front cover of How “Indians” Think
How “Indians” Think
Colonial Indigenous Intellectuals and the Question of Critical Race Theory
Gonzalo Lamana
University of Arizona Press, 2019
The conquest and colonization of the Americas marked the beginning of a social, economic, and cultural change of global scale. Most of what we know about how colonial actors understood and theorized this complex historical transformation comes from Spanish sources. This makes the few texts penned by Indigenous intellectuals in colonial times so important: they allow us to see how some of those who inhabited the colonial world in a disadvantaged position thought and felt about it.
 
This book shines light on Indigenous perspectives through a novel interpretation of the works of the two most important Amerindian intellectuals in the Andes, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca. Building on but also departing from the predominant scholarly position that views Indigenous-Spanish relations as the clash of two distinct cultures, Gonzalo Lamana argues that Guaman Poma and Garcilaso were the first Indigenous activist intellectuals and that they developed post-racial imaginaries four hundred years ago. Their texts not only highlighted Native peoples’ achievements, denounced injustice, and demanded colonial reform, but they also exposed the emerging Spanish thinking and feeling on race that was at the core of colonial forms of discrimination. These authors aimed to alter the way colonial actors saw each other and, as a result, to change the world in which they lived.
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front cover of Inca Garcilaso and Contemporary World-Making
Inca Garcilaso and Contemporary World-Making
Sara Castro-Klarén
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016
This edited volume offers new perspectives from leading scholars on the important work of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), one of the first Latin American writers to present an intellectual analysis of pre-Columbian history and culture and the ensuing colonial period. To the contributors, Inca Garcilaso’s Royal Commentaries of the Incas presented an early counter-hegemonic discourse and a reframing of the history of native non-alphabetic cultures that undermined the colonial rhetoric of his time and the geopolitical divisions it purported. Through his research in both Andean and Renaissance archives, Inca Garcilaso sought to connect these divergent cultures into one world.
This collection offers five classical studies of Royal Commentaries previously unavailable in English, along with seven new essays that cover topics including Andean memory, historiography, translation, philosophy, trauma, and ethnic identity. This cross-disciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American history, culture, comparative literature, subaltern studies, and works in translation.
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front cover of La Florida del Inca and the Struggle for Social Equality in Colonial Spanish America
La Florida del Inca and the Struggle for Social Equality in Colonial Spanish America
Jonathan D. Steigman
University of Alabama Press, 2005

A cross-disciplinary view of an important De Soto chronicle.


Among the early Spanish chroniclers who contributed to popular images of the New World was the Amerindian-Spanish (mestizo) historian and literary writer, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616).  He authored several works, of which La Florida del Inca (1605) stands out as the best because of its unique Amerindian and European perspectives on the De Soto expedition (1539-1543).  As the child of an Indian mother and a Spanish father, Garcilaso lived in both worlds--and saw value in each. Hailed throughout Europe for his excellent contemporary Renaissance writing style, his work was characterized as literary art. Garcilaso revealed the emotions, struggles, and conflicts experienced by those who participated in the historic and grandiose adventure in La Florida. Although criticized for some lapses in accuracy in his attempts to paint both the Spaniards and the Amerindians as noble participants in a world-changing event, his work remains the most accessible of all the chronicles.

In this volume, Jonathan Steigman explores El Inca’s rationale and motivations in writing his chronicle. He suggests that El Inca was trying to influence events by influencing discourse; that he sought to create a discourse of tolerance and agrarianism, rather than the dominant European discourse of intolerance, persecution, and lust for wealth. Although El Inca's purposes went well beyond detailing the facts of De Soto’s entrada, his skill as a writer and his dual understanding of the backgrounds of the participants enabled him to paint a more complete picture than most--putting a sympathetic human face on explorers and natives alike.


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front cover of New World Postcolonial
New World Postcolonial
The Political Thought of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
James W. Fuerst
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018
New World Postcolonial presents the first full-length study to treat both parts of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's foundational text Royal Commentaries of the Incas as a seminal work of political thought in the formation of the early Americas and the early-modern period. It is also among a handful of studies to explore the Commentaries as a "mestizo rhetoric," written to subtly address both native Andean readers and Hispano-Europeans. As Fuerst demonstrates, by blending both Andean and European discourses to represent Incan history, Garcilaso further proposed restoring indigenous sovereignty by adopting a new mestizo governing body via the political alliance and intermarriage of encomenderos (estate holders) and Incas.  This policy extended to education, missionary practices, and others, reflecting Garcilaso's hopes of forming a peaceful coexistence among native Andeans, mestizos, and first generation Spaniards.
 
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