010)
Evidence: AI draft
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui › b. 1949

Works

1615The First New Chronicle and Good Government
Nearly 1,200 pages with almost 400 drawings: Andean history, a record of colonial abuses and a programme for just government.

Position

Guaman Poma’s chronicle, addressed to King Philip III and completed around 1615, combines nearly 1,200 pages of Spanish text, mixed with Quechua, with almost 400 full-page drawings. It recounts Andean history as an ordered succession of ages, records the abuses of colonial officials, priests and encomenderos, and depicts a “world turned upside down”. His plan for good government asks the king to rule through Andean lords and to keep Spaniards out of Indigenous towns. The manuscript probably never reached the king; it was rediscovered in the Royal Library in Copenhagen in 1908 and published in facsimile in 1936. Mignolo cites it as an example of border thinking.

Life & context

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala was born around 1535 – estimates vary – in Lucanas in the southern Peruvian Andes, into a family of local nobility; he claimed descent from earlier Andean rulers and, through his mother, from the Incas. He worked as an interpreter for Spanish officials and churchmen. After losing a lawsuit over his lands around 1600 he was banished and travelled widely. He probably died around 1616.