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How to obtain eternal salvation when you are an old conquistador? Did he feel any remorse for having participated in the destructuring of entire societies and in the death of the peoples who lived in the American continent in the 15th and 16th centuries? Was it possible to dissolve in Catholicism the morally condemnable effects of the conquest? The restitution of goods to the Indians was one of the answers to these questions, given by theologians, jurists and rulers as early as the sixteenth century, and put into practice in the Andes by the encomenderos themselves, through donations and testaments. The objective of this article is to take restitution seriously, as a manifestation of the conscience of the old conquerors, and also to analyze the great diversity of motivations they could have to restore ill-gotten gains. This took place while the Spanish Crown was questioning their power and therefore their place in the colonial society that was then being built in the Andes.
