Oath, lineage, and return: a letter from Las Charcas (1580) by Gonzalo de Ribas Valdés to his father in Oviedo

This item provides the final published version of my study on a 1580 letter written by Gonzalo de Ribas Valdés from Las Charcas (Viceroyalty of Peru) to his father in Oviedo. The article appears in History and Art Journal (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2026) and examines the emotional, strategic, and genealogical dimensions of early modern Hispanic migration, reconstructing Gonzalo’s rise as a merchant, scribe, and local elite through archival evidence from the Archivo General de Indias.