709. Wachtel, Nathan. "PensŽe suavage et acculturation: l'espace et le temps chez Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala et l'Inca Garcilaso de la Vega." Annales: ƒconomies, SociŽtŽs, Civilisations 3-4, 1971a: 793-840.
A structuralist study of Garcilaso's Commentarios Reales de las Incas (1609) and Poma's Nueva Cor—nica y Buen Gobierno (ca. 1615). Garcilaso was born of a conquistador and an Inca princess and went to Spain at the age of twenty, never to return to Peru; though he spoke with some pride of his Indian ancestry, he was essentially raised a Spaniard.
Poma was pure Indian, Christianized and Spanish-speaking, who seems to have earned his living as a wandering interpreter. Both men wrote histories of Peru up to and including the conquest. Wachtel's analysis demonstrates that both, having undergone acculturation at about the same time, took elements of their respective foreign cultures and systematically integrated them into their own cultures' structures of thought. Thus acculturation cannot invariably be taken either as a one-way street, as haphazard borrowing of indiscriminate items, or as a sort of wholesale adaptation of a new system. It is interesting to note that Poma's work looks for salvation to Philip II of Spain, quite logically in terms of the Inca system of thought.
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