Figuring Pre-colonial Andean Narratives: Toribio Mejía Draws the Huarochirí Manuscript

Ramón G. · Boletin del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (2025) · DOI: 10.56522/bmchap.0020010300005

Resumen

Graphic representations of narratives are a way of processing knowledge, diverging from the traditional written text; they can extend, complement and/or even challenge it. In recent decades, the graphic representation of space and the actions of characters in fiction and history has been further explored. In this context, in the 1940s, the Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe carried out a pioneering, unfinished, unpublished and uncontinued study in which he systematically illustrated the stories contained in the early colonial document known as the Manuscrito de Huarochirí (c. 1608). This article is a critical presentation of such work and attempts to show its multiple functions in the intellectual scene of its time and in Andean studies in general.

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú