This dissertation combines literary and historical approaches to the study of the Huarochirí Manuscript, the only book-length text written in the Quechua language in early seventeenth-century colonial Peru by an anonymous indigenous writer. I argue that this manuscript dramatizes the colonial project, in its material and spiritual aspects, by using language and narrative as places where the possibilities and limits of the written word are shown tied to the context of the colonial practices of the ‘reduction of Indians’ and ‘extirpation of idolatries’. The anonymous Andean manuscript posits ambiguous and thus challenging views concerning ‘Indian’ identities, the mechanisms of memory, and the processes of recognition of the sacred in a polarized context between Christian traditions and ‘idolatrous’ practices. I analyze the strength and political implications of these views in contrast to other contemporary texts such as the El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615) by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, the Relación de las antigüedades deste reyno del Piru (c.1613), by Don Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti, and Francisco de Ávila’s Tratado y relación de los errores (1608) and the Tratado de los evangelios (1647).

A central aspect of my dissertation is the study of the colonization of indigenous languages. I examine the language policies that, particularly since the late sixteenth century, carefully regulated the translation of Christian concepts into indigenous languages such as Quechua, the main language of the former Inca Empire. The transformation of Quechua into a written language with the aim of producing texts for evangelical purposes would have effects well beyond language itself. In this context, the Huarochirí Manuscript conforming neither to the genres nor to the purposes of those evangelization texts stands out as an exceptional case.