Book cover placeholder

Copyright

Stephanie Merrim

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-908-1
Hardback978-1-80511-909-8
PDF978-1-80511-910-4
HTML978-1-80511-912-8
EPUB978-1-80511-911-1

Language

  • English

THEMA

  • DSB
  • DSBD
  • NHK
  • QRRT1
  • QRM

BISAC

  • LIT004100
  • LIT000000
  • HIS033000
  • HIS024000
  • REL006630
  • REL070000

Keywords

  • Buenaventura de Salinas y Córdova
  • Colonial Peru
  • Colonial Latin American activist texts
  • Bartolomé de Las Casas
  • Indigenous Studies
  • Social Justice

    Who Will Speak the Truth?

    Buenaventura de Salinas y Córdova’s Activist Memorial, Peru, 1630

    • Stephanie Merrim (translator)
    • Stephanie Merrim (editor)
    FORTHCOMING
    'Who Will Speak the Truth?' brings to light the powerful seventeenth-century voice of the Peruvian Franciscan Buenaventura de Salinas y Córdova, whose 'Memorial on the Histories of the New World, Peru' (1630) stands as one of the earliest and most forceful creole denunciations of colonial injustices against Andean Indigenous peoples. Framed by the apocalyptic imagery of the opening of the Seventh Seal in the Book of Revelation, Salinas’s Memorial is both exposé and call to action, articulating a passionate plea for justice and reform within the Spanish Empire.

    This volume offers the first English translation and a robustly annotated edition of the key activist chapters from the Memorial, accompanied by a modernized Spanish transcription and an interpretive essay situating Salinas within a broader tradition of colonial advocacy. Building on the legacy of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s 'Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias' (1552), the essay traces a vibrant 'activist archive' of colonial Peru in which creole, Indigenous (such as Guaman Poma de Ayala), and Spanish voices contested oppression and demanded fair treatment for Native communities.

    Accessible to students and valuable to specialists, this volume reveals Salinas’s work as a crucial milestone in the history of colonial activism, Indigenous advocacy, and transatlantic debates about justice, empire, and moral responsibility.

    Endorsements

    I am very supportive of her thesis, the importance of religious writers in the canon of Latin American colonial authors. Their role has been much neglected and her exploration of the author of this Peruvian Memorial is super important ― his religious vocation together with his social activism. His position as a member of a criollo family, his sense that he can appeal to the Spanish king as a person of privilege, his travels to Europe and then his final position in Mexico, are fascinating. They enrich our understanding of Spanish American literature and social history.

    Nancy Vogeley

    Contributors

    Stephanie Merrim

    (translator)
    Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies at Brown University

    Stephanie Merrim is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies at Brown University. She is the author of several books including Early Modern Women's Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture.

    Stephanie Merrim

    (editor)
    Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies at Brown University

    Stephanie Merrim is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies at Brown University. She is the author of several books including Early Modern Women's Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture.