Professor & Associate Chair
Office: TMH 215
Email: jd65@txstate.edu
Phone: 512.245.2240
José Carlos de la Puente Luna is a historian of the Indigenous Andes and the Spanish Empire whose work illuminates the formation of colonial Indigenous legal, political, and literate cultures. His scholarship encompasses Andean record keeping technologies, Indigenous intermediaries, the evolution of Inka nobility, and systems of land tenure and community governance. He is the award winning author of Andean Cosmopolitans and Los curacas hechiceros de Jauja, studies that have reshaped understandings of Indigenous political action and legal advocacy in the colonial world. His ongoing publications deepen these themes, with recent and forthcoming work examining primordial titles and land repossession, the making of colonial resettlement landscapes, and the dynamic interplay between households and communities in mid colonial Peru. His current book manuscript, Parting Ways: Commoners and the Making of Community in the Colonial Andean Countryside, builds on new archival research to explore the emergence of breakaway settlements founded by commoner families and their negotiations with both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. De la Puente Luna’s recent professional leadership includes service on the board of directors of the Institute of Andean Studies and the editorial board of The Hispanic American Historical Review, and co organizing the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. His work has been recognized with multiple honors, including the Paul Vanderwood Prize, the Flora Tristán Award, the Tibesar Prize, and the José María Arguedas Prize.
Selected Publications
“Andean Primordial Titles, Land Repossession, and the Rise of New Communities during the First General Land Inspection (1594–1602).” The Americas 82, no. 1 (2025): 1-38.
“Customs Apart: Rethinking Inheritance and Competing Land Claims among Native Commoner Women in Colonial Andean Villages.” Colonial Latin American Review 33, no. 1 (2024): 79-104.
- Honorable mention, Paul Vanderwood Prize for “best article on any significant aspect of Latin American history written in English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish and published in a journal other than the Hispanic American Historical Review or The Americas.”
"Of Widows, Furrows, and Seed: New Perspectives on Land and the Colonial Andean Commons." The Hispanic American Historical Review 101 (3):375-407.
"Calendars in Knotted Cords: New Evidence on How Khipus Captured Time in Nineteenth-Century Cuzco and Beyond." Ethnohistory 66, no. 3 (2019): 437-464.
"Painting the Canvas of the Great Andean Uprising: Recent Research on the Age of Tupac Amaru." Latin American Research Review, 53(2), 381–387.
Andean Cosmopolitans: Seeking Justice and Reward at the Spanish Royal Court. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2018.
- Winner of the Flora Tristán Award of the Peru Section of the Latin American Studies Association for best book on Peru published the previous year
"Incas pecheros y caballeros hidalgos: la desintegración del orden incaico y la génesis de la nobleza incaica colonial en el Cuzco del siglo XVI." Revista Andina 54: 9-95 (2017).
- Winner of the “José María Arguedas Best Article Prize” of the Peru Section of the Latin American Studies Association, awarded to the best article on Peru published the previous year
Courses Taught
HIST 2311 | World History to 1500
HIST 2312 | World History since 1500
HIST 3322 | Colonial Latin America to 1828
HIST 3324 | Latin America from Independence to Present
HIST 5324D | Writing the History of Latin America: The Colonial Era
HIST 5324B | African and Native Experiences under Spanish Colonial Rule
HIST 5324C | Slavery and Emancipation in the Americas
HIST 5398 | General Research Seminar