Pedro Cieza de León , called by the historian Raúl Porras prince of the chroniclers . He was born in the town of Llerena, province of Badajoz (Spain) in 1518. He was the son of Lope de León and Leonor Cazalla. He left Seville for the Indies in 1535 at the age of thirteen. Due to his young age, when he left Spain he could hardly have a humanistic education according to his time. His education then was itinerant and self-taught.
He reached the shores of Colombia and served in various expeditions under the orders of leaders such as Alonso de Cáceres, Jorge Robledo and Sebastián Benalcázar. Militating under the orders of this last captain, he joined the army of Don Pedro de la Gasea, who was on his way to Peru to subdue the uprising of Gonzalo Pizarro, leader of the encomenderos who revolted against the Crown. He attended the battle of Jaquijahuana (1548) and saw the executions of Francisco de Carbajal and Gonzalo Pizarro.
He returned to Lima with the lawyer La Gasea and received the official commission to write a history of the conquest, although already from his stay in Popayán, Pedro Cieza de León took note of everything he witnessed. La Gasea wanted to help him and gave him letters to the corregidores so that they would provide him with the facilities to learn about the most important events in the provinces he visited; he also allowed her access to his personal file as he did with other chroniclers.
The chronicle of Peru
A meticulous observer, in his work The chronicle of Peru (1553), he was the first to draw a complete picture of the Peruvian scene, describing it in detail:the territory, its plains, mountains, rivers, valleys and mountains. The geographical description was very important for Pedro Cieza de León, to the point of asking the navigators for information on the regions that he had not visited . In each town or province that he arrived he took note of their customs, beliefs, described the houses and the dresses.
The work of Pedro Cieza de León is divided into four parts; in the first he reveals himself as a geographer and ethnographer, with a general description of the country; in the second he deals with the lordship of the Incas, for which he interviewed a nobleman named Cayo Tupac and the quipocamayocs who were still living. Searching for the origins of the indigenous population he goes back to the biblical traditions of the flood and the tower of Babel. He collected in great detail the founding myths of the city of Cuzco and the Inca dynasty, following a linear history of the rulers up to Atahualpa. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the government of the Incas without reaching the idyllic claims of the Inca Garcilaso, since his judgment was impartial. We can find data that approve the benevolence and foresight of the government of the Incas, as well as testimonies of their tyrannies and cruelties. In the third part he deals with the discovery and conquest of Peru , again exhibiting his impartiality:while he rejoices at the defeat of the idol worship, replaced by the cross, he has harsh words for the damage caused by his countrymen. The fourth part of his work describes the civil wars between the conquerors. Having written in such an unstable time as that of 1548-1550 and also under the tutelage of the lawyer La Gasea, his version is favorable to the Crown and contrary to the conquerors, especially those of the first batch such as those of Cajamarca or those of Cusco.
Pedro Cieza de León returned to Lima in 1550 and finished his chronicle on September 8 of that same year . He sailed to Spain in 1552 and resided in Seville, where he met the woman he married by proxy. He delivered the manuscript of the first part to the printer Martín Montesdoca, through a contract signed on October 26, 1553, and the print run of the edition was one thousand and fifty copies. Pedro Cieza de León enjoyed his published work for a short time, since he died unexpectedly on July 2, 1554 , when he was only 34 years old
age.