What's in a name? An Indian trickster travels the Spanish colonial world (Jeronimo Limaylla, Peru)

This work offers a new interpretation of the life of Jeronimo Limaylla (1622-1678?), previously identified as a famous ethnic lord of the Peruvian Andes, a transatlantic traveler to the Spanish royal court, an advocate of the indigenous populations, and a legal claimant to the Andean chiefdom of Luringuanca in the Peruvian central highlands. The alleged Jeronimo was in fact a trickster, a common Indian from the coast by the name of Lorenzo Ayun Chifo. His early Christian education and religious training, his highly hispanicized manners, and his striking legal abilities allowed Lorenzo to pass off as the real Jeronimo and almost become lord of Luringuanca. The political support he received in Peru stemmed from the transformative power embraced in his transatlantic experience, which shaped Lorenzo's evolving identity from a common Indian to a fictitious lord at the court of the Spanish King. The Franciscans, with whom Lorenzo traveled, acted as the paramount model of his identity, that of a Christian traveling lord, an advocate of the Indians, and a fierce denouncer of the abuses against the natives of colonial Peru.