Abstract

In attempting to understand the formation of a distinct Spanish American identity in early colonial Peru, scholarship usually relies on the production of the lettered elite. Yet the letters of non-elite colonists contain valuable representations of the Peruvian landscape, the peculiarities of their American lifestyle, and the sense of self these actors were forging as their realities alienated them from Iberian Spanish society. Migrants, in particular, were torn between their old life “there” and the new customs “here.” In this thesis, late sixteenth-century Spanish migrants’ letters are considered in the historical and intellectual contexts of their era, going beyond the study of letters as standalone documents and instead examining the collective representations of the colonial space they were creating. Arguing that in these letters are found the roots of a creole identity, this work calls attention to the self-understanding of non-elite Spaniards as they participated in the building of colonial Peru.