GUAMAN POMA & THE NEW CHRONICLE In 1908, Richard Pietschmann found on the Royal Library of Copenhague a compact manuscript of 1179 pages, extremely rich in illustrations (almost the third of the work), from the early XV century, called "El primer Nueva crónica y buen gobierno", by Guaman Poma de Ayala. The importance of the discovery brought a whole new light upon the Incan history as well as the conquest of the Inca's Empire and the society during the viceroyalty in Peru. The several studies to this book in the last decades along with other chronicles written between the XIV and the XVI centuries have revolutionized many myths and misconceptions we used to have upon the Tahuantinsuyu, its social structure and the whole Andean culture. On 14 February 1615, from Santiago de Chipao in the province of Lucanas in the south central Peruvian Andes, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala wrote King Philip III of Spain that he had just completed a "chronicle or general history" It contained, he said, everything he had been able to learn in his eighty years about Andean history and Spanish rule in the Andes. He added that he would be glad to send his work to the king. Guaman Poma's chronicle of more than a thousand pages had two main purposes: to give the king an account of ancient Andean history from the beginning of time through the reign of the Incas and to inform the monarch about the deepening crisis in Andean society that was a result of Spanish colonization. Guaman Poma called his work "El primer Nueva crónica y buen gobierno," that is, a "new chronicle" and a treatise on "good government" or governmental reform for the Peruvian viceroyalty. The Andean author called his chronicle "new" because it presented a version of pre-columbian and conquest history unfamiliar to readers of the Spanish-authored histories of Peru then in print. He called it a "chronicle or general history" because he posited it as a comprehensive history that took as its subject "the kingdom of the Indies of Peru" from the Andean perspective, in contrast to the genre of the comprehensive or general history of the Indies at large written from the Spanish viewpoint. Guaman Poma presented an elaborate and complex cosmology that wove the dynasties of the Andean past into a Christian model of universal history, and he made the Incas not the first and only great Andean dynasty, but merely the most recent one, succeeding that of the Yarovilcas of Allauca Huánuco from which he claimed descent. With respect to the theme of good government, Guaman Poma sought to convince the king to take action to halt the destruction of Andean society that he described in these terms: The traditional Andean social hierarchies were being dismantled (the world was "upside-down"). The native Andeans were being exploited in the countryside and driven to death in the mines. To escape a dire fate, they were fleeing to the cities where they engaged in the dissipated lifestyle of rogues and prostitutes. From Guaman Poma's Andean perspective, one of the greatest threats was the rapid growth of the mestizo (mixed race) population. Unlike native Andeans, mestizos were free from paying tribute to the colonial administration and, due to miscegenation and intermarriage with native Andeans, they were increasing in numbers at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, the ethnic Andean population was declining precipitously. Large-scale miscegenation, armed violence, the exploitation of native labor, and the spread of epidemic disease would bring an end, in Guaman Poma's view, to the Andean peoples and their culture. The vehicle in which Guaman Poma presented his views was a long prose text, written mostly in Spanish with occasional sections in Quechua, one of Guaman Poma's native languages. He complemented his written text with 398 full-page line drawings interspersed throughout the work. Guaman Poma explained his creation of the pictures by remarking that he understood the king to be fond of the visual arts. Yet Guaman Poma's heavy reliance on the pictorial mode to state his positions and argue his points, particularly about the colonial abuse of the native population, suggests instead that he considered his drawings to be the most direct and effective way of communicating his ideas to the king and persuading him to take remedial action. Guaman Poma wrote that he hoped the king would have his work published so that its advice might be followed by the full range of the king's civil and ecclesiastical officials to halt colonial abuses, protect the native Andeans, and ensure their wll-being. We will never know whether King Philip III personally received Guaman Poma's book, although it seems almost certain that the manuscript arrived at the Spanish court because of its apparent passage through aristocratic hands and its ultimate and present location at the Royal Library of Denmark. This seems to suggest that there had been some form of diplomatic acquisition, such as, for example, the possible receipt of Guaman Poma's manuscript by a Danish ambassador and collector of books who came upon it at the Madrid court.