Reconciling the Divided Self: Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Royal Commentaries and His Platonic View of the Conquest of Perú

Abstract

This paper tries to demonstrate how the production of literature and historical discourse were restrained by policies of imperial expansion. The first generation of Latin American writers are examples of having to shape a discourse that would allow them to publish and be heard mainly by an European audience. One of the first writers to publish a literary work is El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an indigenous woman and a Spanish conqueror. Writing in an old age, Garcilaso tells the story of Inca Civilization under the theories of neo-platonism, a philosophical approach to universal synthesis and harmony. Garcilaso avoids confrontation to the European establishments by obscuring the hard facts of colonial rule in the Viceroyalty of New Castile, modern Peru. Neo-platonism and providentialism failed to reconcile the socalled encounter of two cultures.