Born in Lima in 1939, Franklin Pease was a Peruvian historian who
specialized in the study of Andean Peru, with special emphasis on the world
of the Inca. His initial studies, which focused on the final years of
Tahuantinsuyu, the Inca Empire, were groundbreaking as they helped scholars
to envision Tahuantinsuyu as an ancient Andean society immersed in myth
and religion—that is, on its own terms, and not as a somewhat secular society
that would have easily fit in the mold of early modern Europe.
The study of the conflicting claims presented in the chronicles—the
accounts written by the Spaniards in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
—as well as their silences made Pease realize that these accounts were based
on myths recounted by Native informants from Cuzco. To counteract the
Cuzco bias of the sources, Pease turned to Colonial administrative documents
and studied the relationship between the imperial center and local polities and
populations. Furthermore, although the chronicles were usually considered
independent accounts, it was obvious that many authors had borrowed freely
from each other. Pease therefore turned to the study of Colonial sources and
sought to publish critical editions (an ongoing effort cut short by his untimely
death in 1999) in order to determine their originality, as well as to establish
the chronology of the image the Spaniards gradually developed of the Incas,
and to determine the European influences that shaped their accounts.
Further Reading
Pease, Franklin. Los últimos Incas del Cuzco. Lima: P. L. Villanueva, 1972.
———. Del Tahuantinsuyu a la historia del Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1978.
———. Las crónicas y los Andes. Rev. ed. Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010.
■JAVIER FLORES ESPINOZAPIZARRO, PEDROBorn around 1513 in Toledo, Spain, Pedro Pizarro is often regarded as the
conquistador Francisco Pizarro’s cousin, but although the two families were
apparently closely related, their exact relationship is not clear. Pedro Pizarro
joined Francisco Pizarro’s expedition as a young page. He was an eyewitness
to the lead-up to the tumultuous events in Cajamarca, and the subsequent
march by Francisco and his troops from Cajamarca to Cuzco and the
Spaniards’ entry into Cuzco. He wrote a vivid account of the pillaging by the