Recuerdos de la monarquia Peruana: O bosquejo de la historia de los Incas, compendio breve (review)

A facsimile of this work by Don Justo Apu Sahuaraura was first published in France in 1850 with the title Recuerdos de la Monarquía peruana; ó, Bosquejo de la historia de los Incas. This new edition is not drawn from the same manuscript, but the differences between the two are minor. The present manuscript was found in the collection of José Mindlin, a São Paulo book collector; its 96 pages, handwritten by Sahuaraura in 1838, also include 17 watercolor illustrations, busts of Incas. The first depicted is Manco Capac, founder of the dynastic line, and others follow in genealogical order into the period of Spanish domination. The earlier French publication was illustrated by 16 engravings, so what is especially important about the publication of the Mindlin manuscript is that the watercolor illustrations have been published in color. The new edition comes as a boxed set: the hardbound Mindlin facsimile and a soft-cover volume that includes a transcription of the manuscript, a general introduction to Sahuaraura and his work by Javier Flores Espinoza, and a republished article by Teresa Gisbert on the 1850 engravings.

Don Justo Apu Sahuaraura was born in Cuzco in 1775. His father, who had already demonstrated his loyalty to Spain on various occasions, was killed by the forces of Tupac Amaru II in the Battle of Sangarará in 1780. He took a doctorate in theology and canon law at the College of San Bernardo of Cuzco in 1808. After ordination, he occupied a succession of native parishes in the bishopric of Cuzco. Before independence, he was recommended for (although not named to) a canoncy in the cathedral of Cuzco; no one of native blood had ever risen to such a post before. He fought for Peruvian independence in the Battle of Ayacucho in 1825.

So, he was an Inca, and his work includes a genealogy tracing his descent from Huayna Capac, the last pre-Hispanic Inca ruler. He was descended through the line of Paullu Inca, the son of Huayna Capac who most cultivated a relationship with the Spaniards. Paullu Inca's descendants were the most important branch of the dynastic line in the colonial period. Sahuaraura also prominently portrays the lineage of Anahuarqui, a woman from Choco and spouse of the ninth Inca ruler. This lineage was affinal to the dynastic line, and choosing it over other higher-ranking dynastic connections only makes sense if Sahuaraura's father's claim to the cacicazgo of Choco is taken into consideration.

Sahuaraura's list of Incas is fairly faithful to that of Garcilaso de la Vega, but he adds a list of panacas, the segments of the lineage created in each new pre-Hispanic generation. Garcilaso does not include this list, but other accounts of Inca genealogy do: for example, the account known as the Discurso, signed in 1608 and connected with the efforts of Melchor Carlos Inca, Paullu's grandson, to establish his Inca status in the courts of Spain. The "Inca history" of the Discurso is essentially a genealogy plus the list of panacas, not much different from Sahuaraura's. There is also another connection to Melchor Carlos's status mongering. Melchor Carlos had a white taffeta cloth painted with medallions representing the male members of the Inca dynastic line. This cloth, which was sent to Garcilaso, is now lost; scholars, however, have long thought that it served as the model for the engraving that appears at the head of the fifth década of Antonio Herrera y Tordesillas's Historia General (1601). The similarities between the engraving in Herrera and the illustrations in the Sahuaraura text indicate...