Blas Valera

Who was Blas Valera?

Blas Valera was born in Levanto, Chachapoyas, Peru, in 1545.

Valera is considered to be the son of Luis Valera, one of the men who accompanied Pizarro in the conquest of the Inca Empire. He established himself in this city since its foundation. The mother of this outstanding Chachapoyano writer was Francisca Pérez, a native who had taken this name after being baptized.

The circumstance that he was born in 1545, less than 20 years after the fall of the Inca Empire, allowed him to meet many of its prominent men and also old amautas, that transmitted and entrusted him the events that he later narrated in his works.

He did his first studies in Trujillo and then continued them in Lima. Considering his knowledge of Quechua, he took part in the missions that Jesuits had established in Huarochirí, an important pre-Hispanic center of worship that at the beginning of the 17th century was the location of the most intense eradication campaign of idolatry, carried out by Francisco de Ávila.

He took an active part in the III Concilio Limense of 1583. Father Valera died in Alcalá de Henares, Spain in 2 April 1597.