Today Guaman Poma de Ayala finishes his letter to the King of Spain. At the start it was addressed to Philip II, who died while Guaman was writing it. Now he wants it delivered into Philip III's own hand. The pilgrim has trekked from village to village, the author walking over mountains with much snow, eating if he could and always carrying on his back his growing manuscripts of sketches and words. The author has returned from the world...He went through the world weeping the whole way and has finally reached Lima. From here he proposes to travel to Spain. How he will manage that, he doesn't know. What does it matter? No one knows Guaman, no one listens to him and the monarch is very remote and very high up; but Guaman, pen in hand, treats him as an equal, addresses him familiarly, and explains to him what he should do.
Exiled from his province, naked, treated as nothing, Guaman does not hesitate to proclaim himself inheritor of the royal dynasties of the Yarovilcas and Incas and calls himself king's counselor, first Indian chronicler, prince of the realm, and second-in-command. He has written this long letter out of pride: His lineage stems from the ancient lords of Hua'nuco, and he has incorporated in the name he gives himself the falcon and the puma of his ancestors' coat-of-arms, they who ruled the lands of northern Peru before Incas and Spaniards.
To write this letter is to weep. Words, images, tears of rage. The Indians are the natural owners of this realm and the Spaniards, natives of Spain, are strangers here in this realm. The apostle Santiago, in military uniform, tramples on a fallen native. At banquets, the plates are heaped with miniature women. The muleteer carries a basket filled with the mestizo children of the priest. Also, it is God's punishment that many Indians die in mercury and silver mines. In all Peru, where there were one hundred, not ten remain. "Do you eat this gold?", asks the Inca, and the conquistedor replies: "This gold we eat."
Today, Guaman finishes his letter. He has lived for it. It has taken him half a century to write and draw. It runs to nearly 1200 pages. Today, Guaman finishes his letter and dies.
Neither Philip the III nor any other king will ever see it. For three centuries it will roam the earth, lost.
Memory of Fire. Eduardo Galeano. 1985. Pantheon Books. New York. p.184-5.