By Gonzalo Dominguez Loeda |
Lima (EFE).- In 1538, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro ignored one of the most basic advice and signed without having read the “calf book”, a compilation with hundreds of manuscripts prepared by his other army, that of notaries. Today, this work, the oldest written in Spanish in South America, is an unbeatable time machine for getting to know the nascent Peru.
“Surely he trusted the people who were part of his team. For us, signing a document without reading it is a mortal sin,” explains Ricardo Arturo Moreau Heredia, institutional head of the General Archive of the Nation (AGN) of Peru, the custodian of the Itinerant Protocol of the Conquistadors, to EFE.
And how is it possible to know that he signed his name without having read it first? The answer is simple, the man who led the conquest of the Inca Empire together with his brothers Hernando and Gonzalo was illiterate, he barely learned to write a sign next to his name.
From the Spanish of Cervantes to that of Vargas Llosa
The book, which gave an account of loans, payments and other legal obligations, includes legendary passages from the history of the conquest of Peru, such as the capture of the Inca Atahualpa.
However, its reading was complicated for many Peruvians and, to remedy this, the AGN has published a new version in which it translates the Castilian of the 16th century, the same in which Don Quixote was written, into one adapted to that of the Peruvians of the XXI century.
“Here we have specialists who have done hard work and we have been able to translate and update some terms so that this publication that we provide can be understood,” explains Moreau.
Those who approach the book today may be in for the same surprise as those who found it at the end of the 19th century in a notary’s office in Lima, where it accumulated dust waiting for someone to come across its stories.
In the document, after unraveling a text shaped for their eyes, Peruvians will be able to see how a society of almost five centuries survives, fossilized in a snapshot.
Of mules and rescues
In its pages, the equipment purchased for combat and exploration was portrayed, where the use of horses and mules, payments to soldiers and also money loans abound.
“There are contracts for the sale of horses, slaves, there are inventories of what the soldiers travel with, such as clothing trousseau (…) and also promises of payment that were made to fix loans,” explains the archivist.
Among them, promises of payment as soon as the Incas delivered the ransom of their sovereign Atahualpa -who appears as Atabalipa, in the text-, captured on November 16, 1532 in a daring raid by Pizarro that marked the beginning of the fall of everything. an empire.
But the Pizarros, who had to recount the succulent profits daily, were not alone. By his side, as documented in the “calf book”, thousands of inhabitants of the area fought who, subjugated by the Incas, saw in Extremadura a chance to free themselves from their yoke.
A group of Central American and African slaves also walked by his side, another example of the human journey that had begun to consolidate.
Pizarro and the rule of law
The book shows, especially, “the first contacts, the first forms of exchange,” explains Moreau Heredia.
“You have to keep something important in mind: when the Spaniards arrive they bring with them several important things, but the main one is religion, their culture and their laws,” he details.
And there are no laws without notaries, the 16th century equivalent of public notaries who will be the ones who draft these documents and capture “the first interactions that take place in this process of implanting the laws of the empire from Castilla to Tahuantinsuyo”, the empire of the Incas.
“We are going to see how religion, culture, soldiers and laws are going to be the first culture clash with this empire that has been established,” he says.
To understand, as Moreau Heredia says, it is necessary “to give the context of this documentation that has to do with a historical process that is part” of Peruvian culture.
A story that can almost be heard narrated by the same voice whose pulse sealed the document, a character that arouses rejection and attraction in equal parts, but who shows all his weaknesses with his signature, stamped without hesitation, but with the doubts of who should entrust your own freedom to whoever is next to you.
