The Issue of the Date of Birth of the Chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala as Debated at the Colloquium in Poitiers in 2010

Resumé

Jean-Philippe Husson: The Issue of the Date of Birth of the Chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala, as Debated at the Colloquium in Poitiers in 2010.

The date of birth of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala is a question that has been taken up many times by specialists of the Indian chronicler, but it has not yet been solved to the satisfaction of all scholars. Two opposed approaches have been suggested. In the opinion of some, Guaman Poma must have been born around 1560. Others believe that he would have been eighty years old when he completed his chronicle, and that therefore he was born in 1534 or 1535. In order to solve this problem, the author of the present contribution applies all of the three criteria singled out by José de la Puente Luna in his paper read at the colloquium on Guaman Poma held in 2010 in Poitiers, due to be published in Lima in 2015, with the result that all three criteria lead to the same conclusion: a date of 1560, rather than 1534/1535. It is noteworthy that there is no mention of the latter date in the chronicle before page 962 [976], which may reflect the Inca system of classifying individuals by broad age groups.