Andean civilization in Poma de Ayala’s Chronicle

Grinina Elena Anatolievna ORCID: 0000-0003-0405-1895 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO University) 119454, Russia, Moscow, Vernadsky, 76, room 3059 eagrinina@yandex.ru

Romanova Galina Semenovna PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO University) 119454, Russia, Moscow, Vernadsky, 76, room 3059 gromanova.home@gmail.com

The Andean world seems mysterious and incomprehensible, since it goes back centuries, carefully preserving its secrets: the Nazca desert with mysterious drawings that can only be seen from the air, ancient cities hidden in an impassable thicket, such as the fortress city of Machu Picchu, accidentally found at the beginning of the twentieth century, secrets of the construction of giant structures that allowed the ancient inhabitants used huge blocks of stone in their durable buildings, as well as terraced agronomic laboratories in which crops were grown taking into account zoning, wells-observatories for observing the heavenly bodies. Skull trepanation operations were performed here using anesthesia and antiseptics, and much more. Peruvian scientists are successfully engaged in research on the history, ethnography and culture of the Andean world today ^[1].

For modern people from other continents, the Andean civilization is primarily associated with the Inca empire, which Europeans faced, namely, the Spanish conquistadors during the conquest of these territories at the turn of the XV – XVI centuries. However, even before the Incas, about ten other civilizations arose here, evidence of the existence of which in the form of ceramic products can be seen, in particular, in the Archaeological Museum By Rafael Larco Herrera (Museo Arqueol?gico Rafael Larco Herrera) in Lima. The museum is named after a famous collector who collected the first samples of ancient ceramics, and was established in 1926 by his son Rafael Larco Oil (1901-1965), an archaeologist who discovered many of the pre–Columbian civilizations, determined the periods of their existence and studied the artifacts found ^[2]. Since all these civilizations had no written language, their study is largely based on guesses and hypotheses that are built in the study of objects of material culture. The more valuable are the finds of manuscripts that describe this mysterious world, completely unlike the one in which today's Peruvians live.

The fate of the "New Chronicle of Good Government" (El Primer Nueva Cor?nica y Buen Gobierno) by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala ^[3], preserved in the form of a manuscript, turned out to be somewhat mysterious.  The final version dates from 1612-1615, however, work on it began, most likely, in the mid-80s of the XVI century. This is a kind of message for the royal power, which is located somewhere far away in Spain and, according to the author, knows nothing about the lawlessness that is happening in his homeland. It is known that the author's first attempt to present his work to the Viceroy for subsequent transfer to the Spanish monarch Philip II was unsuccessful. However, later the treatise fell into the hands of the royal governor Francisco de Borja y Aragon and, apparently, was sent to Spain, where traces of it, never reaching the addressee, are lost for three centuries until its discovery in the early twentieth century in Denmark.  It is assumed that the manuscript turned out to be in Copenhagen, because it was bought by the Danish ambassador in the middle of the XVII century, and there it gathered dust on the shelves of the Royal Library, without attracting attention to itself, until it was found in 1908 by the German researcher Richard Pietschmann ^{[4, p. 271]}. 

The first facsimile edition with a preface by Pitschmann was published in 1936 thanks to the efforts of the famous French ethnologist Paul Rivet, who founded the Institute of Ethnology in Paris in 1926, one of the activities of which was the release of rare manuscripts and the results of research conducted by this scientific center. ^[5]. And the most complete edition of the Chronicle text is considered to be the 1980 edition ^[6]. It was carried out by two recognized experts in this field – John Murra and Rolena Adorno. Their extensive commentary turned into a painstaking study of such a valuable historical document ^[7].

The study of two more manuscripts of this period, found in a private Italian collection, made some philologists doubt whether Guaman Poma de Ayala was the true author of the Chronicle, or whether he was a Jesuit monk Blas Valera, a mestizo who died, presumably, in 1589. Heated debates among scientists have not given a definitive answer, who is the author However, the heated controversy aroused great interest in the document in the scientific community, which led to a scrupulous study of its text ^{[4, pp. 271-272]}.

In our country, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kuzmishchev, a well-known researcher of Latin American culture, was engaged in the study of the Chronicle. Thanks to his translations, Russian readers got acquainted with the "History of the Inca State" by Garcilaso de la Vega, published in 1974 ^[8], and with the work "The First New Chronicle and Good Governance". The latter was published after the death of the scientist and represents only the first part of the Peruvian manuscript ^[9]. The large-scale project conceived by the author, unfortunately, remained unfinished.  However, even what is available to Russian science today provides invaluable material for study.

An analysis of the content of the "Chronicle of Good Government" shows that this manuscript is not just a detailed account of the realities of Peruvian life of those years with complaints to the Spanish King Philip II about cruelty and violence on the part of the Spanish colonialists, but also an attempt to reconcile two completely different worlds, two civilizations, which the author of the Chronicle is a witness to: "... I am not I have found Indians who would be greedy for gold or silver; I have not found among them who would owe [another] at least a hundred pesos; who would be a liar, a gambler, a lazy man, an adulterer or an adulteress; who would take [something] from another. You have it all: there is disobedience to your father and mother, and priests, and kings; if you deny God, then you deny the [Christian] faith itself. [This is] all that you know how and inspire poor Indians" ^{[9, p. 248]}.   The Peruvian author emphasizes that the reforms carried out by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569-1581) are unfolding before his eyes. In particular, we are talking about the displacement of indigenous Indian communities from their ancestral territories, compulsory labor service introduced for the enrichment of the Spanish colonialists, as well as the census. Poma de Ayala questions and criticizes the emerging colonial system: "As in those days, Indian kings and chief lords were very much feared, respected, and dutifully served them because of the good upbringing [of ordinary Indians] and strict punishment [for disobedience]. In our life, all this has been lost because of the Spaniards, and even more because of the priests, and even more because of justice and auditors, because [today] everything is against the Indians and the poor" ^{[9, p. 51]}. Nevertheless, seeing all the shortcomings of this system, Poma de Ayala accepts it. He sees himself as an intermediary who seeks to protect the existence and traditional values of the Andean Indians ^{[10, p. 5]}. "Good governance" for Guaman should be based on the forms of organization that the Andean peoples already practiced before the conquest, but in accordance with the principles of Catholicism and under the protection of the king. According to the researchers, "In the Peruvian world, Guaman de Ayala values most of all the once and for all established hierarchical order, where everything is clearly defined" ^{[11, p. 166]}.

By the time the Spaniards appeared in South America, the structure of the society of the Inca Empire was based on the principles of theocracy: "The ruling ethnic group – the Incas, as children of the Sun, that is, the supreme deity Inti, did not marry themselves with representatives of other ethnic groups, did not mix with them genetically. The supreme ruler, the Sapa Inca, personally appointed four chief governors, who, in turn, appointed subordinate Caciques. The number of these administrators was about 160, according to the number of food storages created for the population in case of natural disasters and military conflicts" ^{[12, p. 830]}. In the creation of this system, the author of the Chronicle assigns a special role to the Supreme Inca Pachacuti, whose divine origin has never been questioned by the local population ^[13]. By polygamous marriage unions with twenty sovereigns of the annexed territories (including from the highest nobility, called pr?ncipes (capac churi), from the middle nobility, called principales (incacuna), as well as incas por privileges), the Supreme Inca ensured the loyalty of these lands, then securing it with the marriages of twenty of his daughters and sisters with the subsequent twenty local rulers. The strengthening of political ties through the conclusion of dynastic marriages was very widespread in the Andes ^{[14, c. IL]}. The process of inheritance of power and property was also strictly regulated ^{[15, p. 443]}.

But by the arrival of the Spaniards, the empire of Tahuantinsuyo had already grown so much that it became almost impossible to manage it. The four parts, i.e. suyu, of this vast empire were inhabited and ruled for the most part not by Incas, but by people whose language and customs were very different, and the Quechua language acted as koine.

Religion was of great importance in the life of the Andean civilization. Sun worship in the Inca Empire did not imply monotheism. Being pagans, the Andean Indians believed in the existence of a whole host of gods, on whose help they counted in their daily lives. The Sun god Inti personified only the supreme deity. Considering the importance of religious beliefs for both Andean and European civilization, Poma de Ayala, being an Indian and a Christian and following his role as an intermediary, tries to draw parallels and point out the continuity between local and Christian religious practices. In fact, he seeks to integrate Christian dogmatics and European worldview into the traditional Andean chronotopic model ^{[11, pp. 162-167]}. According to the German researcher F.Amaya Farias, the Peruvian author of the XVI century identifies three points as points of contact between them: the idea of the existence of a creator god, the history of salvation and the figure of Noah, from whom the Andean Indians also originate, as well as the assertion of Indian monotheism ^{[16, pp.20-26]}. However, these arguments of Poma de Ayala remain only an attempt to bring two completely alien worlds closer together, and for the sake of a good goal: to ease the fate of the Indian population. In fact, as V. A. Kuzmishchev rightly states, "The Incas were pagans, and there can be no doubt about it. Any attempts to enroll the sons of the Sun in spontaneous, secret or other Catholics are completely untenable. The Incas were sun worshippers, but they did not interfere with the free activity of a great many other gods, as long as the peoples who worshipped them recognized the supreme position of the Sun. That is why the pantheon of the gods of Tauantinsuyu was literally packed with a variety of various deities of provincial significance" ^[17]. In practice, the conversion of Indians to Catholicism was very slow, due to their limited participation in Christian sacraments, as well as the difficulty of communication due to ignorance of languages.

The linguistic situation, in which Spanish became a participant in the XVI century along with Quechua, testifies to a complex multicultural conflict, real efforts to resolve which we see only today. There is an assumption that representatives of the highest caste, as well as priests, possessed a special, now lost language for communicating with each other: "According to modern Peruvian historians and linguists, relying on the evidence of the XVI century (Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, etc.), there was a third the language, puquin, is the "secret language of the Incas", brought by them from the shores of Lake Titicaca and then forgotten" ^{[11, p.161]}. But this has not been proven.

 A mandatory practice in the Empire of the Sun was that, as new lands were annexed to their state, the Incas sent teachers of their most common language, Quechua, there, the possession of which became practically mandatory and ensured the connection of territories. Both the Indian author and the first Europeans who traveled to the Inca Empire stated the existence of a huge number of different dialects there, and at the same time noted that the Indians speak and communicate fluently in one of them – Quechua ^{[18, p. 192]}. Of course, the conquistadors were little interested in the linguistic problems of the conquered population, but already in the middle of the XVI century, with the arrival in America of a significant number of representatives of the Catholic Church, the situation began to change.

 At first, the priests did not attempt to communicate with the new flock in a language they understood, but after the Council of Trent, which for the first time legalized the languages of the local population during divine services, the First Council in Lima (1551-1552) recommended that local clergy use dialects understandable to the population to preach the teachings of Christ. In the Lima Cathedral, a special pulpit was even built for this purpose, from which worship was conducted in Quechua. With the help of translators from the local population, the itinerant Dominican monks did a vigorous job, and already in 1560 the first dictionary and grammar of this language was published. The author of the work was Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas ^[19], and it is characteristic that Guaman Poma de Ayala subjected this Spaniard to harsh criticism for insufficient knowledge of Quechua, inability to correctly select lexical and grammatical forms, which led to a mixture of different dialects: "... the language of Cuzco, the language of the Chinchay region ... everything is mixed with Spanish" (Here and further our translation is E.G. and G.R.)["... la lengua del Cuzco, Chinchay suyo,...todo rrebuelto con la lengua espa?ola"] ^{[3, p. 1089]}. However, during the catechization, the work of the Dominican turned out to be in great demand, until the appearance of more linguistically perfect works of the Jesuits. This was facilitated by the decisions of the Third Council held in Lima in 1582-1583, which paid special attention to the study and use of local languages, especially Quechua, Aymara, Pukin, Mochica and Guarani. Priests were required to conduct services in these languages among the indigenous population. In addition to its purely practical significance, this work, which required the translation of a significant body of liturgical texts into languages understandable to Indians, had an important linguistic result: catechists-translators selected the most correct, in their opinion, lexical and grammatical forms, discarding others as "corrupted" (corruptas), in fact, developing a certain norm and fixing it in writing.

The most important and authoritative fruit of this work was the work "Doctrina Christiana y catecismo para instrucci?n de los indios" ("Christian teaching and catechism for the education of Indians") published in 1584 ^[20] – the most complete set of doctrinal texts in Quechua and Aymara at that time. Pastoral texts in Quechua reflected the Cuscan dialect of Quechua, which decisively contributed to its spread in the conquered territories, its acquisition of writing, and the spread of literacy ^{[18, p.193]}. And if the first attempts to record the Quechua vocabulary in writing are considered to be the texts of the Guaman Poma Chronicle, then by the end of the XVI century a number of works appeared with the recording of folklore, ritual, historical and other works in this language. This does not negate the fact that the Hispanization of local elites was carried out very intensively, and at the level of official and administrative communication, the Spanish language was dominant.

In the future, the attitude of the colonial authorities to the languages of the local population changed: if the addressee of the Chronicle of the Good Reign of the Spanish King Philip II (1554-1598) showed royal favor to the inhabitants of the new territories and their languages, then his heir Philip III (1598-1621), who took the throne by the end of his Peruvian namesake's work on the Chronicle, confident in the reliability of his power, he directly insisted on the widespread introduction of the Castilian language among the Indians, as evidenced by the relevant royal decrees ^{[21, p. 70]}. As a result, during the XVII and subsequent centuries, interest in local languages was constantly fading, both among missionaries and among linguists ^[22].

In conclusion, it should be emphasized that the collision of the two worlds turned out to be disastrous for the Andean civilization as such. Under the Spanish administration, the internal political situation worsened: internecine skirmishes, the brutality of the authorities led to the fact that previously densely populated territories were depopulated.   The author of the Chronicle considers the main reason for this trouble to be a departure from the traditional norms of morality, customs and rules of public life, which are not compensated in any way by the prescriptions and prohibitions of the Catholic Church, which were constantly violated by its preachers themselves. And Felipe Guaman offers segregation to the Spanish king as a way to solve problems: the indigenous population should live separately from Spaniards, Mestizos and African slaves, and then the Lord will unite everyone into a single people: "Over time we will all be equal and united in this world, there will be no more Negroes or Indians. We will all become Spaniards, there will be one God, one pastor, one king, as the Lord proclaims in the Holy Scriptures" ^{[3, p. 774]}. 

This phrase turned out to be visionary, and in the future the states that emerged in these territories largely followed the path predicted by an Indian monk at the end of the XVI century. Spanish has become the official language. However, interest in Indian dialects has not only not disappeared, but, on the contrary, has intensified since the end of the XX century, and now Indian languages (Quechua, Aymara and Guarani) in the Andean countries have become co-official. This process, which is crucial for the formation of the Peruvian nation and national languages, is still far from completion, and today it is in a very active phase, which is indisputable evidence that the Andean world, unlike the Andean civilization, has not completely perished, but is taking more and more confident steps on the path to revival every time.