Comentarios Reales de los Incas

The Comentarios Reales de los Incas is a book written by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the first published mestizo writer of colonial Andean South America. The Comentarios Reales de los Incas is considered by most to be the unquestioned masterpiece of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, born of the first generation after the Spanish conquest. He wrote what is arguably the best prose of the colonial period in Peru.

He was a direct descendant of the royal Inca rulers of pre-Hispanic Peru and had an equal amount of Spanish blood. He wrote the chronicles as a firsthand account of the Inca traditions and customs. He was born a few years after the initial Spanish conquest and grew up while warfare was still underway. He was formally educated within the Spanish system of his father and for the most part, "Garcilaso interpreted Inca and Andean religion from the European and Christian point of view that he had been taught to adopt from infancy and that provided him with most of his historical and philosophical terminology."

The son of Captain Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas and the Inca princess Isabel Suárez Chimpu Ocllo (or Palla Chimpu Ocllo), he lived with his mother and her people until he was ten and was close to them until leaving Peru. He grew up in the worlds of both his parents, also living with his Spanish father as a youth. After traveling to Spain at the age of 21, he was informally educated there, where he lived the rest of his life.

Garcilaso had previously published a Spanish translation of the Dialogos de Amor and had written La Florida del Inca. That was an account of Hernando de Sotos expedition in Florida and was quite popular. Both works had earned him recognition as a writer.

Most experts agree the Comentarios Reales are a scholarly chronicle of the culture, economics, and politics of the Inca Empire, based on oral tradition as handed down to Garcilaso by relatives and other amauta during his childhood and teenage years.

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