The Archive as Legitimizing Artifact in Ccora Campillana: Romance histórico del tiempo de la conquista (1873) by Carolina Freyre de Jaimes

This chapter analyzes “Ccora Campillana” (1873), the historical romance written by Carolina Freyre that tells the love story of Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Inca princess Ccora Campillana. This study focuses on the Epilogue, where Freyre refers to the existence, and eventual editorial success, of the “Memoirs of Pizarro’s Life,” allegedly written by Campillana herself. Freyre inscribes Campillana’s book as one of the foundational texts of Peruvian literature. By viewing the archive as a repository of cultural and historical memory, my analysis traces how Freyre used the archive to redeem and legitimize forgotten actors from official history, particularly women. I argue that Freyre’s gesture of citing imaginary archival evidence as truthful and real challenged nineteenth-century genealogies of Peruvian literature, built by and for Creole men.