Blas Valera (1544 – 1597) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order in Peru, a historian, and a linguist. The son of a Spaniard and an indigenous woman, he was one of the first mestizo priests in Peru. He wrote a history of Peru titled Historia Occidentalis which is mostly lost, although the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega quoted some of it in his General History of Peru. In 1583 Valera was jailed by the Jesuits. The Jesuits claimed they were punishing Valera for sexual misconduct but more likely the reason was heresy. Valera's writings claimed the Incas were the legitimate rulers of Peru, the Inca's language, Quechua, was equal to Latin as the language of religion, and the Inca religion had prepared the Andean peoples for Christianity. In 1596, still under house arrest, he traveled to Spain. He died there in 1597.
In the words of biographer Sabine Hyland, Valera had "concern for the welfare of the indigenous people of Peru" and he made "courageous efforts to defend their civilization and forge a new vision of Andean Christianity."[1]
- ^ Hyland, Sabine (2003). The Jesuit and the Incas. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 236. ISBN 0472113534.