Abstract
Reviewed by: Monica Diaz, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
Locating Guaman Poma’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno at The Royal Library in Copenhagen, its subsequent publication in print and in digital form, and the many studies that followed, have altered significantly the ways in which we understand Amerindian culture. Rolena Adorno’s vision to make Guaman Poma’s manuscript widely available, and her many interdisciplinary collaborations and contributions continue to unveil the Andean world and its rich complexities. This edited volume is no exception; the 14 chapters included in Unlocking the Doors to the Worlds of Guaman Poma and his Nueva corónica analyse both Guaman Poma’s text and his drawings from different disciplinary perspectives: history, anthropology, literary, visual and cultural studies. The result is a combination of cutting-edge studies that look at the convergences between the Andean past and the present to better understand Guaman Poma’s manuscript and his worlds.
Four overarching themes appear in this collection of essays: the craftsmanship of the manuscript, its intertextuality, its language, and its ethnographic value. In some of the chapters these themes appear in dialogue with each other allowing for illuminating conclusions about the manuscript and Guaman Poma’s milieu. The book opens with an in-depth discussion of the debate about the contested authorship of the Nueva corónica in light of the discovery of two short manuscripts kept in the private Miccinelli collection. Ivan Boserup and Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer debunk the allegation made by Miccinelli that it was Blas Valera, and not Guaman Poma, who authored the Nueva corónica. They look closely at the craftsmanship of the manuscript, comparing ink, handwriting, orthographic idiosyncrasies and the like with the other two manuscripts, debunking the allegations and calling it a forgery.
The chapters by José Cárdenas Bunsen, Gregory Cushman, and Regina Harrison centre on the legal discourses and texts embedded within the Nueva corónica. Cárdenas’ chapter not only focuses on Bartolomé de las Casas as an intertext in Guaman Poma’s work, he goes further and specifically identifies a Las Casas manuscript, The Ternaux, which he argues is the closest to what Guaman Poma could have read. In addition, he pays careful attention to the craftsmanship of both manuscripts and establishes their connection and the importance of manuscript circulation, annotation and readership. Cushman has a different take on the way in which the law appears as an intertext in the Nueva corónica. He focuses on the many legal disputes in which Guaman Poma and his kin were involved over woodlands, water, pasture and farmland in his home district of Huamanga. Cushman argues that these legal disputes over natural resources provide the original inspiration for composing his manuscript. Harrison analyses two more legal texts embedded in the Nueva corónica: an amparo (protection of rights) and a will. Through the analysis of these texts Harrison shows the ways in which Guaman Poma enacted Spanish law for his own purposes. She argues for the transcultural nature of the experiences of Andeans through a careful reading of the ways in which the law was adopted and adapted by natives to achieve their purposes.
The next three chapters by Jean-Philippe Husson, Gregory Khaimovich, and Bruce Mannheim focus on linguistic aspects of the Nueva corónica. Husson conducts a philological analysis of one of the native sources that he has identified in Guaman Poma’s text, namely the drama Prisión y muerte del Inca Atahualpa, still staged in various locations of present day central Peru. Husson’s analysis suggests that by including this source, Guaman Poma was privileging a particular version of the Conquest which subtly endorsed the natural authority of traditional leaders. For his part, Khaimovich remarks that while Guaman Poma’s bilingualism has been noted, the reasons why he included this indigenous language corpus in his text hasn’t been thoroughly examined. Through a close analysis of the chapters in which the Quechua language appears more pervasively, Khaimovich is able to argue that the inclusion of Quechua elements supports the general purpose of the chronicle: the abolition of colonial rule. Finally, Mannheim focuses on three internal linguistic aspects of the Nueva corónica (specificity, production format and genre) by exploring the textuality of an Inca ritual included in the manuscript ‘Inka Raymi’. This is a festival narrative that crosscuts media, provides a normative guide to the performance of a ritual, and invites provocative ethnographic readings.
The next four chapters consider visual intertextuality in Guaman Poma’s manuscript. Jesper Nielsen and Mettelise Fritz Hansen compare and discuss images from a series of early colonial Mesoamerican sources identifying the Euro-Christian templates that functioned as sources of inspiration and drawing a relationship between these and the Nueva corónica. Amnon Nir compares the inclusion of military miracles or extraordinary actions attributed to supernatural intervention in both Juan de Betanzos’ Suma y narración de los Incas and the Nueva corónica. This phenomenon explains and justifies the defeat of the Inca forces, and as Nir argues, it also illustrates the complex process of transculturation that allowed for the incorporation of symbols and values derived from Spanish culture.
Juan Ossio compares written and graphic descriptions of the Inca nobility in both Martin de Murua’s manuscript and the Nueva corónica. The craftsmanship of the texts comes into play here since the Galvin Murúa manuscript was created by both chroniclers and includes similar drawings. Through a close comparison of the three manuscripts, Ossio concludes that Guaman Poma seems to be more consistent and accurate in his representation not only of the appearance of three sets of Inca royalty but also in the presentation of the tocapus on the dresses of the Incas. Finally, Audrey Prévôtel establishes a relationship between hagiographic iconography and the drawings of Guaman Poma, concluding that he knew the iconography and engravings of the Flos Sanctorum and adapted them to give them a different meaning. In the absence of any reference to hagiography, Guaman Poma even subverted the meaning of the original hagiographic iconography as a way of protest.
The last three chapters by Frank Salomon, Jan Szemiński, Tom Zuidema are more ethnographic in nature. Salomon focuses on Guaman Poma’s use of the term sapçi (body of politically controlled assets held in indigenous settlements for the common good), which is the first Quechua word that appears in his work. The author argues that Guaman Poma uses sapçi as a way to establish continuity between Tawantinsuyo and the Toledan regime. Looking at the present time, sapçi still has an enduring resource amid political and economic changes and reform. Szemiński’s chapter looks at Guaman Poma’s descriptions of Inca government agencies; while most sixteenth-century chroniclers mention these agencies in passing, the Nueva corónica gives a more sophisticated view of them. Szemiński argues that imperial administration in the capital and the provinces was complex; in some cases, administration was centralized, in others was not, therefore further research on this topic is needed. Zuidema focuses on Guaman Poma’s descriptions of Inca political hierarchy; he analyses the coherence of the ranking systems and points to its problems, which were mainly due to polygamy, kinship and dual divisions of social and political groups. Zuidema is interested in shedding light on what he calls the ‘original Inca culture’ by looking at the iconography of the Inca hierarchy and comparing it to other pre-Hispanic and colonial sources.
Approaching the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno from different angles and disciplines allows for new and exciting readings of Felipe de Guaman Poma de Ayala’s manuscript. This collection of essays will surely become an essential resource for specialists in Andean culture and in general for scholars of colonial studies, given the wealth of information provided and their creative methodology.