Father Valera, first Peruvian historian: His plagiarists and the finding of his three works

Abstract

Manuel González de La Rosa presents a revolutionary thesis vindicating the mestizo Jesuit Blas Valera as the first and most important historian of the Incas. The author argues that the famous loss of Valera's manuscripts in the sack of Cadiz in 1596 was an invention by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega to hide the plagiarism of the Jesuit's work. He further sustains that the licentiate Montesinos copied the list of pre-Inca kings and the chronology of the "suns" (ages) from Valera's Vocabulario Histórico. Finally, he identifies the Anonymous Account published by Jiménez de la Espada as Valera's third lost work, titled De los indios del Perú, sus costumbres y pacificación. The study relies on textual and chronological analyses to restore the authorship of these fundamental sources to Valera.