Blas Valera - The Writer

The Writer

Luckily this man, who had the opportunity to know people who were able to provide very valuable information to him, was provided with a remarkable talent that distinguished him from his very early studies. Since he was a very young man, he could realize how important was, for the Peruvian history, to compile data information about the great Inca culture, which was already becoming extinct as fast as the western culture was imposing in this country.

All his works were written in Latin and, according to his critics, they were written in an elegant, neat and clean style. He narrated events of Peruvian past with a rigorous critical sense, accepting only the events that were supported by irrefutable evidence. This fact has given the authority to his writings that Garcilaso recognized in them. Many other historians have coincided with Garcilaso's judgment later. Some of them also believed that in other chroniclers' works, there are plagiarisms of the work of this venerable Jesuit and even the clandestine use of unpublished documents that he could not release.

In 1595, being in Spain, Valera lost valuable writings in the plundering of Cadiz made by the Englishmen. Some of them were acquired later by Garcilaso, who relates that they were provided him by the Jesuit Pedro Maldonado. Maldonado saved the documents, and even though they were burnt and mistreated, Garcilaso thought that they were a valuable source of information with more authenticity and credibility than any other chronicler of the epoch.