GKS 2232 4º: Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615)
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My Lord
Don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, native of this kingdom and vassal of Your Majesty and legitimate son that I am of the great lord, Don Martín Guaman Malque de Ayala, who was the natural son of the grandees of this kingdom of Peru, second in rank to, and viceroy of, Tupac Inka Yupanqui, tenth king of this kingdom, and the afore-mentioned, my father, was married to Doña Juana Curi Ocllo, quya, or queen, legitimate daughter of Tupac Inka Yupanqui, whom the afore-mentioned, my father, always served until his death with the powers of an Indian devoted to preserving his people and lands from the war that Your Majesty fought against the tyrants who tried to wrest these kingdoms from Your Majesty. As is well known from the other letters in which I have previously given Your Majesty an account of all this and of other things very much concerning Your Majesty’s service, and of how I greatly desired that on account of the reputation and descent of the kings who ruled in this kingdom from ancient times until the last king, who was Huascar Inka, that there be knowledge in future times about the grandees, viceroys, lords, and governors that have existed, and about their rights and ceremonies, their forms of dress and the ways they adorned their persons, and conducted themselves and entertained in their feasts, banquets, hunts, and pastimes, as well as about the major mines of gold and silver they discovered in these kingdoms, and about the manner in which the subjects of these kingdoms have been and are governed ever since they were conquered and resettled in these provinces by the viceroys and governors, royal administrators, officials, and parish priests, and about the ill treatment that the Indians have received from all of them and from the trustees of Indian labor up to this very day, and about other harm and losses that they have suffered and suffer to this day. It has occurred to me to prepare a chronicle or general history of everything that I have come to know and understand in the age of my time, for I am eighty years old, all that I have seen as well as that which I have learned from very old lords of this kingdom, who had complete accounts and notice of everything about their ancestors so that their memory last throughout the ages of the world and so that things so great and memorable not be lost on account of the lack of writing, and so that Your Majesty’s historians may have fuller understanding than that which I understand them to have been able to have until now. For which inquiry and satisfaction of informing myself about the truth of all that with my very own eyes, it has been necessary for me to have spent thirty years in the task, having traveled on foot personally throughout the provinces of these kingdoms, taking down in writing, in spite of my poor understanding, the truth that all the afore-mentioned lords and authorities, older than myself and even more than one hundred years of age, have been able to affirm to me. And all this, so that Your Majesty might be served in the mentioned amount of time and occupation, during which I, my wife and children have suffered great necessity, poverty, and nakedness on account of not being able to have access to my herds and fields, in doing everything with great patience, with the goal of doing a great service to God our Lord and to Your Majesty by giving a long account of the manner in which the natives of these kingdoms have been treated ever since they were conquered and their lands peopled by the Spaniards, in order that Your Majesty be informed of the truth of everything, and so that Your Majesty order that remedy be sent to the call of the great damage done, because only to Your Majesty pertains looking after them as their king and natural lord, which Your Majesty in fact is, and who is distressed by their misery, calamities, bad treatment, and worse payment that they continually receive in general from every class of people, who treat them worse than slaves who have come from Africa (because even these are treated better, costing their masters the price that they actually pay for them), and thus Your Majesty may be served by showing favor to me and my children and successors so that there be memory, throughout the world, attentive to the causes discussed and to the fact that I descend from the royal house of the Inka kings, the former lords of these kingdoms, which now belong to Your Majesty. If it be necessary for Your Majesty to find out about me, the Marquis of Salinas, president of the Royal Council of the Indies, can give complete account to Your Majesty about me, for he has had notice of my person from the time that he governed this kingdom, that on account of my being a native and of limited intelligence, as are the Spaniards, with regard to how to direct to Your Majesty the afore-mentioned treatise of the general chronicle, I am not sending it in this armada to Spain. And thus I beg Your Majesty to be served by requesting that the viceroy who governs these kingdoms receive it and send it, well guarded, to Your Majesty, since I am ready to deliver it to him as soon as he requests it of me. May God preserve the Catholic person of Your Majesty. From the settlement of Santiago de Chipao in the province of the Andamarcas Lucanas Soras, of the district of the city of Huamanga, on the 14th of February, 1615. Don Felipe de Ayala (his signature and flourish) (I)
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