It is well known that when the Spaniards arrived in both Mexico and Peru, the Amerindian cultures of these regions had already developed their own systems of recording information. In the case of the Aztecs, the extensive use of pictorial representations kept alive the memory of the ancestors and the myths of origin and also contained a great deal of information about the daily affairs of the state. In the case of the Incas, the prevailing form of representation was the khipu, a system of cords and knots that was used mainly for statistical purposes but also in the highly specialized art of recording political and military history.

Both the pictorial representations (compiled in códices after the Spanish invasion) and the khipu were systems not directly related to language. They helped one to recall a verbal account of the referred facts, but they did not represent phonetic materializations of spoken language. In most cases, their signs and designs could be deciphered only by a specialist, someone capable of "reading" the representations and interpreting them for political authorities upon demand.

It is not my purpose here to enter into details about the complexity of the códices and khipu. There already exists a large bibliography on the subject, most recently Joyce Marcus' Mesoamerican Writing Systems, Robert and Marcia Ascher's Code of the Quipu, and the compilation by Walter Mignolo and Elizabeth Hill Boone entitled Writing without Words. These works argue that in highly developed Amerindian cultures there were forms of literacy and inscription that differed from the alphabetic literacy considered by Europeans to be the only form of true writing.

In this essay I intend to present a panoramic view of the most prominent cases in which colonial subjects appropriated alphabetic literacy for their own ends. In some of these cases, indigenous and mestizo writers managed to preserve elements of their Amerindian discursive traditions, not only in content but also in terms of original structures and modes of narration. In addition to adapting alphabetical writing to their native discursive backgrounds, these writers attempted to negotiate some economic and symbolic privileges before the Spanish authorities. As members of elite groups within the native cultures, these writers enjoyed privileged access to the technology of alphabetical writing, thus ensuring themselves cultural legitimacy within the colonial order. Part of the concern of current literary scholars in studying these indigenous and mestizo cases of alphabetic writing departs upon the need to describe with textual and linguistic approaches the complexity of the political struggle and the social processes by which these native leaders preserved and transformed their own cultural identity. This kind of approach complements a purely historical one, generally focused on explicit contents.

I will concentrate here on cases from the Andean world, referring only briefly to three very important cases from the Aztec context. Most of these cases will already be familiar to the specialized reader. However, I would like to put these cases within the context of the ongoing struggle in native culture between, on the one hand, acceptance of acculturation, and on the other hand, the maintenance of continuity whith their non-European past. I use the concept of acculturation here to mean assimilation and not simply "cultural contact," as Robert Redfield and others would have it. By the term "continuity," I refer to both renewal and resistance, but also to the inevitable adaptation to a new cultural and political order. Sometimes, this process of adaptation leads to a phenomenon that recent Latin American cultural critics identify as "transculturation," even though this theoretical framework was originally applied to post-Enlightenment processes of cultural contact and exchange.

To begin with the Aztecs, it is important to remember that after the first years of the siege and capture of the city of Mexico/Tenochtitlan in 1521, Spanish friars trained some of the tlacuilos, or scribes (painters, more exactly) of the Aztec régime in the use of alphabetic literacy. These scribes in the late 1520s produced the first written versions of the conquest in Nahuatl, without neglecting the continuity of their ancient pictorial mode of representation. However, these manuscripts were practically unknown until the 1550s and 1560s when priests like Bernardino de Sahagún and Diego Durán began to compile ethnographic information on ancient Aztec beliefs. Although subsequently edited and translated by Spanish and mestizo priests, these first indigenous alphabetic accounts of the conquest somehow survived to contest the imposition of the triumphalist and heroic versions of the same historical events narrated by such Spanish historians as López de Gómara and Cervantes de Salazar. At the same time, in his translations of original Nahuatl versions of ancient myths and royal genealogies, Sahagún preserved, whether consciously or not, some of the original formulaic structures and heroic depictions in the narration of the origins of gods like Huitzilopochtl and Tezcatlipoca. Ángel María Garibay, one of the most important scholars of Sahagún's ethnographic endeavor, has recognized that the sixteenth-century Spanish version still preserved the form of an indigenous epic poem.

However, it was only over the course of succeeding generations that native authors began to express their own perspectives writing directly in Spanish. Two representative cases are those of Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. The first is the author of Crónica Mexicana (ca. 1598), an account of Aztec history from pre-Hispanic times until the end of the sixteenth century. Tezozomoc, who declared himself a grandson of the late Moctezuma through his maternal line, was also a son of the cacique Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin, an Aztec noble who held the title of governor of the town of Ehecatepec until 1539, when he became governor of the city of Mexico/Tenochtitlan. According to Mario Mariscal, the Crónica Mexicana was originally written in Nahuatl and later translated into Spanish by Tezozomoc himself or by an anonymous translator. Mariscal also presents a third possibility: that Tezozomoc dictated his historical version of the Aztec past in Nahuatl and that this version was then simultaneously translated and written down by someone who did not have a strong command of Spanish. The Crónica Mexicana contains numerous repetitions of words referring to objects that probably had homonymous denominations in the Nahuatl version. There are also multiple syntactical structures that do not correspond to the style of late sixteenth-century Spanish chronicles, and that reflect underlying Nahuatl structures. The use of the formulaic repetition of words and the presence of long descriptive and enumerative passages regarding the clothes and gifts of important personages are also possible reminiscences of an oral memorized version. For many reasons, Tezozomoc's work constitutes an important stage in the long conquest of alphabetical literacy by members of the dominated society, reflecting as it does Aztec styles of narration and cultural resonances that ultimately modified the dominating Spanish modes of historical writing.

The second author is the mestizo historian Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, born in 1578 and a descendant of the lords of Texcoco, one the city-states which formed part of the Aztec Triple Alliance of the Mexican central valley. While Alva Ixtlilxochitl did incorporate into his work the system of warrior values deployed by Spanish historians to explain and praise the actions of the conquerors, he also infused the actions of his indigenous ancestors with heroism, thereby restoring their dignity and honor. His mother's great-grandfather had been Ixtlilxoxhitl, the last king of the Texcoco ruling house according to the mestizo Alva Ixtlilxochitl in his Compendio Histórico del Reino de Texcoco. It was his ancestor who, forming an alliance with Cortés, led thousands of troops against Moctezuma and helped determine the victory of the Christian faith and the Spanish forces. Among many others, one example of the heroism of Ixtlilxochitl, ancestor of the mestizo historian, is the passage in which the king of Texcoco saves Cortés's life by cutting off the arms of several Aztec warriors (472). Thus, Alva Ixtlilxochitl rectifies Spanish versions that declared that Cortés was saved by his own soldiers. However, as Rolena Adorno has stated, "to acknowledge this complicity is not to deny the legitimacy of the position of the colonial subject, but rather to outline its features." In this sense, Alva Ixtlilxochitl represents not so much the "vision of the vanquished" but the voice of indigenous elites who placed themselves on an equal plane with the Spaniards in terms of courage, moral values, and heroism.

In another of his works, the Sumaria Relación de la Historia General de esta Nueva España, Alva Ixtlilxochitl focuses on indigenous history before the arrival of the Spaniards. He establishes his authority in this complex matter by claiming that his sources are the authentic ones, i. e. "las pinturas y caracteres con que están escritas y memorizadas sus historias . . . y los cantos con que las observaban". ("the paintings and marks with which they write and memorize their stories . . . and the song with which they observe them"). He disputed what Spanish historians had written and argued that the amoxtli (Nahuatl name for the book of folded parchments) and oral tradition contained much more accurate information. In this sense, the mestizo historian identifies himself as a colonial subject who claims his own legitimacy and privileges in a universalizing empire. At the same time, he intends to preserve indigenous history by utilizing the same mode of expression that Spanish historians used for colonizing purposes.

Turning now to Peru, the old khipukamayuq, or professionals in the use of the knotted cords or khipu, had managed to transmit their knowledge of the Incan past into alphabetic literacy almost from the first years of the conquest. However, the first document that records this knowledge was not directly written by the khipukamayuq themselves, but was dictated to translators and then written down by Spaniards. Nine years after the occupation of Cuzco by Spanish troops in 1533, Governor Vaca de Castro ordered an investigation into Incan history to be carried out by Spaniards with the help of the Indian informers who were known to be the record keepers of historical memory. He sent for the khipukamayuq of the town of Paqariq Tampu, a place celebrated in Incan origin myths.

The document that resulted from the interviews is known as the Relación del Origen y Descendencia de los Incas. Of the four khipukamayuq who participated in the interviews, we know the identity of only two: Collapiña and Supno. These informants indicated that before the cuzqueño régime of the Incas there had been a state of general chaos, and that --anticipating what all the later chronicles would state-- it was Mankhu Qhapaq, the first Inca, who conquered and "civilized" the neighboring communities and founded the empire. The khipukamayuq also narrated the deeds and victories of succeeding Incas, until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532.

Like many other documents of the period, the Relación del Origen y Descendencia de los Incas of 1542 was presented in the format of a particular Spanish legal document: the "relación de servicios," or account of services rendered by a vassal to a high authority or directly to His Majesty, the King of Spain, in order to obtain honors and compensations. That it was presented in this way is due to the personal interest of Pawllu Inka, one of the sons of the last Inca who ruled before the arrival of the Spaniards. Pawllu Inka, who had cooperated with the Europeans, sought to manipulate some of the information rendered by the four khipukamayuq in order to gain favor for his own lineage. In fact, the only copy we have of the written testimony of the four khipukamayuq is dated 1608, precisely at the moment when the grandson of Pawllu Inka was in the process of petitioning for some special privileges for himself before the Spanish crown in Madrid.

Despite the process of translation, some traces of the original Quechua oral version of the khipukamayuq can still be noted within the Spanish prose into which it was transformed. If we remember that in Andean Incan tradition, information contained in each khipu was organized in sequences of actions and characters, it is most likely that the "reading" of the knots and cords by khipukamayuq was performed by using formula and repetitive structures in Quechua traditional oral style. In the manuscript of the Relación, each one of the biographies of the Incas begins and ends in a similar form, repeating the same patterns. Furthermore, several syntactic structures of the written Spanish version mirror the order of Quechua syntax, such as placing the verb after the modifiers in the predicate of a sentence.

Such commonality with the original Quechua version of the khipukamayuq can be understood because the Spanish written text is basically a transcript of the literal translation undertaken by two Castilians and a mestizo interpreter. They translated the original Quechua version orally into Spanish, which other Spanish scribes then recorded. The result reflects some of the patterns and formulas that the khipukamayuq had used in their own original oral version.

Another element of continuity concerns the direction of the genealogy within both the narration of the khipukamayuq and the written Spanish text. While some Incas are credited with the expansion and consolidation of the cuzqueño state, others (identifiable as the ancestors of the contemporary rivals of Pawllu Inka) receive little recognition. In this sense, even the content of the Relación preserves the selective manipulation of the past so characteristic of the "historical poems" attributed to the Incan court, and in which the khipukamayuq of each royal family of Cuzco were well trained. This was an ancient tradition of narration whose existence is attested to by several of the early chroniclers. The "epic" form and historical recital of the past was an institutionalized and formal practice among the Incas, and was controlled by the state in order to strengthen the power of the sovereign. Both the khipukamayuq, professional bookkeepers and historians who recorded the information that would be used in the poems, and the harawiq, or composers, also in charge of public representations, were supported by the royal families as a specialized staff that contributed to the glorification of their ancestors. An understanding of the forms and uses of this ancient discursive practice is essential to our reading of the particularities of the Relación. Although generally following the format of the Spanish genre of the account of services, or relación, this early colonial document still presents traces of a specific kind of Quechua orality which literary critics and historians have overlooked.

A few decades later, in 1569, twenty-two descendants of the royal family of Tupaq Inka Yupanqi (the tenth ruler) presented two documents to the Spanish authorities of Cuzco in order to claim lands and tributary benefits. The first document or "Memoria" is a list and description of the descendants and of ten witnesses from Incan times who can testify to the identity of the plaintiffs. The second document is called "Memoria de las provincias," and contains a long enumeration of the regions, towns, and military sites that Tupaq Inka Yupanqi conquered, presumably between 1463 and 1493. Both documents were studied by John H. Rowe in 1985, after he found them in the Departmental Archive of Cuzco.

What really matters here is that the order of the provinces and towns of the second "Memoria" is organized in a way that can only be explained through the logic of the khipu system of recording. Although there are several other documents of the period in which descendants of different indigenous noble families petition to recover or preserve their privileges under the colonial régime, this "Memoria" in particular represents a complex intermingling of Spanish legalistic discourse and Incan historical forms of recording. As Rowe observes, some of the places named in the narration of Tupaq Inka Yupanqi's conquests appear before others that are geographically closer to Cuzco, the point of departure for the ruler's military campaigns. This apparent inconsistency reveals the existence of a subtext that models and structures the Spanish written narration according to the characteristics of the khipu cords. In a khipu, there is always a transversal horizontal cord from which several vertical cords hang. These vertical cords may also hold several other small cords that extend from them. It seems that in our case, the khipu-source was organized in vertical cords that meant the conquered provinces, and the subsidiary small cords would have represented fortresses and local chiefs who accepted or were crushed by the power of Tupaq Inka Yupanqi. The knots in each cord would remind the khipukamayuq of the number and order of the fortresses and conquered kurakakuna, or local chiefs. As Rowe explains, each khipu can be read vertically or horizontally. In the first case, the narration of the conquests by provinces would include their fortresses and local chiefs. In the horizontal "reading," the fortresses and chiefs from different provinces would appear juxtaposed in the same category regardless of chronology, thus raising possible confusion in a Westernized lineal reading.

Moreover, the "Memoria" also reveals that some campaigns are narrated in a circular order, i. e., first naming the northern "suyu," or province, and then the eastern one, the southern one, and the western one. This particular spatial order is related to a ritual procedure of Incan military expansion, likened to the form of a spiral that expands itself from a central point of departure. The "Memoria" itself presents the campaigns of Tupaq Inka Yupanqi throughout the entire Andean territory, respecting a similar order at the macro-regional scale: first the provinces conquered in Chinchaysuyu (north), and then in Antisuyu (east), Qullasuyu (south), and Kuntisuyu (west). Regarding style and formulas, Rowe notes that the narrative connections between conquered places consists of stereotypical phrases such as "y luego conquistaron," that repeat the probable oral account made by an indigenous khipukamayuq in charge of keeping the memory of the family's ancestor.

One year later, in 1570, another important document emerged from one of the last surviving Incas who resisted the Spanish colonization in the exiled government of Vilcabamba. Titu Kusi Yupanqi was the name of the Inca who dictated his version of the conquest in order to negotiate privileges under a potential peace with the Spanish régime. This Inca in exile decided to narrate how the Spaniards had committed all kind of abuses against his father, Mankhu Inka, and how his father was justified in carrying out a rebellion against those same Spanish conquerors. The document, called Relación de la Conquista del Perú, or just Instrucción del Inca, originated in Titu Kusi's oral narration which was translated by an Augustinian friar, Marcos García, and then written down by a mestizo scribe, Martín Pando.

Some studies have noted that the translation of Titu Kusi's account manages to keep the form and finality of the oral genre within Incan tradition of the historical poem or "ritual homage" to a dead Inca, ordered by his succesor in order to glorify the deeds of his father. However, in Titu Kusi's case, due to the severe conditions of exile under which he had to dictate his account, the function of this "historical poem" was also informed by the Spanish genre of the account of services, since the text was directed to ex-Governor Lope García de Castro, who was to mediate with the Spanish King to obtain some privileges for the rebel Inca if he surrendered.

Putting aside the political and strategic intentions of the Instrucción del Inca, scholars like Luis Millones have also noted the presence of Quechua orality in the style of the document. The Instrucción presents a heterogeneous structure, since most of the narration consists of long speeches by the principal characters in the drama of the conquest. Thus, Pizarro, Ataw Wallpa, Mankhu Inka, "Vila Oma," or supreme Incan priest, and others intervene with their own words, reproduced by the main narrator, Titu Kusi. According to Millones, this format is consistent with the narrative strategy of Quechua language, in which it is impossible to paraphrase a quote because of the absence of prepositions and conjunctions. For example, to say that Mankhu Inka stated that he disagreed with the Spaniards' behavior, in Quechua you would need to quote Mankhu Inka's words directly. This is common in other Amerindian languages in which the distance between the narrated facts and the main narrator has to be openly indicated by quoting in direct speech the exact words of the participants in the events described. Generally, a verbal form closing the quotation will follow. The narrator appears then as a simple intermediary between the narrated facts and dialogues and the public who hears or reads the narration. In addition to this characteristic, the theatrical or representational nature of the so-called "historical poems" of the Incan court also explains why many of the voices within the text are presented as if they were part of a dramatic script.

At least seventy percent of the total text of the Instrucción consists of long speeches in the voices of the historical characters of the conquest of Peru. Through their words, as presented by Titu Kusi, the reader is presented with a history that deeply criticizes the behavior of the conquistadores and accepts the Spanish presence in the Andes only for the purpose of evangelization. Although some features of the text reveal the intervention of the translator and the scribe in the deployment of the Christian defense, it is also possible to affirm that important components of this document continue to depend upon an indigenous point of view. This is clear not only in the sharp condemnation of the greed and lust of the conquerors, but also in some of the categories of space and time utilized within the Instrucción. To offer just one example: While narrating the Great Rebellion of 1536 led by his father, Mankhu Inka, Titu Kusi describes the Incan armies as moving in a counter-clockwise direction when descending upon Cuzco. Such troop movement is in contrast to the traditional clockwise spiral movement that Incan armies followed setting out from Cuzco on campaign. However, during the Great Rebellion, each of the four provinces in which the Incan empire was divided deployed thousands of soldiers whom Titu Kusi describes in his narration as marching in a direction opposite from that of an expansion campaign, since Cuzco was the end point of the Rebellion rather than the point of departure. In its description of the rebellion led by Titu Kusi's father, the narrative, then, reveals an adaptation of a ritual and military Incan strategy.

Another important case of the use of alphabetical literacy in the Andes is Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios Reales, first published in two parts in 1609 and 1617. Garcilaso was a mestizo of high standing in the existing social hierarchy of Peru. His work was written in Spain, however, after 1590, more than thirty years after he left Peru. He managed to manipulate some of the most prestigious literary and philosophical topoi of Renaissance culture in order to paradoxically propose both a pro-Incan and a pro-encomendero vision of Peru. Garcilaso represents the emergence of a new social group, that of the noble mestizos of Cuzco, who glorified the deeds of their ancestors on both sides, the Spanish conquerors and the wisdom and greatness of the Incan régime. Since Garcilaso makes use of a vast array of European references in his Comentarios Reales his work has traditionally been read as a typical case of the assimilation by colonial subjects of the dominant culture, subjects who do little more than repeat and mimic the style and gestures of their Spanish masters.

A principal shortcoming of such an interpretation of Garcilaso is that it pays no attention to the subtleties of the first editions of his work. The most important editions produced during our century --those of Ángel Rosenblat in 1943-44, Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María in 1960, and Carlos Araníbar in 1991--, have served as the exclusive source for many contemporary studies of the Comentarios Reales. All of the above-mentioned editions, however, severely modify Garcilaso's original punctuation, assuming the potential reader of the text to be a learned Westerner. As a result, Garcilaso's prose is transformed into a clear example of how well a mestizo subject of the Spanish king was able to master the Castilian written language.

Despite apparent mistakes and misprints, the rhetorical mechanisms embedded in the first editions of the Comentarios Reales achieve a high degree of authority by evoking, not only some of the most prestigious European literary and religious topoi, but also some key symbols of Incan imagery and by incorporating elements of an Incan mode of narration. With this understanding of his history as a double-voiced discourse, we can deduce the strategy of a writer who is dealing with a European audience and censorship but who is, at the same time, transforming original Andean themes and styles in order to accommodate them within a projective future, just as Alvarado Tezozomoc and Alva Ixtlilxochitl had done in the Mexican case.

For example, when reading the original text aloud the continuous use of formulaic structures to open the chapters that narrate Incan expansions, and the similarity of certain foundational passages to the versal duality (the syntactical/semantic couplets) of Quechua poetry, become perceptible. Such a reading would respect the original punctuation of the Comentarios Reales, a punctuation that modern editions have severely modified in order to better meet the requirements of a visual reading.

Similarly, certain images used in the work to describe the Andean spiritual ages reflect not only European but also ancient Andean imagery. These images have generally been identified only with prestigious literary and rhetorical topoi such as the præparatio evangelica and the Augustinian scheme of the human ascension to the "City of God." But in the metaphors used in the work to talk about Andean spiritual history, there is also a syncretic but contradictory conformation of Incan and European images. Garcilaso used, for example, the allegory of the climatic and temporal phenomena of Obscure Darkness, the Morning Star, and the Sun of Justice to refer to the ages of barbarism, the Incas, and the Christian faith . If we compare the images of Garcilaso's allegory with the Inca pantheon as described by chroniclers who wrote about Inca religion, we find that Garcilaso's images would not have been at all unfamiliar to the surviving Inca aristocracy of the early seventeenth century. The "Morning Star," or Venus, was generally characterized as a servant of the Moon, and it presided over the dawn and the Spring as a symbol of fertility. The "Sun" represented a dual entity, divided into the solstices of Summer and Winter. In the case of the Summer, the Apu Inti, or major sun, was the symbol of the power of a higher celestial god, Wiraqucha. It announced the climax of the rainy season and harvest during the months of December to May. The other sun, P'unchaw, was the weak sun of Winter, when the celestial body is at its furthest distance from the point of observation, Cuzco, in the southern hemisphere. It announced a time of preparation and renovation of the cosmic cycle, and this sun was worshipped during the Inti Raymi celebration of June.

The two Inca suns imply a complexity that any linear reading of the Christian "Sun of Justice" does not capture. For which is the "Sun of Justice" implied by Garcilaso's text if we consider the Incan references: the major sun of December, or the weak sun of June? If we follow a narrative succession based on the temporality of the day, the arrival of the Spaniards would represent the sun immediately following the dawn, and thus could be compared to a sun that has not yet arrived at its potential maturity and power. In this sense, the text would be implying a "fourth age" surpassing the colonial order, which would be represented by a major sun that is not present within the tri-fold description of the Andean spiritual ages.

This example illustrates the possibility of a quite different interpretation of Garcilaso's work, an interpretation that de-centers and even contradicts a purely Europeanized reading of the text. By attending to the Andean resonances of style and semantic fields within the work, we can begin to discern some of the features of an author that is more complex than the traditionally-accepted commonplace of the fully neoplatonic, "acculturated" and "harmonious" mestizo.

I could not finish this brief account of indigenous and mestizo appropriations of alphabetical literacy without referring to the Nueva Coronica written by the Andean cacique Guamán Poma de Ayala. Although peripheral to the Cuzco Incan center (Guamán Poma wrote from Huamanga and declared himself a descendant of local noble ancestors, yet related to the Incan court), his work is a clear example of adaptation of the European historical recording system. The last registered date in his manuscript is 1615, and the text constitutes a long narration about the pre-Incan and Incan past, and a description of a chaotic and infamous colonial order. It is a clear denunciation of the exploitation and injustices suffered by the indigenous population under the Spanish régime. It was intended to reach King Phillip III in Spain, although we do not know if it was examined by any leading Spanish authority. The work was not published during the colonial period, and was only found in 1908 in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, where the manuscript still remains.

Guamán Poma's prose is frequently informed by his Quechua-speaking background. In fact, he introduces several passages directly written in Quechua, and shows in his use of the Spanish language several syntactical and morphological forms that belong to the Quechua structure. For example, he frequently applies masculine adjectives to nouns that are femenine in Spanish. Quechua, like English, is a language that does not distinguish gender or number in adjectives. It is easy to mix such categories when Spanish is a second language at a very early stage of learning. For many years, traditional historians like Raúl Porras Barrenechea scorned Guamán Poma's prose for being so "imperfect" and "illegible." Porras did not considered that despite its multiple grammatical "mistakes," Guamán Poma's prose is the genuine expresion of an Andean Spanish language that has become one of the most characteristic features of Peruvian popular culture in postcolonial times. The Nueva Coronica is also well known because Guamán Poma adds to his narrative version of the pre-Hispanic past and the colonial present some four hundred illustrations related to the topics and situations in the written account. European iconographic models appear in many of these illustrations, but there is also an important amount of icons and a specific use of space structuration that belong to native Andean practices of visual representation.

Commentary by Rolena Adorno and others has shed light on the multiple sources, both Andean and European, that Guamán Poma used in his long account of Andean history. The Nueva Coronica provides us with a clear example of how colonial writers could utilize discursive strategies borrowed from the Spanish in order to serve indigenous interests. The Nueva Coronica is a challenging work in many senses and represents an example of what León-Portilla would call the "counter-conquest" of the Americas. It is important, however, to note that its use of Andean themes and cosmogonic categories is intertwined with its defense of evangelization and its partial similarity to the Spanish genre of the letras arbitristas. The Nueva Coronica is also, then, a good sample of how regional indigenous elites managed to accommodate themselves within the colonial apparatus.

As is obvious from this brief look at some indigenous and mestizo writers, the appropriation of alphabetic literacy assumes different forms depending upon the specific purpose of a text and its degree of closeness to an oral indigenous source. In the Andean area, other peripheral works, such as the Huarochirí Manuscript (ca. 1608), compiled by the mestizo extirpator of idolatries Francisco de Ávila in the area of Yauyos, and the Relación de Antigüedades del Pirú (ca.1615), by the indigenous kuraka Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, of the Collao region, would perfectly fit in the list of native uses of alphabetical literacy. In all cases these strategies of resistance or coexistence are visible enough to compare with the native appropriation of other European means of domination, such as the horse or gun powder. Despite these native endeavors, however, the Spanish construction of a "city of letters" or "ciudad letrada," as the Uruguayan critic Ángel Rama called it, implied new limitations for the indigenous population, who then had to depend on Spanish scribes and lawyers to make their claims before the Peninsular power.

In many cases, assimilation into the European privileged form of communicating and recording information was complete, as is evidenced by thousands of legal documents filling up the shelves of archives in Spain and Latin America. However, in other cases, and I have only described a portion of them here, indigenous and mestizo cultures managed to survive and transmit some features of their heritage, transforming the European forms and functions of alphabetical writing into a complex discourse that is an original feature of early Latin American culture. It is thanks in part to those early writers that many features of contemporary Latin American literature (e. g., the indigenista movement) can be better understood within their own specific context and social and political function. It is also thanks to them that we can now better appreciate the real nature and sophistication of Amerindian cultures and the means by which they were able to maintain continuity with their past during colonial and postcolonial times.