A survey (in English and in Spanish) of recent research in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615), published on the occasion of the opening of the full digital edition of the autograph manuscript by the Royal Library .
Written and illustrated by a Christianized native Andean of Southern Peru, several decades after the Spanish conquest, the Nueva corónica is a complex and unique mixture of historiography and utopianism. On one hand, it contains an entirely original framework for Andean historical self-understanding, as an alternative to the colonial viewpoint. On the other hand, based upon vivid written and graphic descriptions of Andean daily life and sufferings under colonial rule, Guaman Poma formulates far-reaching proposals for reform aimed at turning the chaotic viceroyalty into a dynamic self-governed kingdom within the Spanish empire. Guaman Poma envisioned this new order as Christian, but organized in accordance with Andean economic, social, and cultural tradition.
The manuscript has been preserved since the 18th century in the Royal Library, Copenhagen. "Rediscovered" by modern scholarship in 1908, it was included in UNESCO's "Memory of the World" list in 1999.
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