Atahualpa Inka and Friar Vicente de Valverde in Cajamarca
From The Chapter of the Spanish Conquest and the Civil Wars by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (1615)
Mimetic appropriations of the power of the “other,” including textual authority, appear throughout Andean and Amazonian histories. In his 1400 page letter to King Philip III of Spain, indigenous author Guaman Poma de Ayala expertly manipulates European discursive formulas to expose colonial injustices and advocate for native causes. In an act of decolonizing history, Guaman Poma retells the story of the Conquest from a native perspective and challenges Western historiographical canons. In her seminal work on Guaman Poma, Rolena Adorno, former professor at The Ohio State University, moreover, reveals a parallel polemic narrative in the drawings that accompany Guaman Poma’s impassioned text. Her analysis of the spatial arrangement in the images uncovers a symbolism of indigenous moral superiority in colonial intercultural encounters and points to broader systems of alternative literacy and historiography in the Andes and Amazonia.