About the Author

Sabine Hyland is Co-director of a multidisciplinary project studying the Chanka people of Peru. She holds a doctoral degree in anthropology from Yale, and is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at St. Norbert College.

Reviews

". .. . Hyland provides insight into the life of the Jesuit scholar, indigenous historian, teacher, and religious comparativist. Part history, part detective novel, the book plunges into various controversies: Christianity and indigenous Inca religion; Jesuits and the Spanish Crown; Valera's own mixed heritage; and even Valera and the Jesuits who imprisoned and then exiled him, despite his loyalty to the order. . . . Valera takes his place among ethnographers such as Acosta and Native rights advocates such as Las Casas, and Hyland's book provides captivating access to his unique contribution to history. Highly Recommended."
--Choice

"[A] refreshingly lucid account of an important but poorly known figure in colonial Latin American history."
-Richard L. Burger, Yale University

"This is a beautifully written, deeply informed and highly informative work. . . . [Hyland] has cast a bright light into a corner of early colonial Latin American scholarship that we had all but abandoned hope of ever seeing into very clearly."
-Gary Urton, Harvard University