The thesis is focused on the Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno, by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, written in the Peruvian highlands between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Although specifically designed to superficially appear innocuously and mildly complaining, the author disguises his transcendental subversive intentions by limiting the scope of the referential subject to the members of his cultural group. / While the introduction explains in detail the objective of the thesis and reviews some literature on the subject, the first chapter provides a broad and summary overview of indigenous Andean cosmology, its constitutive elements and its main characteristics. In the second chapter these elements of cosmological philosophy are presented as the only available tools at the disposal of the indigenous population in order to understand that catastrophic event referred to as the Conquest and the inevitable conclusion to which it arrived. The third chapter explores the use of those cosmological tools and the understanding of the disaster in the subversive endeavour of cultural survival in the context of colonization. Finally, the fourth chapter examines the plurality of levels of subversive messages conveyed by the author and his hidden message of rebellious hope. Within the same frame of cosmologically oriented thought patterns and messianistic expectations, Guaman Poma alters one apparently insignificant historical detail, thereby making possible the cosmic regeneration and historical rebirth of the last Inca emperor and his entire people. A section of conclusions and a bibliography follow the fourth and last chapter.

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In the late sixteenth-century a Peruvian Indian and Inca nobleman named Guaman Poma de Ayala wrote a one-thousand page history of the world, his Nueva Cronica y Buen Gobierno, recounting the development of Andean and European humanity from the beginning of time up to the period in which the author lived. My analysis focuses on the mode of communication used by Guaman Poma, his use of Renaissance Iberian discursive and visual codes, to articulate his radical views of Spanish rule in Peru. His views, I argue, although articulated in a foreign language and media, express a fundamentally Andean understanding of the world. The conquest and the Spanish people are woven into the Andean mythological order. Andean and Spanish worlds are made to conform to a common temporal and spatial model in the author's attempt to make sense of the apocalyptic consequences of the arrival the Spanish.

This study seeks to ascertain European views concerning the nature of the indigenous population of Peru by employing contemporary works of Spanish chroniclers. Major focus is on the ideological background of the conquest with elaborations on Iberian philosophies held by conquistadors. Equally important are evaluations of Indian religion and social customs based on such sources as Aristotelian and Thomist doctrines as understood by Spanish writers. Political organization and the hierarchy of rulers play vital roles in determining why the Spaniards overwhelmed the Indians. Conquest destroyed the socio-economic structure of the Inca Empire, and the bonds holding communities together were lost as the Incas accepted Catholicism as their cult.

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