In this account to King Philip III, Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala describes the history of the Quechua people, as well as traditional roles, rites of passage, laws, and traditions held throughout their societies. Guamán Poma was born into a noble Inca family after the Spanish conquest of Peru, and the perspective he delivers in “The First New Chronicle and Good Government,” while still critical of the Spanish occupation, reflects the fractured and disharmonious (to say the least..!) relationship between the Inca and the Spanish who were occupying Peru.
Something that stuck out to me was the way Guamán Poma described the relative safety of women pre and post conquest. Guamán Poma says that before the Spanish, unmarried women were able to walk freely, without worry. However, since the introduction of Christianity, this is no longer the case. Guamán Poma himself is a Christian, as he states and discusses throughout the text. This seems to be his way of saying that it is not so much that the Christian religion is itself the problem, it is the way some of the Christian Spanish colonizers choose to abuse their power and status, and exploit the rest of the population. This section also highlighted the ways in which gender relations differed in society before and after conquest and occupation. Before the arrival of the Spanish, there was relative equality compared to after.
Guamán Poma also devotes a significant portion of this treatise to Incan laws and social customs. I think this part of the letter is extremely important as it could be seen with relative objectivity (had it ever reached its intended audience). There are clear signs that the Inca had social order, and that in many cases, a lot of their institutions shared common ideas with the Spanish-imposed Christian institutions later on. It seems that Guamán Poma’s main argument is that realistically, the Spanish are only reasserting what was already in place- though, with more violence and with less representation from the Indigenous peoples, who at this point had been disenfranchised.
While this account is certainly thorough, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Guamán Poma’s perspective throughout it. First, his status as a noble already places him in a position of relative power above other Indigenous peoples. Additionally, his commitment to Christianity also complicates (though, it does not negate) what he is saying. At times it’s hard to tell if he is trying to urge the importance of Catholicism and Catholicizing or to warn against it. The best rationale, in my own personal feelings, between these points is that he isn’t denouncing the religion but he is denouncing how it is being proliferated. Unfortunately, I do wonder if that is something that King Philip III would have even cared about, had he been able to read this.
Super interesting point where you talk about how his conversation about gender before and after conquest. A lot of the violence done by Catholic Spaniards to Indian women would have been considered righteous to their godly standards, as a lot of the Bible has been interpreted quite misogynistically (forgive me for making up a word). In this way, while he is trying to make the point that the Spaniards are the problem and not the Christianity, it does not exactly come off in the way that he intends, I think at least.
I agree with your point of how Guamán Poma’s perspective was not easy to configure in the text, and that he is indeed saying that the Spaniards are the one who are to blame rather than their religion. The big difference between the colonization that had occurred was not only the greed that inflicted them but what you mention of a drift that occurred between the men women and those in the community once the Spaniards arrived.