Intercultural communication and cultural transfers in the colonial context. The encounter between Pizarro and Atahualpa in 1532 ans its discursive representations in early-modern cultures

Abstract

This contribution treats the historical representations of the encounter between the Inca King Atahualpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on november 16th, 1532, in the Peruvian town of Cajamarca which was one of the decisive turning points of the Spanish conquest of South America. After theoretical and methodological reflections on the relations between intercultural communication processes and cultural transfers in the context of the conquista, it focuses first on the various contemporary Spanish discourses on the event of November 16th, 1532, which represented predominantly an official ideological version of it. In a further step are analyzed the new 18th-century discourses, influenced by different historical sources, like the work of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, which reveal very different ‘constructions’, based on a transcultural network of cultural transfers and intercultural mediators, of this event.