Abstract

The manuscript of Huarochiri, the only known Andean colonial text written in Quechua, is a testimony of Andean thought and philosophy. Nevertheless, this anonymous text has not received the attention it deserves from scholars working in the Latin American colonial literature. Based on a study of this written legacy of a people, whose traditions are still with us today, I conclude that the manuscript can be considered as an expression of a philosophical system dealing with the human effort of the Huarochiri people to understand the world, and its human and non-human elements. The questions and answers present in the myths about the meaning of life, the origins of sickness and death, the relationship between men and women, have guided my research into the formulation of Andean cosmology and theology, anthropology, and ethics. I have also established that this philosophy is intercultural because it opens up a specific modality of relationship both amongst different peoples within the Huarochiri community, as well as with Incas and Spaniards. ;I have undertaken the study of the manuscript as a palimpsest of various discourses where the collective voice as and the secondary voices are heard without loosing their own originality. In this sense, the construction of the history of different social groups all descendants from the God Pariacaca did not prevent the formation of a distinctive feminine voice emanating from the Goddess Chaupinamca. It is also seen that in the intercultural exchange between Indian and Christian visions, the alignment of the narrator to Christian values does not preclude the reader from finding in the same manuscript indigenous values and thoughts. For this reason, even though the Andean region and culture include a variety of zones and peoples, the manuscript can serve as a foundational written text for the entire Andean people, for it is an ancient record of the principle of relationality and a synthesis of these people's dialogic capacity