| Research Abstract |
The Cronica (Chronicle) which is dealt with in this research, was written by the native born in the Andes, non letter world in prehispanic times, whose name is Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala(1550? - 1616). He wrote in Spanish, which he acquired through self-study, the interesting and voluminous cronica titled Nueva Cronicay Buen Gobierno (in English New Chronicle and Good Government, closed in 1615 and published in 1938 in Paris), which approximately reaches to 1200 pages and includes more than 400 illustrations. At the end of the last century, a group of the Italian scholars (archeologists and historians), based on the Naples (Miccinelli) Documents", declared that the author of the work was not Guaman Poma, but the mestizo Jesuit friar, called Blas Valera, and caused the large and heated disputes in the academic world. Though this new theory is not almost supported now, because the "Naples documents" being the forgery of documents is ascertained, the dispute has contributed to modify the
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traditional investigation and interpretation of Guaman Poma and his work, in which he has been much appraised as the rare intelligent native, because he wrote the Cronica in Spanish, and his Cronica has been regarded as the encyclopedia of the Andean culture and society in prehispanic times. And to urge us to reconsider the motives or purposes of his writing, principally by means of elucidating the activities and roles of Guaman Poma as curaca (chief of provincial ethnic group) of the Yaros in Huamanga And by this latest research, it has been ascertained that Guaman Poma, who had been the active cooperator of the colonial authorities from 1580 to 1600, being defeated later in land lawsuit against the other ethnic group, the Chachapoyas, commenced to include considerable correction and revision in the draft of the work which he had been writing from 1580 under the influence of Spanish clergyman and famous cronista (chronicler) Martin de Murua, and that finally he completed the Cronica in 1615, with the ideas of Las Casas, who had fought during half century for the liberty and human rights of the vanquished (indigenous peoples), antagonizing the conquistadores, colons, colonial authorities and even the Spanish Crown. And is has been clarified that already in the second half of 16^<th> Century there were many curacas who acquired the knowledge not only of Spanish conversation, but also of reading and writing, and that the natives learned the legal expedient, "lawsuit" under the Spanish control, and utilized it positively as one method for existence in the severe Spanish rule. By this research, I could obtain big clue in future elucidation of the indigenous society in colonial period. Less
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