Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala is undoubtedly the best-known author in Andean studies. For some decades, his book Nueva corónica y buen gobierno has been central to understanding the Andean past, given his unique perspective as an indigenous writer. The present work gathers 14 essays about Guaman Poma by scholars from diverse disciplines: history, literature, anthropology, and philology. It is the result of the Second International Guaman Poma Conference, held at the Royal Library of Denmark, Copenhagen, in October 2013. As Rolena Adorno highlights in the introduction, this institution has had a leading role in curating and publicizing the Nueva corónica, from its discovery by Richard Pietschmann in 1908 through the manuscript's digitization in the 1990s.
This book is a valuable contribution for Andean studies for many reasons. First, it builds a necessary dialogue between the Nueva corónica and other relevant texts, such as the Galvin manuscript of the Historia general del Perú by Martín de Murúa and the Ternaux manuscript of the Tratado de las doce dudas by Bartolomé de Las Casas. Juan Ossio, for example, compares the clothing patterns of the Inca nobility in the Nueva corónica and in Murúa's text, and José Cárdenas Bunsen offers new insights regarding the circulation of Las Casas's writings in Peru during Guaman Poma's time. Alongside these older connections, Ivan Boserup and Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer contribute to clarifying the relations between the Nueva corónica and other newer documents, such as the Miccinelli manuscripts discovered in 1998. They demonstrate convincingly that the illustration of the contract between Blas Valera and Guaman Poma was copied from the Rivet edition (1936) of the Nueva corónica.
Second, the book delves into the Nueva corónica's sources, analyzing the influence of Western books on Guaman Poma's work. Jesper Nielsen and Mettelise Fritz Hansen show, for example, how European templates inspired his representations of indigenous gods and devils, which was also the case in Mesoamerican codices. Guaman Poma was very aware of the subversive potential of books. Audrey Prévôtel argues that he reversed the content of hagiographic genre prints as a means of protest, using Christian iconographic production to show the abuses, arrogance, and covetousness of Spanish conquerors. In the same manner, Regina Harrison stresses Guaman Poma's familiarity with Hispanic legal books, certainly an outgrowth of his concern for ensuring justice in the Andes.
Third, Adorno and Boserup provide insights into Guaman Poma's background as an author. Jean-Philippe Husson examines how the drama Prisión y muerte del Inca Atahualpa might have influenced his vision of the conquest and other related themes. Gregory Khaimovich argues that the main audience of Nueva corónica was meant to be Guaman Poma's fellow countrymen, and that Philip III was only his formal, but not his final, addressee.
A fourth aspect brought to light is the way that Guaman Poma portrayed the Inca past and its rituals, dress, and bureaucracy. Jan Szemiński makes a reconstruction of Inca government agencies through his description of imperial administration, and Tom Zuidema looks at how the tunics drawn on the pages of the Nueva corónica bring us an understanding of kinship and the ranking model that underlay it. Amnon Nir offers a new approach to military miracles in Nueva corónica, from an Inca perspective, and Bruce Mannheim reinterprets warikza arawi, a song recorded by Guaman Poma. He proposes that the hymn was a generic ritual narrative, and not a specific instance of it.
Finally, this book contextualizes Guaman Poma's work in its original environment. Gregory T. Cushman demonstrates the ecological practices surrounding Huamanga, Guaman Poma's native home, and the inspiration he drew from his own legal tragedy of losing Chiara lands to the Chachapoyas. Similarly, Frank Salomon analyzes the role of the sapçi, or storage house, linking Guaman Poma's writing and contemporary community agricultural and herding practices among the Andean villagers of Rapaz.
Beyond the notable contribution of each essay, this book reflects extensive research centered on Guaman Poma's life and work, an interdisciplinary road begun in the 1970s that has not yet ended. Thus, these essays are an invitation for future research in innovative directions. As Rolena Adorno suggests in the introduction, there are many doors waiting to be unlocked, and Guaman Poma is just standing next to them.
