Trauma and Narrative in Early Modernity: Garcilaso's Comentarios reales (1609-1616)

Suffering remains alien to knowledge

Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (18)

En [Garcilaso] se fundan las dos razas
antagónicas de la conquista, unidas ya en
el abrazo fecundo del mestizaje

Raul Porras Barrenechea,
Antología (88)

I. Introduction

My reading of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega moves between the historical possibilities of inscription delimited by the two quotations taken from Theodor Adorno and Raul Porras Barrenechea. In the first quote, Adorno speaks of the essentially incomprehensible character of pain. Porras Barrenechea, on the other hand, acknowledges a productive quality to suffering in relation to a political body. While Adorno articulates a mostly—but not solely—twentieth-century consciousness of the shattering effects of massive trauma, Porras Barrenechea upholds the iconic nature that Garcilaso's texts have acquired in Peru. If Adorno's dictum runs the risk of producing an anachronistic reading, Porras Barrenechea's argues for the foundational power of Garcilaso's writing. The pervasive iconic nature of Garcilaso's texts, a result of their foundational standing, makes a reading that engages the anachronistic (or catastrophic) dimension even more difficult and politically urgent. ² I believe that any attempt to re-situate Garcilaso's writings within the traumatized setting of the post-conquest Andes must dislodge the Comentarios from its productive iconicity. Conversely, it is only through an exploration of the demands exerted by catastrophe that Garcilaso may be understood apart from the lengthy history of readings that have nationalized Andean literary traditions. ³ As part of that broader project, I set out to accomplish two goals in the following pages: first, I will establish the philosophical and political need to perform a reading of Garcilaso's Comentarios based on the category of trauma; ⁴ second, I will sketch out three rhetorical strategies used by Garcilaso in order to respond to the demands of trauma.

II. Grounds for a trauma-centered reading

Garcilaso de la Vega was born in Cusco, the ancient capital of the Tahuantinsuyu (Inca dominions), in 1539, seven years after the arrival of Francisco Pizarro and the capture of Atahualpa—the last pre-Hispanic Inca—by his troops. At the time of Pizarro's arrival, the Tahuantinsuyu was divided in a bloody civil war of succession between Atahualpa and Huáscar. Garcilaso's family belonged to a panaca (royal lineage) closely allied with Huáscar and which regarded Atahualpa as a traitor and usurper. ⁵ Garcilaso was the child of Captain Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega and the Inca Princess Ñusta Isabel Chimpu Ocllo. On the paternal side, he descended from renowned families that embodied the Renaissance courtier ideal in Spain. Through his maternal lineage, he belonged to the panaca of the great Tupac Inca Yupanqui (tenth Inca since Manco Cápac, the founder of the Inca dynasty), and a direct relative of Huáscar (twelfth Inca and the last duly "crowned"). ⁶

The precariousness of early colonial rule, due to Andean resistance and a number of civil wars between various Spanish-led factions, determined several events in the life of Garcilaso and his family. In 1549, by royal decree, Garcilaso's father was designated to marry a noble Spanish woman, and Garcilaso's mother was forced to marry a Spaniard of lesser status. By then, Garcilaso had been christened Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, and lived in his mother's household where he frequented several of his Inca noble relatives. Between 1555 and 1556, he worked for his father as a scribe and was a first-hand witness to the intrigues of Spanish colonial life. In 1560, a year after his father's death, Garcilaso traveled to Spain in order to reclaim his father's encomiendas (land grants and Indian tributes awarded to distinguished conquistadors). The Spanish Crown's reasons for denying a renewal of the encomiendas in Garcilaso's name are worth mentioning, as they illustrate his dramatic bind with colonial society.

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