Teología moral, restitución y sociedad colonial en los Andes en el siglo XVI

International audienceHow to obtain eternal salvation when you are an old conquistador? Did he feel any remorsefor having participated in the destructuring of entire societies and in the death of thepeoples who lived in the American continent in the 15th and 16th centuries? Was it possibleto dissolve in Catholicism the morally condemnable effects of the conquest? The restitutionof 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 theencomenderos themselves, through donations and testaments. The objective of this article isto take restitution seriously, as a manifestation of the conscience of the old conquerors, andalso 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 theirplace in the colonial society that was then being built in the Andes