Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609)

"He is exemplary of the sort of hybrid who came to exist in the Spanish Empire. His father was a Spanish conquistador in Peru and his mother was an Inca princess. So he lived in an Inca principal household, though he also learnt aristocratic Spanish things like horse-riding, hunting and sword-fighting. But he followed Inca traditions too. Like reading those knotted ropes that were basically books. He had an uncle who was important Inca royalty. He came to Spain as a young man to get a good renaissance education. In this book he wanted to present his mixed-race hybrid and he rewrote Peruvian history in his own image. He sees the Incas as being like the Romans and that their civilisation was necessary so that the Spanish Catholic seed could be sown there. He gives a history of the Spanish conquest from the maternal and paternal points of view. It’s all very Freudian with the father thrusting into the mother’s territory. So, it’s about the hybridisation of America but it also shows the Indians in a good light from a European point of view. If Columbus and de Vaca showed the Indians as they saw them then las Casas and de la Vega try to show them as potential Europeans. This was partly because of their own cultural prejudices but also because they wanted to get the best for their Indians – not that those Indians got to voice an opinion on what was best for them. In Europe, of course, de la Vega traded on being South American royalty."