Zárate, Agustín de (c. 1508–1514–after 1578)

Agustín de Zárate, an important early chronicler of Peruvian history, was born sometime between 1508 and 1514. He was still alive in 1578, although his exact date of birth and death still eludes researchers. It is known that he was named secretary to the Real Consejo de Castilla in 1528 and that in 1543 he was named accountant general of Peru, possibly at the early age of twenty-eight. His Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú is of consequence for a number of reasons: it serves as a source for other, better-known chroniclers, including Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala; it attempts a primitive ethnology (a few chapters); and it indicates the role the author played in the Pizarro-Almagro civil wars. Nevertheless, posterity has not remembered Zárate. This may be because his work represents a philologist's nightmare, not only because the 1577 version suppresses certain chapters from the 1555 first edition (as discussed by Dorothy McMahon and Marcel Bataillon), but also because, as Paul Roche has discovered, there exist different printings of the first edition—partisan, pirate tomes produced as a result of the Pizarro-Almagro intrigues.

See alsoCieza de León, Pedro de; Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca; Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe; Peru: From the Conquest Through Independence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works by Zárate

Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú. Anvers (Antwerp): Martin Nucio, 1555.

Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú. Sevilla: Alonso Escribano, 1577.

Secondary Sources

Bataillon, Marcel. "Zárate ou Lozano? Pages retrouvées sur la religión péruvienne." Caravelle: Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilien 1 (1963): 11-28.

Hampe Martínez, Teodoro. "La misión financiera de Agustín de Zárate, contador general del Peru y tierra firme (1543–1546)." Historia y Cultura 17 (1984): 91-124.

Leonard, Irving A. "On the Lima Book Trade." Hispanic American Historical Review 33, no. 4 (1953): 511-525.

Lostaunau Ulloa, Alejandro. "El cronista Agustín de Zárate." Boletín del instituto Riva-Agüero 9 (1972–1974): 172-181.

McMahon, Dorothy. "Variations in the Text of Zárate's Historia del Descubrimiento y Conquista del Peru." Hispanic American Historical Review 33, no. 4 (1953): 572-586.

Roche, Paul. "Les corrections almagristes dans l'edition princeps de l'Histoire du Perou d'Agustín de Zárate." Caravelle: Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilien 31 (1978): 5-16.

Roche, Paul. Agustin de Zarate: Temoin et acteur de la rebellion pizarriste. Nantes, France: Université de Nantes (Acta Hispanica 1), 1985.

Ross, Kathleen. "Historians of the Conquest and Colonization of the New World: 1550–1620." In The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, ed. Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker, pp. 101-142, and esp. 118-122. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

                                          Thomas Ward