Bartolomé de Las Casas and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala: Republicanism on the Colonial Frontier

Abstract

This article will examine how Bartolomé de Las Casas and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala use the republican lexicon on the colonial frontier. Initially, it explicates how Las Casas extends the concept of republican liberty to include the singular peoples that the American world presented. For this, it highlights the pretensions of truth and validity in the face of the Other, as well as the democratisation of the right to resistance. Then, it introduces how Guaman Poma translates between the republican public good and Andean reciprocity. In the mestizo chronicle’s political imaginary, we find a republican underpinning whose notion of public good presupposes the de-privatisation of the communal.