Again, its interesting to see Guaman Poma de Ayala navigate through the work as he seems to recognize the disconnect between his positionality and what he’s asking of the King. While last week I was confused by why he chose to disparage the Spanish, this week it became a bit more obvious that it was to show the imperfections, especially the Idolatry the Indigenous are accused of having, also exist within the Spanish ranks. His appeals to the King are especially interesting when it comes to the people in power because he’s basically giving the King advice on how to colonize and loot better. How the king can change things so he makes more money off the colony, which feels strange but makes sense in the context Poma de Ayala is faced with. In contrast to this, it is also interesting how Guaman Poma de Ayala uses divine endowment against the Spanish, essentially saying, ‘of course Spanish law supersedes Inca law, but not even Spanish law supersedes divine Law, and since God gave us these lands and titles you’re actually not allowed to take those from us.’ It’s a ballsy move to tell your colonizer they can’t take your things, but using their own rules against them is actually pretty iconic. I also feel like Guaman Poma de Ayala does a good Job of playing to the King’s pre-existing fears. He really hammers down on the overreaches of the church, and how the Priests are essentially stealing from the crown by taking on authority only the crown can grant. And beyond that, he goes so far as to claim a lot of these religious figures aren’t good Christians and deserve to be punished or excommunicated. While he certainly has a point, I don’t know that he would be the person the King would listen to on these points, especially since his own status as a ‘true Christian’ can probably be refuted. Even with his own, pretty high status, this feels like a really risky move from a personal point of view. If any of those priests, encomenderos. inspectors, or someone aligned with them sees this letter, he is surely done for. The way he describes the power these people have, not even he would have been able to survive whatever they chose to do. Finally, I enjoyed the way at the beginning of the letter he describes his own position as proximate to nobility and describes his ‘proper lineage’ and then throughout the rest of the letter names positions and who should fill them, and he conveniently fits a lot of the pre-requisites. Obviously we can’t know how intentional this was, but if it was, its a really clever move