Different perspectives of the city between the Royal Commentaries and the General History of Peru

Abstract

The configuration of the city of Cuzco as “city of memory” in which different transformations and destructions occur is a vivid and personal reference throughout the Comentarios reales. In contrast, in his Historia general del Perú, Garcilaso presents this urban area mainly quoting Spanish chroniclers, and suggests an essential difference with the pre-Hispanic city, giving account of a network of other cities and political institutions where a lettered city emerged, thus consolidating the new Empire.