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2004, The Jesuit and the Incas
In the spirit of justice Blas Valera broke all the rules -- and paid with his life. Hundreds of years later, his ghost has returned to haunt the official record. But is it the truth, and will it set the record straight? This is the story of Father Blas Valera, a mestizo Jesuit caught between the Andean world and that of the Spanish conquistadors. Valera believed that the Inca culture, religion and language were equal to their Christian counterparts -- a belief that was denounced as heretical by leaders of the Jesuits -- a new religious order that was striving to survive. Four centuries later, this Incan chronicler had been all but forgotten until an Italian anthropologist discovered some startling documents in a private collection in Naples. The documents claimed -- among other things -- that Valera's death had been faked by the Jesuits; that he returned secretly to Peru; and that he penned the famous chronicle attributed to Guaman Poma. Far from settling anything, the documents created an international sensation among scholars and led to a bitter dispute over how they should be assessed. The Italian scholar who first revealed them received death threats for her role in publishing them. In the Jesuit and the Incas, Hyland takes a balanced approach between the two bitter sides of the debate. She argues that the first set of manuscripts found are "true lies" -- colonial forgeries in Valera's name, created by his secret followers. She does not comment , however, on the later 'Naples documents', which had not been brought to light when the book was written.
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