Unlocking the Doors to the Worlds of Guaman Poma and His Nueva Coronica

Honored by UNESCO’s Memory of the World designation, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615) rewrites Andean history in accordance with the author’s goals of reforming Spanish colonial rule in the continent-spanning viceroyalty of Peru. Housed at the Royal Library of Denmark since the 1660s, brought to international attention in 1908, and first published in facsimile in 1936, the autograph manuscript has been the topic of research in Andean ethnology and related disciplines for several decades.

Now, on the eve of the 400th anniversary of Guaman Poma’s composition of the Nueva corónica, a renowned group of international scholars has focused fresh attention on the work, its author, and its times. Accomplished Andeanists such as R. Tom Zuidema, Frank Salomon, Jan Szemiński, and Regina Harrison are joined by other notable and younger scholars to explore Andean institutions and ecology, Inca governance, Spanish conquest-era history, the transformations of native and European sources in Guaman Poma’s hand, and his multilingual artistic dexterity. The relationship of the manuscript to Fray Martín de Murúa’s chronicles and a critical analysis of claims about the Nueva corónica’s authorship round out the volume.