The partial English translation of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's massive chronicle, translated by Roland Hamilton, is a fascinating read. Although the entirety of the text is not available in English, Hamilton's translation covers the precolonial history of Peru as presented by an indigenous writer to the king of Spain. Unfortunately, the original text probably could have benefited from an editor, but the author bequeathed to posterity an unparalleled intellectual work of indigenous intellectual production in Peru, Latin America and the Americas. As part of the Catholic Indian elite, Guaman Poma's chronicle reflects the contradictory tendencies of colonial indigenous peoples with a foot in both the precolonial past and the colonial present. While he consistently criticized the Spanish colonial regime for its abuses of Indians and the spread of moral, sexual, and criminal vices brought by the Spanish, the author also sought to fix the precolonial past of the Incas into Biblical genealogies and history.
The Inca, despite bearing responsibility for the spread of idolatry and worship of huacas across Peru, were also responsible for sound laws, a just social order, and a harmonious system in which people knew their place. Furthermore, Guaman Poma came from a provincial family, not Cuzco or the Inca royalty, like El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Thus, his view on the pre-conquest Peruvian imperial government reflects a provincial and Christian view of the indigenous past. While simultaneously praising Christianity and expressing admiration for the Spanish monarchy, our chronicler is also presenting the Inca as the upholders of a superior system of justice, despite their idolatry. This ambivalent position of Guaman Poma probably also reflected the interests of his social class as they sought to protect or pursue positions of authority in colonial Peru. By presenting the Inca imperial past as one with a more just arrangement of society, and exaggerating the importance of his own lineage within that system, Guaman Poma was undoubtedly arguing for more power for those like himself in colonial society.
According to Hamilton, the chronicle's structure was likely influenced by quipu, the system of recording information using strings and knots. The translator suggests that Guaman Poma's penchant for long lists to describe the emperors, queens, nobility, age divisions, social classes, and epochs was probably a product of the quipu system. Indeed, this is probably true, since Guaman Poma must have relied on both quipu and oral traditions to construct a narrative of the Inca past. Although this sometimes makes for rather dull reading, some amazing levels of details and narrative elaboration breathes life into ancient rulers and personages of Tawantinsuyu. Despite his own provincial and Catholic biases and the attempt to prolong the history of the Inca imperial line to encompass over 2000 years, Guaman Poma de Ayala's presentation of this past undoubtedly presents it as superior to the corruption and excessive exploitation of the colonial system. Unlike his contemporary society, the Incas suppressed crime, sexual excess and libertinage, promoted virginity and chaste living, protected the poor and disabled, and supported institutions like nunneries. In spite of their idolatry and the alleged origins of the Inca monarchs with a sorceress who married her son, aspects of this past were deemed superior to those of the colonial Spanish and were used for a scathing critique of the the Peru of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Given the intended audience for Guaman Poma's chronicle, one wonders how he would have written the history of the Incas for local audiences and what a Blas Valera or El Inca Garcilaso would have made of him.
And last but certainly not least, a possible connection to the Antilles may be evident in some of the customs of Indian populations described by Guaman Poma. Although he sometimes exaggerated the extent of the Inca Empire, even going so far as to claim Panama and Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) were part of it, one interesting custom of burying the dead with gold, silver and coca inserted into the mouth of the deceased stood out. Indeed, some of the most elaborate and precious precolonial Caribbean duhos or stools once featured gold-encrusted mouths. While only one specimen with the gold still intact survives, one wonders if the Taino practice of inserting gold into the mouth of zoomorphic or anthropomorphic faces of duhos could possibly be a remnant of a similar practice with the burial customs of some South American Indians? Instread of doing it for the dead, however, the Taino practiced the same custom for duhos, whose carved faces must have had some religious and spiritual connotations due to the use of duhos for cohoba ceremonies.
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