Christopher Dilke's The Nueva Coronica

In The Nueva Coronica book, by Guaman Poma de Ayala, Guaman Poma reveals the Indigenous Peruvians’ perspective over the Spanish regime was totalitarian. This source proves to be very valuable at the time because it was like none other, since the Incans did not have written documents of themselves; they used Quipu (bead and knot system). David Frye, Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, and Christopher Dilke present their translations with different connotations (significances). However, all of the facsimiles of Guaman Poma by the historians all can provide a framework for the audience to understand the Native Peruvians’ perspective of the Spanish Church community and Priests.

The visual aspects of the translations differ greatly while comparing

On the other hand, the facsimiles have differing expressions of the document’s intent. Dilke states that his translation’s purpose was to “bring attention to the Spanish Court the great merits and the sufferings under the Spanish rule of the Peruvian people” (Dilke 15). Dilke effectively positions his reasoning, just as Mills and Taylor did with theirs. Mills and Taylor describe Guaman Poma’s manuscript as a “moral condemnation and stinging critique of flagrant disobedience of royal laws and colonial ordinances”… “That would assist the survival of native Andean people” (Mills & Taylor 153). Although Dilke’s translation just demonstrated the Incans being treated poorly by the Spanish Empire’s rule, but in Dilke’s translation they only were suffering under Spanish regulation. The Andeans being treated poorly by the law breaking Spaniards, who’s “example [for the Indians] they set [was] nearly always bad”, is demonstrated by both the ‘Mills and Taylor’ and ‘Dilke” translations (Dilkes, 146). They all had the intention to let the audience sympathize with the horrors occurring with the Spanish maltreatment of the Native Incas. On the other hand, Frye references “Guaman Poma’s Indictment’ by presenting a simple numbered list, however he does not display Poma’s intentions for the letter to the King. Frye’s main intentions were to make Poma’s work more accessible to a general audience, as opposed to

These interpretations were molded by what the historians believed to be most important from Poma’s manuscripts. In order to gain better attention of the reader, Dilke first eliminated passages which seemed to be of no conceivable interest to the reader”… and “omitting a lot of redundant passages” (Dilke, 14). Since the translation was able to effectively translate and organize the passage, readers were able to keep an interest since they experienced texts with new ways to understand it. Guaman Poma’s bringing of “attention to the Spanish Court the great merits and sufferings under Spanish rule of the Peruvian people”, is revealed by Dilke’s attempt “to throw nothing of value away” from the text (Dilke, 15). The abridged Mills and Taylor translation is less like Dilke’s, except there is a resolution presented for the problem with the Spanish Priests. Some of these resolutions encouraged that the Spanish Priests “should be proven and tested for academic preparation as well as for humility, charity, love, and fear of God and justice” (Mills & Taylor, 163). Contrastingly, Frye’s facsimile does not present ant solutions for the Spanish Priest’s corruption and primarily focusses on making it more ‘accessible’. While the Frye translation’s intent is to be more accessible to a broader audience, Mills