Knowledge of God, natural reason, and local and universal history in Guaman Poma de Ayala's New Chronicle and Good Government

Abstract

Scholars often see in the chapters of Guarnan Poma de Ayala's Nueva corónica y buen gobierno devoted to the history of the conquest of Peru a strong critique of Spanish chronicles accounts that ground his claim of restitution, allegedly the work's central claim. Through a close reading of its other historical chapters, those dealing with pre-Hispanic Andean history, this paper offers a new interpretation of the text. It argues that the Nueva corónica is a theologicallyorganized didactic text whose goal is to produce in the reader a radically new way of seeing the world, and that the historical narrative of the pre-Hispanic past in particular lays the foundation that will render intelligible in an alternative way the present of the colonial society and its future.