Mester

This article examines the rhetorical use of the notions of infancy and childhood in the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios Reales. Garcilaso's own childhood and the Inca customs surrounding childhood are deployed as rhetorical resources to increase the author's credibility; to recreate his genealogy along with the story of the Incas; to negotiate legitimacy and social mobility and; in the end, to claim an inheritance, both in the literal and in the figurative sense.