El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega

El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega

Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (pseudonym of Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, 1539, Cusco – 1616, Córdoba, Spain). Son of the Spanish captain Garcilaso de la Vega and the Inca princess Isabel Chimpu Ocllo, the Inka Garcilaso was a chronicler of pre-Columbian Inca history, society and cultural, while also documenting the tumultuous, post-conquest years which the author lived through as a young man in the early years of the Peruvian Viceroyalty. In 1561, after the death of his father, the Inka moved to Spain, never to return to his native land. His most well-known work, The Royal Commentaries of the Incas (Comentarios reales de los Incas, 1609) is based on oral and written sources gleaned from his interactions as a young man with the elite intelligentsia of his royal maternal relatives in Cusco. Book II, chapter XXVII of The Royal Commentaries of the Incas is entitled “The Poetry of the Inca amautas, who are philosophers, and harauicus, who are poets” and offers one of the few descriptions of Inca poetry and philosophy written by an author with direct knowledge, observation of, and participation in these artistic and humanistic traditions. The chapter also includes two notable Quechua langauge poems —“Caylla llapi” and “Sumac Ñusta”— which we present below.