Indies Society from Radical Instability to Archivalization

Scholars have described the gradual, circa-1570s maturation of Indies society through various paradigms. These were times of increasing Crown assertion over the Indies, of the penetration of the market economy, and of a greater concern with social status in the form of blood purity statues. We envision this change also being characterized by “archivalization.” Vassals asserting, augmenting, or even inventing an identity had to square their claims against years and decades of past documents—in their own collections and in others. Together, these local archives formed a broader Andean archive, which in turn existed within the broader imperial and Christian archives. These collections offered a complex and bottom-up but unitary regime of truth. Social conflicts would very often be resolved by aggrieved parties and officials by referencing documents within this archival constellation.Footnote ¹²

For commoner natives, the social performance of authority before sympathetic followers and officials that had become ubiquitous after the conquests was no longer sufficient. One now had to also navigate the written record, using exaggeration, tactical omissions, and outright forgery if need be. Some native commoners survived these treacherous new circumstances, but our author did not. It was this failure that sent Guaman Poma on a quest to rethink Andes society, and that colored his Nueva corónica throughout. Paradoxically, the chronicle that he wrote after his humiliation both blasted Peru as an inferno of upwardly mobile commoners and urged a new archive-based social order in which paperwork would prevente deceit and cemente native obedience to the Spanish, to God, and ultimately to himself as the king’s advisor-prince.

In the early post-conquest period, upheaval arrested the emergence of a paperwork regime of truth. The military and spiritual conquests of the Indies, with their promises of feudal lordship and theocratic deliverance, tore asunder indigenous social hierarchies. A new social order took decades to emerge. Instability and social mobility (upwards and downwards) reigned thanks partly to endemic conflict among the Christian factions—the many groups of conquistadors, friars, and Crown officials who vied for dominance within an ever-shifting field of allegiances and ambitions. But instability also persisted because countless indigenous vassals—from the highest elites to low-born commoners—sought to exploit the moment’s confusion for their own ends. This was not simply a rebellion of the dispossessed against the conquerors. It was also a struggle within indigenous societies themselves, where older elites, threatened by the social upheaval of conquest, strove to retain or reassert their power, while many lesser lords and commoners sought to reshape the social order to their benefit.

These many thousands of struggles were very often duked out through paperwork. Vassals approached kings, viceroys, governors, prelates, friars, inquisitors, Spanish and indigenous municipal governments, and native elites (among others) for resolutions, even as institutional frameworks continued to mutate as the century progressed. Subjects handed authorities hundreds of thousands of petitions for reform and privilege, initiated massive lawsuits, and leveled accusations during investigations of powerful native and Spanish authorities. The evidentiary bases of many early claims to native lordship could not initially be based on pre-existing paperwork. For one, would-be lords generally could not read or write alphabetically in Spanish or native languages. Moreover, in the upheaval of the conquests, Spanish officialdom was contested, weak, and dispersed, stymying the emergence of a stable regime of written truth. Those claiming high-ranking status, therefore, often had to prove their claims before officials by mustering witnesses—ideally as many illustrious old men as possible. Moreover, these pretendents had to convincingly perform lordship during these encounters.Footnote ¹³

Individuals and groups thus gradually created official archives from the bottom up while simultaneously creating innumerable personal collections. And all of these archives grew larger with each passing paperwork struggle. The ever-expanding records profoundly transformed paperwork procedures and epistemologies. The list of archive-hoarding corporations and individuals was equally vast, encompassing families, brotherhoods, convents, monasteries, bishops, cathedral councils, cities, inquisitors, local officials, royal administrators, and beyond. Spanish and native vassals continued to seek to establish their status and authority by pointing to their merits and lineages before Crown officials through witness statements and performance of status. Yet, whereas before the 1570s they tended to certify their prestige largely through witnesses and performance, afterwards a new strategy gradually became ubiquitous. With each passing year, archives grew and grew, and in paperwork struggles countless documents—gobierno and gracia decrees, justicia rulings, audit proceedings, tribute records, baptismal certificates, contracts and notarial certifications of every kind, genealogies, personal correspondence, codices, pious donations, and testaments—increasingly appeared.

Virtually everything was on the line in such struggles. Property, wealth, and debts—from a few pesos to hundreds of thousands—hung in the balance. Even more important was social status: family privileges, honor, and legitimacy. Often, both riches and prestige were at stake: lordship, pensions, and tribute exemptions. Archives were increasingly becoming the very stuff of power.

For indigenous actors, assembling such documentary collections became essential. The more elaborate and older the texts, the better. The native families who embraced these collections early on faced better odds not only of surviving their own everyday struggles but of perpetuating their lineages for centuries.Footnote ¹⁴ For instance, two distant but feuding branches of Guzmán family, a well-established dynasty of indigenous lords from Coyoacan in the Mexico Valley, staked their claims on vast archives. One side, led by the self-declared “mestizo” don Juan Hidalgo Cortés Moctezuma y Guzmán, claimed descent from the Mexica, as well as from the rival Tepanecs’ forefather Acolnahuacatliacatel and the Chichimec lord Tztontecomatl and lady Tzompachtli.Footnote ¹⁵ On the other, their relatives and rivals doña María de Guzmán and Tomás de Parrales, claimed the cacicazgo belonged to them, offering similarly powerful arguments. The Coyoacans’ case only survives in fragmentary form, but we know that, between 1678 and 1681, Spanish authorities read at least 259 documents. The earliest Spanish source that the Mendozas presented against one another was dated 1537, and the vast majority from 1540 to 1580.Footnote ¹⁶ During this period, indigenous lordship faced dramatic challenges from conquistadors, friars, and commoners, and even weathered the storm of the 1567 abolition of the massive Marquisate of don Martín Cortés. No outcome seems to survive.Footnote ¹⁷ But what is abundantly clear from such cases is that, between the 1530s and the 1580s, the epistemology for certifying indigenous lordship had changed dramatically. The performative social maneuverings in the period immediately post-conquest gradually gave way to a new epistemology emphasizing documentary proof.

Commoner Mobility in the Era of the Archive

Scholars have lavished attention on native lords’ post-conquest survival strategies, including their embrace of archives.Footnote ¹⁸ However, we know far less about the tactics adopted by indigenous commoners.Footnote ¹⁹ Yet, they, too, partook in this social process of “archivalization.” They deployed paperwork collections to various ends. Some kept small personal archives, documenting their meager possessions. Others formed trade guilds and kept records and tribute receipts.Footnote ²⁰ When officials, conquistadors, friars, and native lords sought to exploit them, commoners could appear before Crown institutions and present complex records of past events, as did the laborers led by Toribio Lucas and Pablo Sandoval in Central Mexico in 1564.Footnote ²¹

Although indigenous commoners were the ones who suffered most during the conquests and subsequent epidemics, many nonetheless seized opportunities to rise through the ranks. Thousands of commoners managed to insist before Spanish authorities that they had distinguished themselves fighting alongside the Spanish during the conquests and frontier wars.Footnote ²² For this, they often received special privileges, ranging from tribute exemptions and small pensions to major, hereditary positions of indigenous administration and lordship. Others acquired social status by enthusiastically seeking out positions in Spaniards’ employ, as many native tax collectors, auditors, and translators did. Various new institutions of European inspiration—especially churches and municipalities—also employed a gamut of bookkeepers, bailiffs, aldermen, and other officials. Commoners who played their cards right could therefore aspire to become a sort of “service nobility.” And these families’ archives would document their ennobling deeds. They summoned witnesses before notaries to testify to their brave exploits, support for Spaniards, and discoveries of mines and other sources of riches. And, of course, they would treasure above all crown officials’ decrees and orders confirming their status.

Not all commoners were satisfied with the prospect of becoming new lords—some had even greater ambitions. They could sometimes also refashion themselves as old nobility, transforming themselves into storied aristocrats whose dynasties ostensibly ruled before the conquests or even since God made the Earth. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of complaints told of “intruder lords” who arrived in native communities claiming falsely to be blue bloods.Footnote ²³ Karen Powers, for example, has unearthed the case of the commoner Francisco Hati, who despite his lowborn origins, pretended quite successfully to be the lord and governor of San Miguel outside Quito. Bolstering his case was his extraordinary business acumen—he lavished his followers with the wealth he amassed as a major rancher, textile empresario, and long-distance trader. Only when two rival caciques in the 1680s clashed did Spanish officials uncover that archival records demonstrated that don Francisco had risen from commoner status in 1571 to become a lord by 1582.Footnote ²⁴ Francisco had grafted himself onto the struggling Hati lords’ family tree, persuading Spanish officials in the process. Yet, although he successfully claimed lordship in his lifetime thanks to his community support, his descendants’ claims collapsed under the archival scrutiny brought by rival lords decades later. For commoners seeking to create dynasties, the problem was not an all-seeing “state” powered by archives. It was rival claimants themselves, who combed through their personal and official archives to dethrone their rivals.

The Return of Don Felipe Guaman Poma: Inventing the Tingo-Ayala Clan

This brings us back to Chupas, where Lázaro the native commoner, alias don Felipe Guaman Poma, was beginning his own effort to claim lordship. He had managed to leverage his language skills to assist Spanish officials in undertaking land distribution campaigns, signing “don Felipe Guaman Poma translator.”Footnote ²⁵ Similar to Hati and many other intruder lords, Guaman Poma was not satisfied by the prospect of becoming a mere service elite. He laid claim to something far bolder: an ancient, expansive, illustrious genealogy. Now, he just needed a town to “return” to, a place to lord over.

Guaman Poma apparently saw great potential in the backwater of Chupas. Spanish records attested that a lord, don Juan Tingo, had ruled the area until his death sometime before 1594.Footnote ²⁶ Guaman Poma presented the region as overflowing with abundance: ancient orchards, croplands, rivers that fed the Huamanga valleys, and Inca irrigation systems.Footnote ²⁷ He decried outsiders’ property damages as exceeding 10,000 pesos in damage. And he fancifully envisioned Chupas as the heart of the entire Huamanga area.Footnote ²⁸ This could become, with a little care and imagination, an ideal place in which to construct a new lordship. Sure enough, don Juan Tingo’s only legitimate heiress was Inés Coca, a woman who was so poor she planted her own crops and who relied on the assistance of an illiterate lumberjack named Martín de Ayala to help her win and defend her modest property concessions.Footnote ²⁹ Now, Guaman Poma set about embellishing the status of these Chupas’ residents to transform the virtually abandoned hamlet into the heart of a sprawling lordship.

Two figures—don Juan Tingo and don Martín de Ayala—appealed particularly to Guaman Poma’s ambitions. According to him, the two shared rulership over Chupas in halves, likely a regional variation of hanan/hurin (the pervasive Andean upper/lower rulership and social structure).Footnote ³⁰ Don Juan had the most illustrious lineage of the two—descended from the great warlord Apo Jira Quimbo, who subdued the indigenous Angaraes of Chupas and founded Huamanga. Five generations later, don Juan was born, inheriting great lands and status but dying poor after sacrificing his fortune to helping the Crown fight the conquistador-rebel don Diego de Almagro in the 1540s.Footnote ³¹

Don Juan stood out for his lineage, whereas don Martín de Ayala stood out for his brave assistance of the Crown in “all these wars declared against His Majesty” and his three decades of pious work for the Hospital of the Natives (Hospital de naturales) in Huamanga. Guaman Poma gave don Martín credit for founding Huamanga itself, for being the first to receive baptism, for three decades of pious work for the Hospital of the Natives in Huamanga, and for assisting the Crown in the conquest of the sovereign Inca realm of Vilcabamba. Crucially, he claimed to be don Martín’s legitimate son. And although don Juan evidently was the only lord in Chupas, Guaman Poma repeatedly cites him as the segunda persona (secondary lord) to don Martín, the primera persona (premier lord).Footnote ³²

Guaman Poma not only linked his personal claims to Chupas lordship to these two figures but transmitted his stories about them into a tale of Chupas’ centrality in the Huamanga area. He offered officials a map of Chupas’ former borders, which he argued the Inca had established over the current site of the city of Huamanga and which the conquistadors had later effaced. Chupas, in this rendition, appeared as a proper town, crisscrossed by strategic roads and rivers. In reality, Guaman Poma was working feverishly to create a town out of this near-abandoned hamlet. Nothing symbolized township status quite like a church and a municipal government, as our protagonist well knew. He depicted don Juan as an alderman and claimed that Chupas had its own church and municipal officials. Guaman Poma thereby positioned himself as a blue-blooded lord of a once-vast Chupas, a real community that had its own service nobility and self-government.Footnote ³³

A Trickster-Traveler Exposed

Since his appearance in Chupas between 1597 and 1598, Guaman Poma attempted to create the impression that he possessed a formidable archive to support his sweeping claims. He repeatedly insisted before the Lima High Court in 1597 that his community could prove its legitimacy from the old Inca Tupac Yupanqui’s border limits, as well as from many royal decrees, viceregal edicts, the 1570s rulings of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, a 1594 land concession, and even ecclesiastical ordinances such as the Council of Trent.Footnote ³⁴ These documents, he promised, confirmed that “since time and memory we are natives whom God appointed.”Footnote ³⁵

And yet, his swagger could not conceal that the archive was not on his side. These texts simply never materialized. He did present a confirmation that don Juan Tingo was native lord in 1570 and a series of documents from the 1570s to the 1590s proving that Martín de Ayala and Inés Coca owned land in Chupas.Footnote ³⁶ Yet, his own archive contradicted his grandiose story. “Don” Martín de Ayala was no lord in these sources. He was an illiterate lumberjack who assisted Inés with her petitions. She, in turn, was so poor she featured not as the illustrious daughter of don Juan but as a commoner herself.Footnote ³⁷ Only when Guaman Poma arrived on the scene in 1597 did “don” Martín and “doña” Inés appear.Footnote ³⁸

Guaman Poma now borrowed and used the commoner archives kept by Martín and Inés, hoping to prove the latter’s links to don Juan Tingo. Inés was don Juan’s daughter, and Guaman Poma stressed he had a connection—whose nature he failed to specify—to both of them. But in a paperwork regime, the wholesale invention of identities was not as simple as it had been immediately after the conquest. Guaman Poma did manage to briefly persuade the High Court in 1597 that he might be a lord, but local documents beginning in 1570 in Huamanga abundantly proved otherwise: His alleged father Martín and his ally Inés were peasants. Moreover, while he insisted that don Juan named him as his heir alongside doña Inés, he never presented a testament.Footnote ³⁹ Guaman Poma’s own archival documents disproved his argument—and his very self-identity.

By early 1600, the walls were closing in. Guaman Poma had demanded land that had also been claimed by a group of Chachapoyas commoners and had provoked this savvy group. They had their own archives and, unlike Guaman Poma, could easily present their case. In 1586 the viceroy had granted the Chachapoyas’ request to form a community in Chupas on the grounds that they labored as the mitmaes (servants) of Spanish officials in Huamanga and that these abandoned lands had once belonged to the Inca. The Chachapoyas could found a new town there, as they did. Their leadership thus legitimately transformed from a handful of commoners into service elites.Footnote ⁴⁰ Don Domingo Jauli of the Chachapoyas and other lords presented local Spanish authorities with their legitimate claims to lordship over the area and revealed Guaman Poma to be the commoner Lázaro.

Scholars have dismissed the Chachapoyas’ claims, but in reality, the records that survive solidly demonstrate their case. Their lawsuit does not survive in its entirety, so we do not know exactly how they made their case. The Spanish field justice’s ruling reveals, however, that they argued Lázaro had misrepresentted his claims to lordship. The Chachapoyas proved this by demonstrating that Guaman Poma’s bustling town of Chupas was in reality a handful of hovels, and a ruined chapel was the final nail in the coffin. And Lázaro’s own attempts from 1597 to 1599 to become certified as the lord of Chupas told a very similar story. He did not convincingly certify that his community accepted his status as a lord, mustering the witness statements only of two old women allegedly related to don Juan Tingo.Footnote ⁴¹ Moreover, he presented a copy of a brash letter to a Huamanga abbess in which he presented himself as a lord; she dismissed his claims completely.Footnote ⁴²

But status inflation was not grounds for exile. Countless vassals exaggerated claims to status. The Chachapoyas proved Lázaro was up to something more serious, which constituted grounds for exile and public lashing: making outright false claims. He had repeatedly promised to possess specific documents demonstrating his rank, which he ultimately failed to present. Based on his own efforts between 1597 and 1599, the same story emerges: He had nothing to support his claims. His connections to don Juan Tingo’s lordship never materialized, a critical omission in any succession claim. Moreover, his eminent father don Martín de Ayala was manifestly a lumberjack and a yanacona—a lordless servant—who worked for the indigenous hospital of Huamanga.Footnote ⁴³ The written record had caught up with Lázaro. It was little wonder, then, that the Spanish field justice who reviewed the case listened to the Chachapoyas’ arguments and ruled that they “proved well and thoroughly” that “said Lázaro Indian is a poor Indian, and a fugitive,” not a mighty lord.Footnote ⁴⁴ Indeed, few debates about native lordship were this cut-and-dry. Lázaro was a commoner—and for this he would pay with banishment.

Lázaro and the Nueva Corónica

After his Chupas defeat and exile, Lázaro doubled down on his exaggerated claims to high-aristocratic status. In his nearly 1200-page chronicle-letter, Lázaro transformed into don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Inca viceroy, the superior of Pizarro and even of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. He was the global monarchy’s second-in-command, charged with auditing and reforming Peru root and branch. This was the identity behind Lázaro’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, which he wrote sometime between 1611 and 1615.Footnote ⁴⁵

Prior to his humiliating foray into Chupas, Lázaro had done fairly well for himself. Among Spanish officials he was already known as don Felipe Guaman Poma and had clearly flourished in clerical and lay investigations, including his years as an official interpreter serving Gabriel Solano de Figueroa’s audit to “fix” land titles in the provinces of Huarochirí, Jauja, and Huamanga from 1593 to 1595.Footnote ⁴⁶ We can only speculate as to why Lázaro did not think this position suited his ambitions. But certainly, his experience in Chupas only emboldened him.

He headed south, to the province of Lucanas, which he claimed he was the governor and indigenous administrator of. Lázaro remained in and around Lucanas for more than a decade. He survived by offering paralegal services to local caciques on how to use paperwork to remove rivals and secure land titles. Again and again, he arrived in towns that he claimed to govern in the name of the poor. His foray into Concepción de Guaylla Pampa ended with disaster; he confronted natives, priests, and corregidores (field justices) only to anger local indigenous people and be investigated, imprisoned, and expelled.Footnote ⁴⁷ Perhaps here he claimed don Martín de Ayala had been a lord there, for the Nueva corónica inserted his fabricated 1587 letter to King Phillip II.Footnote ⁴⁸ The archive, meanwhile, proved that Martín was still a commoner in a remote part of Chupas, not a Lucanas lord.

This humiliating ritual repeatedly took place. He would face the same fate in his alleged hometown of San Cristóbal of Suntunto, where he confronted the followers of a local native lord who had in the past been punished for idolatry. These followers had allegedly occupied the author’s patrimonial lordly lands.Footnote ⁴⁹ The field justice, again, gathered evidence from the community against Lázaro and have him expelled. In San Cristóbal (perhaps another town of the same name), he angered a priest, alleging he had had a tryst with a native lord’s daughter, and was run out of town.Footnote ⁵⁰

The author seems to have had a difficult life on the road. He reported that many vassals met him with dismissal and mockery.Footnote ⁵¹ His Spanish skills did sometimes win him friends among commoners and lords alike. And he claimed his explosive, upsetting denunciations of abuse sometimes drew popular support.Footnote ⁵² Still, he could barely hide that he survived on alms.Footnote ⁵³ In San Cristóbal, Lázaro met a Spanish merchant, who suggested he also join his trade. Christ was coming soon to punish the wicked, Guaman Poma admonished the merchant, and he had no time for base pursuits. Instead (wrote Guaman Poma), he would write the king and insist on privileges yet again. It was fated in his name—not only was he an Inca but also a guaman, king of the birds; a poma, mountain lion and king of the animals; and an Ayala, as was the loyal Ayalas of Biscay and the father of his mestizo brother.Footnote ⁵⁴

Guaman Poma, Secret Lord and Undercover Apostolic Investigator

In the Nueva corónica, Guaman Poma endeavored to harmonize his commoner status with his lordly ambitions—his low birth with his service to God and the Crown. No figure was more appealing for this purpose than the carpenter-king Jesus Christ. Listening to the poor, as Christ had, transformed one into a lord. Guaman Poma insisted incessantly upon the need for good lords and officials to heed the cries of the “poor of Christ.”Footnote ⁵⁵ He admonished, “I tell your Majesty: he who defends the poor of Christ serves God.”Footnote ⁵⁶ But to be a truly Christian lord, one had to also become poor, “leaving all the riches and vanity of the world.”Footnote ⁵⁷ After all, “Christ made himself poor to converse with the poor…do this, and you will become Christ, and in turn, [become] living God.”Footnote ⁵⁸

Guaman Poma populated his story with many such Christ-like poor. There was Martín de Ayala, his mestizo half-brother, who lived in extreme austerity as a hermit. There was don Cristóbal de León, the much-suffering native lord who was Christ-like as well.Footnote ⁵⁹ Others were vassals who helped him on his way.Footnote ⁶⁰ Few were as Christ-like as the author’s own parents. His father, don Martín de Ayala, of the Inca’s inner circle, had served the Spanish with the same apostolic dedication to God’s mission.Footnote ⁶¹ He had “served God our Lord Jesus Christ in his holy house, hospital of Cuzco and Huamanga, thirty years with his wife doña Juana Curi Ocllo…holy servants of Jesus Christ.”Footnote ⁶² Guaman Poma thereby transformed Martín de Ayala the lumberjack, who was seen in 1570 to be illiterate and in 1594 to be serving the hospital of Huamanga as a servant, into a true nobleman, possessing not only an impeccable genealogy but an apostolic vocation.Footnote ⁶³ His illustrations of the Holy Family and his own mother, father, and half-brother underscored his vision (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Images of the Holy Family (Nueva corónica, 90) and the Ayalas (Nueva corónica,14). Left: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus; Right: Guaman Poma’s father the prince don Martín de Ayala, his mother the Queen doña Juana Curi Occllo, and his half-brother the hermit-priest Martín de Ayala, whom his mother sired with the Spanish captain don Luis Ávalos de Ayala.

Source: Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615), 90 and 14.

Guaman Poma was still different from these recluse-kings, however. His calling was not to live as a humble hermit or a hospital chaplain but rather to listen to the poor, preach the Gospel of justice, and reform society.Footnote ⁶⁴ The author heavily implied that Christ was a visitador eclesiástico, or ecclesiastical investigator (Figure 2).Footnote ⁶⁵ The Son of God had, after all, been “the first priest…who came from Heaven poor, and loved the poor more than being rich.”Footnote ⁶⁶ He had roamed the land, listening to the aggrieved.Footnote ⁶⁷ All ecclesiastical investigators should be like Christ, Guaman Poma insisted.Footnote ⁶⁸ Yet, few were. And in no uncertain terms, our protagonist became—after his exile—the only such church auditor. He reminded the king that he himself was an apostolic commoner-lord who had roamed the Andes for three decades listening to the pitiful cries of the needy.Footnote ⁶⁹ His great commoner audit was his own choice, Guaman Poma insisted; he was an undercover lord in a world where officials—even investigators—did not really listen. He undertook this to better bring about justice in the Andes: “for this I made myself poor, blending in with the other poor…for one clearly knows through the faith that where the poor are is Christ himself, and where God is, is justice.”Footnote ⁷⁰ This way, the Spaniards, indigenous people, and others revealed their true selves to him.Footnote ⁷¹ Indeed, in many ways the Nueva corónica constituted the conclusion of this uniquely truthful spiritual and earthly audit.

Figure 2 An Inca-era investigator, a Vecitador (sic) or Taripacoc (Upper Left) and a Spanish ecclesiastical investigator, appointed by the King and the Pope

Source: Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615), 364 (upper left) and 696.

The author’s long ecclesiastical investigation was to restore the Andes and return the “world upside down” to order and hierarchy. He was enamored with these investigations but warned that only a true Christian, an apostolic, “high-ranking man, a servant of Christ” appointed by the king, could undertake these audits without becoming corrupt.Footnote ⁷² Any other investigator would be an enemy of the poor and would keep the king in the dark about injustice.Footnote ⁷³ The combination of Guaman Poma’s (unrecognized) high status and his intimate connections to the realm’s unfortunates—the commoners and fallen Andean lords—made him a king’s informant unlike any other. He insisted, in third person, “the author passed, out of love for the poor of Christ, much work…only in the service of God and his Majesty.”Footnote ⁷⁴ He offered his book as the ultimate “warning and remedy.”Footnote ⁷⁵

If the king and Guaman Poma’s many other readers would heed the advice of the Nueva corónica, a Christian renewal would sweep the Andes. First, the king would need to recognize the gravity of the problem. The world was upside down, he repeatedly insisted.Footnote ⁷⁶ By this, he meant that vassals no longer respected the social hierarchy. Everyone—Spanish, indigenous, black, or otherwise—pretended to have noble status, even Jews, artisans, Moors, day laborers, robbers, and executioners.Footnote ⁷⁷ Subjects of different status groups and castes slept with one another, causing great confusion.Footnote ⁷⁸ Commoners therefore lost all respect for their lords.Footnote ⁷⁹

A core problem was commoners’ social mobility. Lords became commoners, and commoners became lords—now, many “don Juan World-Is-Backwards” ran the show.Footnote ⁸⁰ After the conquest, many lords had perished, and Spaniards had appointed tribute-payers in their stead. Powerful Spaniards made and unmade lords at a whim so that “of ten Indians, five are lords (curacas).”Footnote ⁸¹ The author staged a dialogue between native commoners:

Those with legal knowledge usurped lordly positions, too.Footnote ⁸³ The Incas, especially, multiplied: As he sardonically described, the Chilque ynga (potters), the Acos ynga (con artists), the Uaroc ynga Llulla Uaroc (liars), the Mayo ynga (perjurers), and the Quillis Cachi, Equeco ynga (gossips and liars) now ruled over Peru.Footnote ⁸⁴ Guaman Poma scoffed that, now, “even the blacks are Incas.”Footnote ⁸⁵ The author concluded, “everything here is a lie.”Footnote ⁸⁶

Lucifer’s dominion over the Andes was stronger than ever, but Guaman Poma proposed a solution that would bring about an orderly world. Soon, commoners would obey nobles, wives would serve husbands, children would honor their parents, and everyone would keep dutifully within their social groups.Footnote ⁸⁷ The truth itself would return from its long exile. His proposal was paradoxical— archivalization would restore society. However, this was not the sinful, misshapen archive that had arrested his ambition. A purified, more rigorous, and more Christian regime of archival truth would take form.

From this world of unrelenting falsehood a twisted paperwork regime had been born. Legitimate and virtuous lords stood no chance against Peru’s many bad Christians’ petitions, lawsuits, and audits. Spanish priests and field justices, for example, falsely accused many lords of idolatry, witchcraft, and graft.Footnote ⁸⁸ The old archives were faulty; as he noted, “now, any foreign laborer (mitayo) has a writ of privilege (título): the world is lost.”Footnote ⁸⁹

But the author, with his exalted lineage and special apostolic insights, could help the king turn the situation around. In Madrid, the king would begin issuing privileges and degrees only to those who deserved them, not to “store-owner women and Jewesses and low people.”Footnote ⁹⁰ The monarch, not local officials, would issue all privileges and would demand that candidates for privileges present no fewer than twelve witnesses.Footnote ⁹¹ Henceforth, “to call one’s self don, one must be an Old Christian…with a title from His Majesty.”Footnote ⁹² But that was not all. Guaman Poma himself would henceforth directly vet these petitions. He stated, “it is very just that I should provide my finding, and sign [the petition] with my name as a chronicler and prince of this realm; then your Majesty would then issue the title.”Footnote ⁹³ He further stated that the King should decree that Guaman Poma vet “the testimonies of each native lord…so that I can provide my testimony on what each person deserves, because I know about everything…as the second person of the Inca.”Footnote ⁹⁴ The author thus positioned himself at the apex of the king’s empire-wide distribution of grace, as his chronicler-counselor. Next to King Philip III, he would become the second most powerful man in the empire.

Under Guaman Poma’s direction, Peru’s administration would become even more archival. Spanish corregidores (field justices) were to archive lengthy explanations of any decisions to grant privileges and relief to local lords and thereby ensure these grants only went to those with “good blood.”Footnote ⁹⁵ Indigenous society would also be further archivalized. Native lords should be capable of proving their identities through royal decrees to prevent lying commoners from usurping social status and becoming false lords.Footnote ⁹⁶ Each type of native official, from the highest Inca to the lowest enforcer, would possess a título or identity paper.Footnote ⁹⁷ To keep peasants paying tribute to true noblemen and to guarantee the community’s welfare, native officials and scribes would keep careful municipal archives documenting tax revenues and wills.Footnote ⁹⁸ Outsiders, too, could only reside in native towns if they had their papers in order; these would clearly establish their identities and state exactly how much they last paid in tribute.Footnote ⁹⁹ He even advocated that all travelers carry identity papers on roads and in inns to identify themselves by lineage. Anyone without papers would lose their goods and be tried.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

This all implied a complex system of record-keeping. Notarial records would be rigorously kept by the quilcaycamayoc scribes and overseen by the local lord. They would record all expenses in their libros quipu, knotted-string records.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Such collections would be periodically audited.Footnote ¹⁰² Indeed, such investigations—which Guaman Poma claimed to have perfected—would match all vassals to their paper identities and thereby maintain this rigid society of orders for all of time. Not only natives would be subject to mid-tenure and post-tenure investigations.Footnote ¹⁰³ Spanish field justices, conquistadors’ mayordomos, friars, and priests would work under perpetual, carefully documented audits.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

To ensure the Christian purity of this system and to prevent Spaniards from taking advantage of the illiterate, indigenous society would have to further transform. All indigenous subjects, including peasant women, should “raise himself to be a Christian ladino”—that is, savvy in the ways of the Spaniards.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Every town would have ladinos to carefully keep Spanish and native sinners in check and bring about God’s plan.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In towns and cities, schools would train ladino children.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Officials, too, would necessarily be ladinos.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ To ensure an orderly society, all natives would need to be literate Christians and unflinchingly obey and contribute to this paperwork regime. Those who did not speak Spanish and read and write would be cast out of Christendom and community life and forced to live as animals.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Guaman Poma promised that, if this inescapable regime of alphabetic, archival truth was implemented, abundance would return to Peru, “and there will be clarity in the service of God, in the world, and in this kingdom.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ The true lords of Peru would return. Apostolic Christianity would finally take root. And then, the empire would at last begin to realize its promise.

Guaman Poma proposed that he had, thanks to his long years of poverty, grasped the deepest secrets of the Andes. His Nueva corónica provided the blueprint for a new beginning—a perfect regime of archival truth and ladino Christianity. At its head would be the pope and King Philip, with the author as his second-in-command. He exulted, “Holy Catholic Royal Majesty, I return as prince of the Indians…I return for the kingdom, and it is so that I write this history, so that it become memory, and be placed in the archive for justice to see.”Footnote ¹¹¹ Copies of this chronicle would be deposited in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, “in the archive of the world,” and in the residence of the king “in Spain, head of the world.”Footnote ¹¹²

Hierarchy Resurrected: Guaman Poma and the House of David

Finally, with the Nueva corónica beginning to transform the Empire, the contradiction in his identity—his status as a commoner-lord—would begin to resolve itself. As a commoner, he had become Christ-like, listening to the poor as an undercover Inca official. He now was able to explain how to fix the kingdom and its twisted truths. Now, his perfect lineage, forgotten by all but himself during his long wanderings, became relevant again. After all, his grandparent Capac Apo Guaman Chava had ordered the becita general (“general audit”) of the Andes in Inca times.Footnote ¹¹³ And as such, Guaman Poma was a capac apo, a prince, and consequently the king’s second-in-command.Footnote ¹¹⁴ He had no superior in Peru, especially not the likes of a “soldier” like Viceroy Toledo.Footnote ¹¹⁵

The lords who had joined the poor of Christ would rise back to their pre-conquest statuses. Commoners would also, at last, learn their places. Although they would be equal as Christians, they would never again govern the Andes. Never again would miscegenated castes, tribute-paying peasants, bastards, or other riffraff rule.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Guaman Poma explained: “without good blood and letters, one cannot govern.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ This was a truth that Jesus Christ himself incarnated: “he did not wish to be born from low people, but rather [hailed] from the caste of kings, and he was born to the Virgen Holy Mary.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ Christ may have been a carpenter, but he was also the kin of King David and the Son of God.

Here, Guaman Poma’s account of the Inca past becomes essential. The Nueva corónica stressed the author’s pure-blood runa lineage, uninterruptedly dating back to Adam and Noah, tying him to a handful of provincial elite families in the four quarters of the Inca empire with the Andes’ deepest, most sacred proto-Christian lineages. This was along his alleged paternal line, which reached back for nearly 5000 years over the course of four distinct pre-Inca ages. His ancestors had clear blood lines back to Noah, just as the Habsburgs themselves did.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Guaman Poma’s precursors ran through the God-worshiping ancient Pacarimoc Runa (People of the Dawn) in the First Age, who were followed by the equally virtuous Wari Runa (the Founder-People) in the Second Age, and by the Purun Runa (People of the Barren Lands) of the Third.Footnote ¹²⁰ In the Fourth Age, Guaman Poma’s ancestor appears: the enperador apu (great emperor) Guaman Chava of the Yarovilca.Footnote ¹²¹ But the ancient people who worshipped God without knowledge of the Church were soon conquered by the Inca Tocay Capac, who was not descended from Noah but rather claimed to be the child of the sun. As Adam was, the first Inca was corrupted by his wife and mother Mama Huaco, who was under Lucifer’s power.Footnote ¹²² From this point forward, the Inca would struggle with idolatry. The only Inca to truly return the Andes to a more Christian state was the tenth Inca Topa Yupanqui, who gave the people ordinances as Moses had and not coincidentally appointed Guaman Poma’s ancestor Guaman Chaua to the position of viceroy (virrey) and great lord (capac apo).Footnote ¹²³

The Archive and the Shape of Guaman Poma’s Life and Works

Despite Guaman Poma’s rejection of the empire’s traditional paperwork formulas, he was nonetheless deeply aware of their structures and epistemologies. He had long worked within the Spanish administration as a translator, had engaged in justicia (litigation) and gracia (the distribution of property), demonstrated a profound interest in investigations (visitas and residencias), and believed that paperwork would save the empire. His Nueva corónica was a pastiche of paperwork genres that doubled as a petition both for gobierno (reform by decree) and for gracia (privilege).

His fascination with audits, for example, reached back to the early-1570s anti-idolatry investigation of Cristóbal de Albornoz, whom he mentioned repeatedly in the Nueva corónica.Footnote ¹²⁴ He was in Huarochiri around the same time anti-idolatry auditor Francisco de Ávila manufactured false idolatry charges against many Andean lords.Footnote ¹²⁵ These bruising investigations put on raw display how vassals and officials could not only trade insults but grossly manipulate the record to get their way. Everything was on the table: the use of false testimonies, impersonation of witnesses, forging of signatures, and deceitful accusations of idolatry. Out of these paperwork struggles came one of the most important surviving testimonies in Quechua on indigenous religious Andean sacred landscapes, the co-called Huarochiri Manuscript, penned by one of Ávila’s staunchest allies, don Cristóbal de Choquecasa, the same lord of service who had exposed rivals for forging documents and testimonies. Clearly Lázaro was aware of these manipulative paperwork practices—and of the power of stories of the ancient Andean past.

The chronicler was not a successful litigant, but he was acquainted with lawsuits and therefore appreciated how rival factions could channel the early Andean archive to stake claims and secure authority. He evidently cribbed events from other lawsuits to construct his own story. For example, he took careful notes on litigation between two communities on the lands connecting Lima to the Huarochirí highlands, San Pedro de Mama and San Mateo de Huanchor. His grandfather would come to resemble one early Huanchor lord, Poma Chagua. Poma Chagua was a provincial lord, a quipucamayoc administrator of the Inca’s sacred lands, and an ally of the Spanish. This Poma Chagua shaped Guaman Poma’s grandfather Guaman Chagua in the Nueva corónica.Footnote ¹²⁶ It seems also to have shaped lumberjack Martín de Ayala’s into don Martín Guaman Malqui de Ayala in the Chupas litigation.Footnote ¹²⁷ Lázaro pillaged the record in his attempt to completely restructure the Andean archive.

He also educated himself on the possibilities of circumventing the existing archive by following long-established patterns of petitioning the court when local possibilities failed. He was aware that other lords had traveled to Lima and even the court in Madrid, for example. In 1562, don Felipe Guacrapaucar of Luringuanca had traveled to see the king, prompting numerous royal decrees of reform and privilege.Footnote ¹²⁸ Guaman Poma was familiar with Guacrapaucar’s case, and knew of his privilege decrees, having encountered him in 1594.Footnote ¹²⁹ He also clearly studied the Inca who petitioned in Madrid, even keeping track of the lives of individuals at the court.Footnote ¹³⁰ Lastly, he appreciated the power of reform petitions (gobierno), as evidenced by his familiarity with important polemicist-petitioners who worked on behalf of native lords such as the Dominican don Domingo de Santo Tomás.Footnote ¹³¹

Such cases also gave Guaman Poma hope and a reason to write his Nueva corónica. Vassals making grandiose claims often approached the court, hoping to escape local contexts in which their reputations and family documents were widely known. Some were quite probably commoners. Tenamaztle the Chichimec, who had led a rebellion of commoners, maroons, and slaves in the Mixton cliffs of Jalisco in the early 1540s, appeared before the court in Valladolid in 1555. There, he claimed the status of king of Jalisco in a privilege petition and was supported by the Dominicans and various witnesses. He died before the Council ruled on his case.Footnote ¹³² The Dominicans also brought to the court one Juan de Cortés, described by High Judge Zorita as a miserable Quiche commoner in Sololá claiming royal status.Footnote ¹³³ In 1557 the regent of Spain, princess Juana de Austria, declared don Juan Cortés lord of the entire province of Utatlan.Footnote ¹³⁴ Such elevated status generated an immediate response on the part of the Franciscans, who gathered materials from thirty other communities declaring him illegitimate.Footnote ¹³⁵ Rival Quiche and Cakchiquel lords promptly crafted alternative royal genealogies, such as the Popol Vuh.Footnote ¹³⁶ A handful of Quiché communities did embrace Juan’s titles, producing supporting documents including the Title of Totonicapan and five extant Nija’ib’ titles, inventing in the process fictional lords that historians and ethno-linguists stubbornly believe are transparent reflections of native culture.Footnote ¹³⁷

The parallels to the Maya Popol Vuh and Title of Totonicapan are illuminating. These authors structured their claims by using the narrative structure of the Old and New Testaments. The Nueva corónica follows a similar structure but even structurally prioritizes Biblical history over Andean accounts.Footnote ¹³⁸ In its prologue, Guaman Poma asked the Holy Spirit to illuminate its readers and the whole world, before telling the story of Adam and Eve and the genealogies of Genesis.Footnote ¹³⁹ Then, began the eras of the Incas and Spaniards, in which great wars broke out, the poor were oppressed, and prophets and lawgivers delivered the word of God. In this telling, the Runa people of the Andes from whom Guaman Poma descends are pure—if rustic—Chosen Ones.

But just as important are Guaman Poma’s multiple lines connecting him to King David (through the Runa, the Inca, and his emulation of Christ). As a remedy to this wreckage, Lázaro offered his book—a new testament for Peru, to be placed in the archives of Rome and Madrid, as King David had done when he moved the Ten Commandments in the Ark to Jerusalem.Footnote ¹⁴¹ In this way, the Nueva corónica was not merely a chronicle but a new Gospel for the Andes. Indeed, the author stated explicitly that “God ordered these histories, [the] First Chronicle.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ In this way, Guaman Poma seems to be drawing from the popular trope of the hidden king, the rey encubierto, whom Catalan peasants believed was the return of a hidden prince, perhaps even Christ or a Christ-like hero, who would usher in the Universal Monarchy. In these stories, the protagonist appears to be a poor man but reveals himself, disclosing his illustrious lineage and fitness to rule.Footnote ¹⁴² Guaman Poma’s understanding of writing was so deeply tied to paperwork procedures, however, that his account had a unique twist. He was not merely a secret prince but a secret investigator—truly the man of the hour for King Philip III, lord over a vast empire that ran on paperwork.

Lázaro versus the Inca, the Chronicle versus the Archive

Guaman Poma imagined that he could overcome the archive—not by mastering its requirements but by rejecting it and proposing its total recreation. He knew paperwork well but could not muster the social credibility required to amass favorable judicial determinations and privileges. After all, his ancestors were clearly not lords, so he had little support from witnesses and no documents to inherit. Commoners’ claims to lordship were simply becoming more and more difficult to sustain over time, especially after the 1570s.

The extent to which Guaman Poma thus needed to denounce the archive can be easily grasped by comparison with his important contemporary don Melchor Carlos Inca. Don Melchor was in Madrid in the early 1600s, petitioning with a similar claim: He was the true heir of the Inca, the last direct male descendant of Huayna Capac by way of don Cristóbal Paullu Inca. Paullu was an important figure since By the 1570s, the pro-Spanish Inca dynasty survived only through his line. He had also been the first to petition the Crown for privileges in the Andes, inspiring many imitators among regional Andean lords.Footnote ¹⁴³ Guaman Poma himself explicitly claimed in the Nueva corónica to be family with don Melchor; the Inca was his uncle.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Moreover, the chronicler kept tabs on his alleged uncle, illustrating him wearing the Habit of Saint James, which he won from the King in 1606.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

Guaman Poma’s similarities with don Melchor Carlos Inca are also illuminating. The chronicler seems to have imitated the Inca’s claims to privileges in several ways. The parallels between Paullu and Guaman Poma’s heroic grandfather Guaman Chava are numerous. Paullu had an illustrious lineage: He was a “prince,” descending from Huayna Capac and a non-Inca mother, and played the role of viceroy.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Paullu also resembled Guaman Poma’s father, for he rushed to convert to Christianity and support the Spaniards (although our protagonist claimed his father was the first Inca in Peru to do so). He also oversaw the construction of chapels, as had Guaman Poma himself.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Moreover, the chronicler and the Inca were both would-be Inca princes who sought to use writing to persuade the king of their honor.

Yet, don Melchor was a false prince, argued Guaman Poma. Both he and Paullu were bastards.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Currently, there were no legitimate Incas—except, of course, the author himself. In this regard, our commoner-chronicler was partly right. Don Melchor confronted his own problems with the archive. Paullu’s mother Añas Colque was not an Inca, making him perhaps illegitimate (at least by Spanish standards). Many contemporaries believed Paullu had plotted to betray the Spaniards in the 1530s and 1540s.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Spanish authorities believed Paullu’s son don Carlos Inca to have been involved in supporting the rebel Incas of Vilcabamba; Viceroy Toledo exiled him to Madrid.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

Yet, unlike Guaman Poma, don Melchor was a master of the emerging archival system. Whereas the chronicler declared all papers intrinsically corrupt and his own account to constitute the basis of a new archive, his would-be uncle was far shrewder. He assembled a robust collection of early documents—a 1539 tribute grant to Paullu from Francisco Pizarro, confirmations from viceroys Vaca de Castro and Toledo from 1543 and 1582, and an extensive proof (spanning from 1599 to 1603) of his family’s many Christian services undertaken by a viceregal agent. An additional document proved how many prominent and older Spanish and indigenous witnesses in Peru confirmed each of his claims. This composite document alone was 357 pages long.Footnote ¹⁵¹ But don Melchor’s mastery of the archive did not stop there. He presented this file to the council, winning a stunning 8500-ducat yearly pension in 1606.Footnote ¹⁵² Then, he immediately pivoted to transform this success into the ultimate feat: a Habit of the Order of Santiago. In his 1607 petition and proof to the Council of Orders, he summoned witnesses who scrubbed any accusations of bastardy or infamy. Several insisted they knew of the existence of his file in the Council of the Indies and had seen his privilege decrees.Footnote ¹⁵³

Don Melchor was a master of procuring witness statements in his favor. These testimonies were essential in assembling the documents and ultimately the multi-generational archive, which could support claims to Inca princedom. Yet, Guaman Poma could summon nothing of the sort. During his Chupas litigation, he counted on the assistance of Martín de Ayala and Inés but could find little outside support. To prove his importance to the Chupas community, Guaman Poma featured the witness testimony of two over-ninety-year-olds doña Juana Agua and doña Juana Huchi Tinta.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ But this was hardly a persuasive demonstration of widespread community support for his claims. In the Nueva corónica Guaman Poma also recognized the importance of witness statements but merely asserted that he had interviewed older indigenous people. In a letter allegedly written by his father to the king in 1587, the author claimed that they had interviewed “eyewitnesses…from the four quarters of these realms, from very old Indians 150 years old.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵ This enabled the chronicler-investigator to access stories of Andean antiquity, the Inca interregnum, and the era of Christianity.

These were two rather similar men, but two very different outcomes. Don Melchor took the formal archival route, which his grandfather Paullu had already mastered. He proved every claim in painstaking documentary detail before the highest royal councils—engaging in more than a little embellishment in the process. This brought him glory and riches that no other Andean noblemen could dream of. Then, there was Guaman Poma, who insisted he had an archive superior to don Melchor’s and a direct claim to the Inca throne, and yet, this never materialized—not in Chupas, not in his subsequent wanderings and exiles, and not in the Nueva corónica. Instead, Guaman Poma had an explanation: He was a hidden lord, a Christ-like investigator who would renew the faulty Andean archive as the king’s second-in-command. He had not failed to master the archive—he had superseded it with a comprehensive new account that would finally usher in a Christian era for the Andes.

Guaman Poma, Martin Guerre, and Menocchio

The Nueva corónica was a treatise organized around claims of credibility, authority, and trust aimed at reconstructing an Andean archive rent by misbehavior, lies, deception, and satanic manipulation. As a remedy to this wreckage, Lázaro offered his book—a new testament for Peru to be placed in the archives of Rome and Madrid, echoing King David’s deeds. Then, the commoner-prince revealed himself, ruling as King Philip III’s viceroy on the other side of the planet. And yet, this Inca prince’s vast chronicle was really the work of Lázaro, a humble commoner. He challenged everything his contemporaries held to be true—and even today he continues to challenge us.

After all, the story of Lázaro has remained untold even after evidence first surfaced more than fifty years ago. Since the recovery of his chronicle from the archive in Denmark in 1908, historians continue to honor him as a lord and as the greatest interpreter of the Inca and Andean society. Yet, it has been nearly five decades since the Chachapoyas revealed don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala to be Lázaro. How did our chronicler succeed?

Guaman Poma rose to scholarly fame in the 1970s and 1980s, at the same time as two other early modern European commoners, Martin Guerre and Domenico Scandella, alias Mencocchio. Historians Natalie Zemon Davis and Carlo Ginzburg developed microhistory as a genre to explore the lives of these two tricksters, whose voices, muffled by the Inquisition or simply illiteracy, spoke to the paradoxical conundrums of modernity: print culture, political and religious radicalism, skepticism, self-fashioning, and individuation.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Guaman Poma, however, became the opposite. Scholars stubbornly defended his own claims. He had to remain the key native informant for ethnohistorians interested in rescuing millenarian Andean cultures destroyed by colonialist modernity. His voice, ethnohistorians claimed, had been rejected, marginalized, and obliterated by the lettered Spanish and creole elites. It was up to these scholars to reconstruct the outlines of ancient Andean religions, histories, and legal regimes hidden in the Nueva corónica.Footnote ¹⁵⁷

This split between ethnohistory and European microhistory is very much alive fifty years later. Take, for example, the intellectual biographies of African healers in the new Latin American colonial historiography. James Sweet conceives of Domingos Álvares as no trickster, but as an African religious lord whose persecuted knowledge might help us understand the ethnohistory of both African and New World vodun.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ The recent biographies of African slaves Juan Nepomuceno Prieto and Rufino Jose Maria follow the same logic.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ For Spanish individuals, however, stories of modern self-fashioning has taken center stage. Catalina Erauzo, the lieutenant nun, and the gender-changing don Antonio Yta, meanwhile, yielded narratives on tricksters and self-fashioning.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ Thus, we have ethnohistory for Guaman Poma and other non-white actors, on the one hand, and microhistories of early modernity for Menocchio, Martin Guerre, and other Europeans.

This divide in scholarly reading practices merits a second look. What if we reconcile Guaman Poma and Lázaro, admitting his commoner origins while also recognizing the brilliance of his work? Only then does his truly unique place in early modern history become evident. Arnaud du Tilh, the commoner counterfeiter who claimed to be Martin Guerre and bamboozled the entire Basque community, struck learned Frenchmen—such as Jean de Cora and Guillaume Le Suere—as prodigious and preternatural.Footnote ¹⁶¹ He prompted great minds—including early modern eminence Michele de Montaigne and trailblazing microhistorian Natalie Zemon Davis—to ponder on the futility of securing certainty.Footnote ¹⁶² Yet, Lázaro was the trickster commoner and the philosopher-intellectual. He was the source of skepticism and its critic, simultaneously. He was, so to speak, both Martin Guerre and Michele de Montaigne.

Like Menocchio, Lázaro was a stubbornly inquisitive commoner living in a world facing rapid and repeated structural changes. In the rural areas of the Venetian republic, Menocchio experienced the Reformation by offering a radical critique of social and religious hierarchies. Menocchio’s peasant monism and his independent, creative readings of popular religious literature and travel accounts provoked his decades-long public, stubborn critique of Catholic sacraments and theocratic hierarchies. He triggered two inquisition trials and endured increasing social isolation before his final, public execution.

Lázaro was also a stubbornly independent and uninhibited consumer of written culture who also grew isolated. His cosmology was a brilliant typological reading of the Bible applied to his family lineage that went far beyond the cheese and the worms of Menocchio’s cosmology. His critique of ecclesiastical hierarchies and corruption was more robust and articulate than Menocchio’s. Yet, Lázaro fully defended the hierarchical beliefs of a new “Andean” Catholic piety as he sought to put an end to the social radicalism that had engulfed the Andes for three generations. Paradoxically, his radicalism lay in a critique of the increasingly important epistemology of Andean paperwork and archives to recreate purer and stricter social hierarchies.

And as those of both Martin Guerre and Menocchio, Guaman Poma’s microhistory teaches us much about the early modern world—both the mechanics of historical change and the richness of human beings’ responses to these circumstances. As a commoner, Lázaro offers us a window into the radicalism unleashed by bottom-up paperwork in Spanish America after the conquest. His meditation on viceregal paperwork shows the extraordinary structural instability of the aftermath of the conquest in which factions, conquistadors, royal officials, friars, native lords, and commoners undid one another in paperwork battles via petitions, audits, and litigation. These battles toppled conquistadors, theocratic friars, and indigenous lords alike through decades of instability. Through the skillful manipulation of testimony and enough community support, commoners could become lords and lords commoners. The Nueva corónica captures this structural instability accurately and powerfully, critiquing without quarter the twisted truths that emerged from this period.

The gradual consolidation of viceregal archives blocked commoners such as Lázaro from certain types of unrestricted social mobility. It was getting harder to manipulate factionalism and paperwork to change social structures on the ground. His effort to create a new pueblo in Chupas and declare himself lord catastrophically collapsed as the archive disproved his imagined dynastic genealogies. Lázaro’s alleged father, Martín de Ayala, was no Inca ambassador to Pizarro, but a servant commoner and lumberjack. Previous petitions and contracts proved this without a doubt. Lázaro’s solution, however, was to double down, exaggerating his claims to such an extent that it secured his frequent removal from town after town. He attempted to create pastiches of local conflicts to ground his statements, with limited success.

Then, he drew on the figure of Christ and the discourse of the religious investigation. This stubborn strategy reveals Lázaro’s deep familiarity with the religious, prophetic culture of his time. The well-informed, public presentation of apostolic power in societies teeming with millenarian anxiety, vagabondage, and gossip traveling as news could easily transform carpenters, soldiers, bakers, homeless, and poor peasant women into Old Testament prophets, even Christ-like messiahs, claiming the status of princes, lost kings, lords, and even saints.Footnote ¹⁶³ He cast himself in the role of an apostle, and sometimes even as Christ. He was, like the carpenter from Galilee, a commoner-prince who listened to the poor and spoke truth to power regardless of the consequences. As the perfect Christian investigator, an undercover lord unlike any other, he was the perfect person to inform the powerful in Madrid of Peru’s problems. The direct appeal to King Philip III was not delusional; rather, it was a strategy that he knew had worked for many commoners claiming lordship. The farther away tribunals were from local archives, the greater his chances of success.

To replace the untrustworthy Andean archive, Lázaro offered the king a new world. Lázaro pinpointed the lies in the world of deracination, traveling, and radical self-fashioning that characterized early modernity and the aftermath of the conquest. Tributaries, commoners, merchants, and artisans moved across towns and inns using titles of lords that did not belong to them, calling themselves “dons,” and wearing apparel that did not suit their station and lineage. Vassals mocked distinctions of status and ethnicity, and children mocked their parents—the world was upside down. The Andes needed to return to the Inca and even pre-Inca times, when proto-Christian values safeguarded a more perfect society of orders.

He may have been a commoner, but he paradoxically loathed social mobility and exalted pure noble lineages. Guaman Poma even offered Philip III solutions that scholars today tend to associate with the modern surveillance state. Every vassal was to possess identity papers, tethering them to a truth they were not free to fabricate. A dense constellation of carefully managed local and centralized archives would confirm these identities and cement the society of orders. Native lords in particular were to constantly surveil Spaniards and indigenous commoners, turning the Andes into a never-ending audit. Guaman Poma would then emerge from his commoner audit of Peru, becoming King Philip III’s second-in-command and overseeing all distribution of privileges. His Nueva corónica would sit in Rome, with the pope, and in Spain, constituting the foundation of the new archive.

Resurrections

A commoner thwarted repeatedly by the strictures of the viceregal archive thus aggressively doubled down. He would become the guardian of all native and non-native identities, the architect of a new and long-lasting social order. He was unrelentingly creative and creatively unrelenting, a testimony to the contradictions all people contain within themselves. And he was also spectacularly unsuccessful, meeting resistance from natives and Spanish authorities at every turn. It seems that ultimately no one seriously entertained Lázaro’s delusions.

But he did fool us. For over a century, scholars have believed his tales of greatness. Great indeed he was, but for reasons that have yet to be fully explored. He was a commoner-iconoclast, one of the great skeptical interpreters of the viceregal archive, and a chronicler of the radicalism of the first seven decades of the post-conquest state. His Nueva corónica thoroughly documented and denounced how commoners aspiring to preeminence might seek to escape their station by manipulating testimonies and manufacturing evidence, fully taking advantage of factionalism and paperwork. Lázaro’s life also shows that this path narrowed as the archive blocked these very peasants from establishing convincing lordly identities.

The Nueva corónica, however, also shows that, there was still reason for commoners without paperwork and curated archives to believe their voices might reach the court. The popular culture of Catholicism—and for Lázaro the figure of the carpenter-king—played a powerful role in keeping those dreams alive. And if the poor fugitive commoner Lázaro never reshaped the archive as a prince by King Philip III’s side, he and his works have risen again. Lazarus-like, he has at last become the Andean lord don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and his Nueva corónica a pillar of scholarship on the Andes. He is now the archive, just as he intended. Now, we might be wise to approach Guaman Poma and his works anew, not as an elite’s ethnohistorical masterpiece, but as the stories of a poor man with something remarkable to say.