| Pedro Cieza de León | |
| Native Name: | Pedro de Cieza de León |
| Native Name Lang: | Spanish |
| Birth Date: | 1518 or 1520 |
| Birth Place: | Llerena, Extremadura, Spain |
| Death Place: | Seville, Spain |
| Nationality: | Spanish |
| Fields: | History, geography, ethnography, political science, botany, zoology |
| Signature: | Cieza2.jpg |
Pedro Cieza de León (Llerena, Spain c. 1518 or 1520 – Seville, Spain July 2, 1554) was a Spanish conquistador and chronicler of Peru and Popayán. He is known primarily for his extensive work, Crónicas del Perú (The Chronicle of Peru), which has been a source of knowledge for centuries for different disciplines such as history, philology, geography, biology, anthropology, botany and zoology. He wrote this book in four parts, but only the first was published during his lifetime; the remaining sections were not published until the 19th and 20th centuries.
Cieza de León was born to a family of Jewish conversos around 1520 in Llerena, a town in southeastern Extremadura, less than 100 km (60 mi) from Portugal. Although recently converted from Judaism to Catholicism, the family enjoyed good social standing in the region because of their networks and business dealings.
His father, Lope de León, was a shopkeeper in the town, and his mother, Leonor de Cazalla, was a native of Llerena. There is scant documentary evidence of the young Cieza de León’s childhood, and little is known of his early life before his voyage to the Americas. Given the fact that he left home at 13, it is unlikely that Cieza de León received more than a rudimentary education.
In 1536, in Córdoba, at 16 or 18, Cieza de León was greatly surprised to learn of the discovery of the land of the Incas and so decided to go to Seville to embark on his journey to South America, to see for himself the artifacts of precious metals which had been brought to Spain from Cajamarca.
In light of the prohibition of entry into the Spanish colonies for Jews and Jewish converts to Catholicism, Alonso López and Luis de Torres attested for Cieza de León that he was not prohibited. Jewish converso Pedro López de Cazalla, secretary of Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, conqueror of the Incan Empire, was also his first cousin.
Cieza de León participated in various expeditions throughout South America and he saw the deplorable state into which the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) had fallen. He made note of the sharply reduced population of almost all areas as a result of the Spanish conquest, as also their violence towards the local population. He complained about the state of affairs, writing:
I do not approve of the overthrow of power in any way, but I still mourn the extortion and ill-treatment inflicted by the Spaniards on the Indians, enslaved by cruelty, despite their nobility and the high dignity of their people. Because of this, all these valleys, which were densely populated in the past, are now almost deserted, as many people know.[1]
During Cieza's travels in Peru, he helped found a number of cities. These activities include the following:
Cieza de León returned to Seville, Spain, in 1551 and married a woman named Isabel López de Abreu. In this city he published, in 1553, the first part of the chronicles of Peru (Primera Parte). He died the following year, leaving the rest of his work unpublished. His Second Part of Chronicles of Peru, describing the Incas, was translated by Clements Markham and published in 1871. In 1909, the fourth part of his chronicle, focusing on the civil wars among the Spanish conquerors, was published under the title Third Book of the Peruvian Civil Wars. The third part of Cieza de León's Crónicas del Perú, which examined the discovery and conquest of Peru by the Spaniards, was considered by historians to be lost. The document eventually turned up in a Vatican library, and historian Francesca Cantù published a Spanish version of the text in 1979.
The Chronicle of Peru itself, superbly planned and structured, consists of four parts:
The distribution of the First Part of the Chronicle of Peru is known from Cieza's will: in Medina del Campo Juan de Espinosa sold one hundred and thirty copies, in Toledo thirty - Juan Sanchez de Andrade, and eight - Diego Gutierrez from Los Rios de Cordoba. Juan de Casalla from Seville contracted to sell more than a hundred copies. Books were also sent to Honduras and Santo Domingo.[3]
Concerning the work, The Dominion of the Incas, Raul Porras Barrenechea said: "It is admirable that in such a turbulent time as the years from 1548 to 1550, when Cieza was in Peru, he was able to write a work so thorough, so reliably and reliably documented, and such maturity, about the history and institutions of the Incas. The history of the Incas was a natural given for Cieza, as an adult. No one can dispute his primacy regarding the Incan power. The history of the Castilian chronicler immediately introduced the Incas into world history."[5]
These three books were published in the 19th century, and it is unknown whether the author completed the last two: "War in Huarino" and "War in Jaquihaguana". The manuscripts of the last two books have not been found.
Pedro Cieza de León's historical works led the historian Raúl Porras to coin him the phrase: "the premier chronicler of the Indies."
Though his works are historical and narrate the events of the Spanish conquest of Peru and the civil wars among the Spaniards, much of their importance lies in his detailed descriptions of geography, ethnography, flora and fauna. He was the first European to describe some native Peruvian animal species and vegetables.