Seventeenth Century Environmental Criticism, the Taqui Onqoy and Garcilaso de la Vega’s Comentarios reales

This article analyzes Book IX of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Comentarios reales (1609) and argues that the ninth book constitutes a sophisticated environmental observation that relates the Inca with the ideology of an insurgent indigenous movement, the Taqui Onqoy. Members of this movement believe that old Inca deities would avenge the indigenous populations through ocean flooding, infestations, and diseases washing the Spaniards away from their lands. Curiously, Garcilaso not only describes land, animal, and plants’ transformations, but adds information about how animals and plants become plagues acting against the Spanish—just as the Taqui Onqoy prophesied it. Through a close examination of dates, names, and places mentioned by the Inca, this article explains the ideological correspondence between the insurgent movement and the mestizo writer. The article concludes that the deliberate omission of the Taqui Onqoy rebellion can be read as a rhetorical strategy to avoid endangering the author’s social position. Such a stratagem unavoidably alters the production and reception of what constitutes an important ecological discourse during the Colonia.