Tales of Ancestry, Inheritance, and Possession: New Documentary Evidence on Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and the First General Land Inspection

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's 1616 El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno stands as the author's staggering attempt to obtain by privilege that which he could not secure through justice: status as a native lord and title to lands. Indeed, the last 20 years of the native chronicler's life as we know it, roughly from 1595 to 1615, are marked by the usual milestones of an ascending clerical career in the service of provincial priests, inspectors, and administrators from the south central Andean region stretching between Jauja and Huamanga.¹

This upward social movement comes to a sudden halt in 1600, when Guaman Poma is whipped and exiled after a humiliating defeat in court. Although the chronicler's failure to obtain judicial recognition of his noble ancestry and lordly (cacique) status, as well as legal title to certain lands close to Huamanga, inaugurates a period of uncertainty, he reappears as “author” only a few years later. Once again, Guaman Poma is at the service of local Spanish officials, this time in the nearby Lucanas province.² There Guaman Poma resumes his partially successful attempts at colonial self-fashioning. With his appointment as administrator of community endowments in Lucanas, but more so with his ongoing project of the Nueva corónica, he begins to represent himself as author, prince, and councilor to the king.³ In this illustrated manuscript, he rewrites the history of the Incas and the Spanish conquest, correcting previous authors and enlightening the Spanish crown on the path to “good government.”

Guaman Poma invokes the loyalty of his illustrious ancestors, who witnessed the first encounter between natives and Spaniards, as well as his own worth as noble adviser and polemicist. With every step, he lays out an alternative path to reward and privilege for himself and his “children and descendants.”⁴ This path was to eventually carry him to King Philip III, to whom he writes from Santiago de Chipao in early 1615, before embarking on a journey to deliver the final version of the Nueva corónica to the viceroy's “house of good government” in Lima. Guaman Poma then vanishes from the historical record.⁵

This biographical sketch helps us to contextualize additional evidence involving the life and times of Guaman Poma, which is presented in this research note for the first time.⁶ Don Bernabé Sucso Paucar's 1615 titles to the maize fields of Tomaringa, the information in question, contribute to the scholarship on Guaman Poma in three related ways. First, these land titles add to a growing body of documentary studies that broaden our understanding of the chronicler's life journey, thus providing further context for his famous text. Second, the titles allow us to further flesh out Guaman Poma's activities as interpreter during the First General Land Inspection (Primera visita y composición general de tierras), allowing us to weigh the latter's impact on his subsequent writings and legal disputes. Third, the papers hint at some avenues through which Guaman Poma could have obtained firsthand information about pre-Hispanic and colonial Incas of both high and low status, one of the Nueva corónica's principal themes, while in Huamanga rather than in Cuzco, as previous authors have usually assumed. An appendix to this research note, titled Testimonio de cómo las tierras de Tomaringa pertenecen a don Bernabé Su[c]sso Paucar, reproduces this novel testimony.

Investigating Land

The land titles locate Felipe Guaman Poma in the villages of Socos and Paccha (near the present-day districts of Socos, Vinchos, and Santiago de Pischa), only a few miles west of the modern city of Ayacucho (known as Huamanga in colonial times), during the final days of December 1594. Thanks to similar documentary discoveries from recent years, the chronicler's general whereabouts and activities around this time are fairly well known. Toward the end of 1592, or at the beginning of the following year, Guaman Poma was assigned to serve as one of the interpreters in the First General Land Inspection, aimed at regularizing the precarious ownership regimes that coexisted in the viceroyalty at that time. This appointment, which he probably received while in Lima, placed Guaman Poma in the service of Gabriel Solano de Figueroa, a presbyter and the judge commissioned to inspect the south central provinces of Jauja, Huancavelica, and Huamanga.⁷ After a brief stay in Jauja between April and June of 1594, the judge Solano and his native interpreter began journeying south, en route to Huamanga.⁸

The fragments of the General Inspection located thus far demonstrate that, in Jauja as well as in Huamanga, Guaman Poma did much more than merely translate. As he toured the region, the native interpreter participated in diverse judicial proceedings, whether by notifying interested parties about legal acts, most likely in the standard variety of Quechua known as the Lengua general, or by serving as a witness in formal land hearings. Moreover, in at least one striking case, the interpreter arbitrated a legal dispute concerning native lands on behalf of Solano. Specifically, the judge authorized Guaman Poma's adjudication of the lands of Totorapampa and Rumichaca, near the city of Huamanga. As part of this commission, Guaman Poma inspected the area and listened to litigants and gathered additional testimonies by taking witness depositions. After completing the inquest, he measured and delimited the contested plots of lands. After the native interpreter reached his final verdict—that the lands belonged to Catalina Pata, a local woman and a resident of Huamanga, the city where Solano held court from September 1594 through 1595—Guaman Poma presented his ruling before the judge's notary.

The native interpreter's declaration, registered by the judge's notary writing in third person, is as follows:

[H]aving determined the truth about who the said lands of the said site of Totora Pampa and Rumichaca legitimately belonged[,] [Don Phelipe Guaman Poma] found and recognized said lands to belong to the said Cathalina Patta long possessed and inherited from her father, and that no other person nor Indian was owner of them, although some ill-advised individuals maliciously wanted to bother her in order to take the lands and benefit from them.⁹

The judge Solano confirmed the native interpreter's decision, a ruling in which the Royal Court of Appeals in Lima concurred.¹⁰

On December 20, 1594, shortly after the adjudication concerning the lands of Totorapampa and Rumichaca, don Francisco Paucartira, cacique of Paccha, formally testified before the same judge, his notary Juan López, and his interpreter, Felipe Guaman Poma.¹¹ According to the cacique's brief deposition, don Francisco had previously provided an account of the tilled and untilled plots surrounding the village, noting to whom they belonged, whether the lands were sufficient to sustain the commons, and whether there existed any excess lands (“chacras y tierras”) formerly belonging to the Inca king or the female religious specialists in charge of state cults (“del Ynga o ma[ma]conas”). The latter lands had been, in theory, transferred to the Castilian crown six decades before by right of conquest, so that Judge Solano could now declare them available for purchase. Seizing the opportunity to obtain official confirmation, the cacique also provided the judge's notary and interpreter with a full list of the names and sizes of the fields and other lands that he claimed he and his ancestors had possessed since “time immemorial,” in the hopes that Solano would recognize his rights to them. Given that he could not sign his own name, “the said interpreter don Felipe Guamanpoma” signed on his behalf. It is thanks to this brief mention that we know of the future chronicler's presence throughout the proceedings.¹²

Even more importantly, we also learn that even before vacant or ‘excess’ lands were bought and titles ‘fixed’—by compensating the crown for any arbitrary appropriations, procedural omissions, or unfair prices incurred in previous land transfers—preliminary proceedings such as these were conducted in other settlements as Solano and Guaman Poma toured the area.¹³ Though virtually unknown to scholars in this context, the centrality of such inquests cannot be overstated.¹⁴ The gathering of information about native land ownership regimes, both individual and collective, was an essential first step in the land inspection and the ‘fixing’ of titles. Probably in the presence of commoners, local caciques were interviewed to name and identify the different fields within their jurisdiction and to state whether they belonged to certain individual households or to the commons, so that titles to plots, groves, and cattle enclosures (“chacras, arboledas y corrales”) could be formally awarded. Furthermore, the caciques were expected to stipulate the existence of any vacant lands hitherto devoted to the Inca and the Sun, so the judge could make them available for purchase by interested parties.

Such was the case of the town Sumaro (Çumaro), in the Cuzco region, studied by historian Donato Amado. As part of the town's first general land inspection and reallotment (reparto), an inspector-judge aided by an interpreter and a land surveyor redistributed the lands among the different kinship groups (ayllus) established within the town, as stipulated in its original land deed dating from November 1592.¹⁵ In the case of Huamanga, all information about the land regime in the town of Paccha was compiled following a similar procedure. The December 20, 1594 proceedings referenced a land distribution logbook (quaderno y manifestacion de tierras y chacras), previously created by Guaman Poma and the rest of Solano's inspection team for the town. It contained a registry of the ayllus, their members, and the plots they owned, which the notary and interpreter presented to Solano for approval.¹⁶

As exemplified by the testimony of the cacique of Paccha, don Francisco Paucartira, preliminary proceedings also included the formal depositions of local caciques who, again with the aid of Felipe Guaman Poma, corroborated the land tenure regime previously described and recorded in the logbook. As was likely the case in other villages, the judge Solano authorized a copy of the original proceedings conducted at the town of Paccha, validating it with his signature. The caciques of Paccha would have added that testimony to the village archive, preserving these deeds should they need to defend their communal lands (as the leaders of Sumaro, in Cuzco, did on several occasions).

Conflicting Titles

Don Francisco Paucartira, the cacique of Paccha, was not the only one to take advantage of the land inspection. Don Bernabé Tirasucso, an Indian notable from the neighboring village of Socos, listed the same maize-and-legume-producing lands of Tomaringa (“the place where one turns,” probably in allusion to the hill that bounded the fields) as belonging to him and his ancestors from time immemorial. Both claims—those of don Francisco and don Bernabé—received the corresponding legal sanction from the judge in 1594.¹⁷ To complicate title to this plot, the Tomaringa fields would enter the historical record again in 1607. In that year, one don Tomás Quispisucso, cacique of the ayllu Anan Quichuas, resettled in Socos, traveled to the viceregal capital of Lima, and secured confirmation of the lands assigned by a local inspector to the whole group back in 1594. The endowment included Tomaringa, where don Tomás himself owned certain plots. Three parallel titles to the same fields were thus created in 1594.

Seventeen years later, in 1611, don Francisco Paucartira's niece, doña Leonor Cocachimbo, also claimed ownership of the lands of Tomaringa and presented her uncle's last will and testament and Solano's 1594 recognition as legal evidence. Don Bernabé Tirasucso, however, disputed doña Leonor's claim before the local magistrate by presenting Solano's older, parallel recognition to the same plot, likewise obtained during the land inspection and confirmed by the Royal Court of Appeals in Lima (the same document that the cacique of the Anan Quichuas had presented in 1607 to uphold the rights to the fields of the whole group).

The legal battle between doña Leonor Cocachimbo and don Bernabé Tirasucso for the lands of Tomaringa took an unexpected turn the following year, in 1612, when expert witnesses summoned to convene at the disputed site unanimously declared that the fields did not belong to either of these litigants. Rather, the fields were ancestral lands that belonged to doña Isabel Cusicoca, the daughter of the late cacique of Socos, don Cristóbal Quispitura, who had inherited them from his forebears (see Figure 1 below). According to the witnesses, “[the] said Leonor Coca Chimbo and Bernabé Sucso have no right [to the fields] whatsoever”.¹⁸

Figure 1 Litigants to the Fields of Tomaringa, 1611.

Source: Autos seguidos por doña Catalina y doña Luisa Cusichimbo, indias del pueblo de Socos en la provincia de Huanta, que era de la encomienda del Marqués de Oropesa, sobre propiedad de unas tierras en el valle de Tomaringa, que heredaron de don Bernabé Susco Paucar, y de las que pretendía despojarlas Diego López de Planas, vecino de la ciudad de Huamanga, a título de haberlas compuesto con Su Majestad, Huamanga, 1642, Archivo General de la Nación, Derecho Indígena y Encomiendas, leg. 8, cdo. 107.

To everyone's surprise, then, the witnesses identified the third party—doña Isabel Cusicoca—as the fields’ legitimate owner; however, they also acknowledged that doña Leonor and don Bernabé did have tenuous rights to the lands under dispute, rights that were contingent upon communal consensus and dissimilar criteria for determining inheritance rights. On one hand, doña Leonor was doña Isabel's cousin in the first degree; hence, the two women shared unnamed ancestors. On the other hand, don Bernabé was the son of one don Juan Turaraymi and the grandson of Inca Raymi, presumably an Inca scion who died without receiving baptism. These were also relatives of doña Isabel, a fact that was not made explicit at the time of the witnesses’ convocation. Basing his decision purely on the words of the witnesses and disregarding Solano's 1594 titles, the local magistrate awarded the fields of Tomaringa to doña Isabel Cusicoca on January 20, 1612.¹⁹

Notwithstanding this story's many twists and turns, some things are clear. First, local witnesses in Paccha and Socos knew about these conflicting land claims, as much in 1611 as they had in 1594, when Solano and Guaman Poma inspected the region and granted title(s) to Tomaringa. Upon receipt of the apparently straightforward land records that had been corroborated by Solano's notary and interpreter based on local testimony, the judge granted parallel titles for the same fields to two later-to-be-opposed branches of the same family. Second, long before the lists of lands and their owners were entered into the legal record, different individuals in the two villages could have orally contested preliminary statements and contradictory witness testimonies before the notary and interpreter. In this case, for unknown reasons, they did not. Third, though at first glance the official lists of lands stamped with the judge's approval project an image of continuity and consensus, these records gloss over tensions over lands, especially conflicts among relatives, exacerbated years later by the judge's presumably involuntary adjudication of the same plots of land to two different subjects—and, by extension, to two different villages. Thus, underwriting the complex histories of possession and inheritance included in the preliminary land records handed to Solano for approval in 1594, there is the role of the interpreter as the creator of a judicial, yet always unstable, “truth” about the original owners of Tomaringa.

The skills and knowledge gathered by Guaman Poma during these crucial years are, to a significant extent, the ‘stuff’ of which the Nueva corónica is made.²⁰ Such experiences informed Guaman Poma's legal and authorial strategies in multiple ways. They fully familiarized him with and made him part of multiple micro-investigations into past and novel land tenure systems, thus granting him firsthand access to the legal arguments and crafty narratives used by claimants and their advocates to secure legal titles from the judge Solano de Figueroa. This toolbox of legal knowledge, skills, and connections prepared Guaman Poma to lay claim to the lands of Chupas, near Huamanga, two years later, in 1597. This legal claim eventually led him to seek confirmation from the viceroy Luis de Velasco and the Royal Court of Appeal in Lima.²¹

Such claims were ultimately rejected by the courts, and so these years also familiarized Guaman Poma with the inherent ambiguities and dangers of land titling in early colonial Peru. I strongly suspect that a scenario like that which unfolded around the Tomaringa fields in Socos (discussed above and in the sections below) was configured in the legal proceedings that pitted the local Chachapoyas community against the heirs of don Juan Tingo during Guaman Poma's famous legal battle for the lands of Chupas. To begin with, both parties laid claim to the same lands, with titles dating back to the 1540s. As in the case of Tomaringa, moreover, colonial authorities awarded parallel titles to the same lands of Chiara (in Chupas) to members of the Tingo clan (Inés Coca) as well as the Chachapoyas families during the same years, in 1586 and 1594.²² As previously mentioned, Guaman Poma served as self-appointed procurator to the heirs Juan Tingo and Domingo Guaman Mallqui as they fought for the lands in Chupas against the Chachapoyas community between 1597 and 1600. This legal dispute was to lead to his dramatic punishment and expulsion from Huamanga. After his legal defeat, these seemingly unrecognized ancestral rights to the lands of Chupas would haunt some of the pages of the Nueva corónica, though in veiled form, as the author lamented the loss of the family possessions.²³

Royal Ayllus in Huamanga

Without additional information, it is difficult to disentangle the different histories of possession and parallel claims to the lands that Guaman Poma heard, translated, and—to some extent decided upon—in 1594 as different parties argued that the Tomaringa fields were theirs. Nevertheless, the names and genealogical relations of some of the litigants suggest that the lands under dispute had likely been under the control of Sucso ayllu, whose members claimed direct descent from Huiracocha Inca, one of the former rulers of Tahuantinsuyo. Sucso ayllu controlled different plots in the valley of Cuzco and beyond.²⁴ Apparently, some of its members also maintained an important presence in the Huamanga region, and more specifically in the villages of Paccha and Socos, after the Spanish conquest (and likely earlier, from Inca times).

Individuals with the surname “Sucso” appear in the legal proceedings concerning the lands of Tomaringa, in different capacities. Some, like don Tomás Sucso, don Cristóbal Pasucsso, and don Cristóbal Sucsso, were among the expert witnesses called upon by litigating parties in 1611 to testify about the ownership of the plots. Moreover, the lands in question bordered the plots of other members of this extended family, such as don Bernabé Tirasucso (also called Sucsopaucar, the plaintiff in 1611 and the grandson of Inca Raymi), don Cristóbal Ataosucso, and Tomás Quispisucso, very likely his close relatives. The proliferation of these individual owners and plots suggests the breaking up of previous generations’ extensive territory, originally acquired by way of conquest by the lords of Cuzco and later confirmed during the formal establishment of the colonial villages of Pachas and Socos in the 1570s or 1580s.

Although members of this royal ayllu seem to have been split between the villages of Pacha and Socos during the resettlement process of those years, Sucso nobles exercised lordship over a prominent local ayllu, that of the Anan Quichuas. Settled by Spanish royal authorities in Socos, Anan Quichuas had been present in the region since the Inca conquest (or had arrived because of it). Local or not, the men of the group had achieved the rank of “Incas by privilege,” and their labor likely supported the noble Sucsos.²⁵ Indeed, Guaman Poma described the Anan Quichuas as lower-ranking Incas, comparing them to the Cavinas and the Andamarcas, his own relatives and co-litigants.²⁶ He even mentioned one don Pedro Guambo Toma, “paramount lord of the Quichigua Indians, of one-hundred-and-eighty years of age,” as a “firsthand witness for this [Nueva] Corónica.”²⁷ As stated, don Tomás Quispesucso was the Anan Quichuas’ paramount lord at the time of Solano's inspection. He was also the cacique who obtained confirmation of these lands and others from Lima's Royal Court in 1607. The story we just recounted, thanks to don Bernabé Sucso Paucar's land titles, sheds light on the mechanisms through which Guaman Poma could have obtained firsthand information about Inca men—those of royal ancestry and those of tributary status—during his time as an interpreter in the land inspection.

Conclusion

Though seemingly describing a mundane bureaucratic act, this microhistory of the First General Land Inspection provides both a window into these proceedings as they unfolded at ground level—an aspect generally overlooked in general analyses—and suggests how Felipe Guaman Poma's capacity as interpreter of this inspection gave him access to Inca informants. He used their experiences and testimonies both to construct the Nueva corónica’s vision of the Incas and to place his own claims, as chronicler and prince, before the king. Moreover, the years between 1596 and 1600, when Guaman Poma served as self-appointed procurator to the heirs of Juan Tingo and Domingo Guaman Mallqui as they jointly fought for the lands of Chupas against the Chachapoyas and others, cannot be understood without these foundational experiences. Notwithstanding Guaman Poma's defeat—he was declared an impostor and an irrelevant party to the land claim—his judicial efforts were remarkable. Few native Andeans of his time possessed such pragmatic knowledge about land and how to secure title to it in the courts. Don Bernabé Sucso Paucar's 1615 titles shed light on the means through which Guaman Poma acquired this type of highly specialized knowledge, as well as the administrative and judicial mechanisms behind this acquisition.