Sum and narration of the Incas

Suma y narración de los Incas, by Juan de Betanzos, directly narrates the history of the cultures of the Andean territories and the encounter with the Spaniards. It was written in Cuzco around 1551, very few years after the Inca Empire was conquered, from the oral testimonies of elders who kept the memory of the past.
It is considered that Suma y narración de los Incas is one of the first works of indigenist character. It contains precise data and with a lot of information about the customs of the Inca domain because Betanzos was married to Princess Cuiritnay OcIlo, main wife of Atahualpa, which gave Betanzos enormous prestige among the Inca nobles, especially those of the lineage of Atahualpa.
Juan de Betanzos was one of the few Spanish conquistadors who managed to learn Quechua, the official language of the Inca Empire. This served him to be the interpreter and right hand of Francisco Pizarro. Thanks to this, and his marriage he managed to win the friendship of much of the Inca nobility.
Undoubtedly, the chronicler was a link between the Inca people and the Spain of his time, being a political relative of the Cuzco nobles and mastering their language.
From the first pages it is noted that Juan de Betanzos knew very closely the events that occurred in the huge Andean territory, because he begins by establishing the genealogy of the Inca kings and then their cosmogony, which according to tradition has divine origins; after which he exposes the war-expansive events, carried out by the Cuzco ethnic group, from the first monarchs. Now, as what really interested the author was the Inca world, in the last part of the work, he channels his narrative again towards the last descendant of the monarchy, Manco Inca.
This edition of the Suma y narración de los Incas is based on that of Marcos Jiménez de la Espada and contains the notes of this outstanding editor.