Nazca is a city and system of valleys on the southern coast of Peru. It is also the largest existing city in the Nazca Province. The name is derived from the Nazca culture, which flourished in the area between 100 BC and AD 800. This culture was responsible for the Nazca Lines and the ceremonial city of Cahuachi. They also constructed additional underground aqueducts, named puquios, in a regional system that still functions today. The first puquios are believed to have been built by the preceding Paracas culture.
The Viceroyalty of Peru, officially known as the Kingdom of Peru, was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America, governed from the capital of Lima. Peru was one of the two Spanish viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Antonio Raimondi was a prominent Italian-born Peruvian geographer and scientist. Born in Milan, Raimondi emigrated to Peru, arriving on July 28, 1850, at the port of Callao. In 1851 he became a professor of natural history. In 1856, he was one of the founding professors of the medical school at the National University of San Marcos; in 1861, he founded the analytical chemistry department.
Martín de Murúa, O. de M., was a Basque Mercedarian friar and chronicler of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. He is primarily known for his work Historia general del Piru, which is considered the earliest illustrated history of Peru.
Luis Antonio Eguiguren Escudero was a Peruvian educator, magistrate, historian and politician. He was the director of the General Archive (File) of the Nation (1914), Alderman of Lima (1914–1920), Mayor of Lima (1930), President of the Constituent Congress (1930–1932), founder and leader of the Peruvian Social Democratic Party. He won the Peruvian presidential election of 1936, but his victory was ignored by the Congress and the then-President Oscar R. Benavides, who claimed that he had won with votes of the APRA. He presided over the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in 1953 and 1954.
The term Peruvian literature not only refers to literature produced in the independent Republic of Peru, but also to literature produced in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the country's colonial period, and to oral artistic forms created by diverse ethnic groups that existed in the area during the prehispanic period, such as the Quechua, the Aymara and the Chanka South American native groups.
Raúl Porras Barrenechea was a Peruvian diplomat, historian and politician. He was President of the Senate in 1957 and Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1958 and 1960. A well-known figure of the student movement in San Marcos in the early 20th century, Porras became one of the most prominent hispanist historians of his generation and a leading figure of the Peruvian diplomacy.
Ignacio de Arbieto was a Jesuit philosopher and historian of Peru.
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.
Catarina de San Juan known as the China Poblana was an Asian slave who, according to legend, belonged to a noble family from India. She was brought to Mexico through the Spanish East Indies and has been credited since the Porfiriato with creating the China Poblana dress. After converting to Catholicism in Cochin —an Indian city where she was kidnapped by Portuguese pirates—Mirra was given the Christian name Catarina de San Juan, the name she was known as in Puebla de Zaragoza where she worked as a slave, married, and eventually became a beata - a religious woman who took personal religious vows without entering a convent. Upon her death, Catarina de San Juan was buried in the sacristy of the Jesuit Templo de la Compañía de Jesús in Puebla, in what is popularly known as Tumba de la China Poblana.
Mariana of Jesus de Paredes is a Catholic saint and was the first person to be canonized from what is now Ecuador. She was a recluse who is said to have sacrificed herself for the salvation of her city. She was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1853 and canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1950. She is the patron saint of Ecuador. Her relics are the Church of the Society of Jesus in Quito. Her feast day is celebrated on May 26, on May 28 in the Franciscan Order.
The Quitu or Quillaco were Pre-Columbian indigenous peoples in Ecuador who founded Quito, which is the capital of present-day Ecuador. This people ruled the territory from 2000 BCE and persisted through the period known as the Regional Integration Period. They were overtaken by the invasion of the Inca. The Spanish invaded and conquered the center in 1534.
Juan de Espinosa Medrano, known in history as Lunarejo, was an Indigenous cleric, sacred preacher, writer, playwright, theologian, archdeacon and polymath from the Viceroyalty of Peru. He is the most prominent figure of the Literary Baroque of Peru and one of the most important intellectuals from Colonial Spanish America.
Antonio Ruiz de Montoya was a Jesuit priest and missionary in the Paraguayan Reductions.
Bernabé Cobo was a Spanish Jesuit missionary and writer. He played a part in the early history of quinine by his description of cinchona bark; he brought some to Europe on a visit in 1632.
Ludovico Bertonio was an Italian Jesuit missionary to South America.
Peruvian wine dates back to the Spanish colonization of the region in the 16th century.
David Anthony Brading FRHistS, FBA, is a British historian and Professor Emeritus of Mexican History at the University of Cambridge, where he is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall and an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College. His work has been recognized with multiple awards including the Bolton Prize in 1972, the Order of the Aztec Eagle, and the Medalla 1808—both of which were awarded by the Mexican government—and the Medal of Congress from the Peruvian government in 2011.
Alonso de Sandoval, SJ was a Spanish Jesuit priest and missionary in Colombia. He devoted most of his life to the evangelization of Black slaves arriving in the Colombian port city of Cartagena, and was the mentor of Saint Peter Claver. He is also known for his treatise De Instauranda Æthiopum Salute, a major contribution to the study of the slave trade and the condition of Black slaves in Cartagena.
Cristóbal de Molina, called «el Cusqueño», was a Spanish colonial clergyman and chronicler who was very fluent in Quechua. He spent most of his life in Cusco, Peru and became a reputable reporter of the pre-Colonial Andean culture.
