Royal Commentaries of the Incas: 400th anniversary.

• Author: Caminiti, Estrella Guerra
• Position: HISTORY - Critical essay

It has been 400 years since Los Comentarios reales de los Incas was published in Lisbon. This work of El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega--called Royal Commentaries of the Incas in English--is considered not only the author's most important work, but also one of the great reference points of Peruvian writing. El Inca Garcilaso was the son of Spanish conquistador Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas and Inca princess Palla Chimpu Ocllo (later baptized Isabel Suárez Chimpu Ocllo), and one of the most highlighted aspects of the book is that it was the first work of a mestizo , the first product of the melding of the Hispanic and Inca cultures. Royal Commentaries introduces us to the history of the Incan empire as seen through the lenses and norms of the Spanish Golden Age. The work was important for the 18th century and continues to help contemporary readers understand that period of time. This look at Royal Commentaries will focus less on the content, however, than the process of its creation.

Evidence found by combing through Garcilaso's prior works shows that that Royal Commentaries was carefully planned years in advance. The introductions and dedications he writes in earlier pieces include what appear to be tangential references to a forthcoming project, but soon it becomes clear that all of his previous works were a preparation for Royal Commentaries . It also becomes clear that El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega had a very ambitious goal: to establish himself as a mestizo historian and an unquestionable authority on the New World.

The first work that El Inca published was a Tuscan-to-Castilian translation of the Dialogos de Amor (Dialogues of Love ) by Leon Hebreo. We know something about the writLng process through the correspondence that Garcilaso maintained with a "Don Maximiliano" from Austria during the early days of the publication process. The first letter that he writes to Don Maximiliano is dated September 18, 1586 and is sent from Montilla. In it, Garcilaso introduces his work to Don Maximiliano and asks him to help get it into the hands of King Phillip II, to whom the translation is dedicated. The translation must have been finished, revised, and a clean copy prepared--as was El Inca's custom--in late 1585, because the dedication to the "Sacred Catholic Royal Majesty, Defender of the Faith, King Phillip II" is from January 19, 1586. Because of the cumbersome processes for obtaining a printing license, however, the work was not edited by the Pedro Madrigal printing house in Madrid until...