In 1563, amid the debate regarding the perpetuity of the encomiendas in Peru (1560-1570), the president of the Council of the Indies, Juan Sarmiento (ca. 1518-1564), received a formal opinion entitled Formal Opinion on the Perpetuity and Good Governance of the Indigenous People of Peru and Advice on What the Encomenderos Should do to Save Themselves (Parecer cerca de la perpetuidad y buen gobierno de los indios del Peru y aviso de lo que deben hacer los encomenderos para salvarse). The piece was a theoretically elaborated response contradicting the reports and formal opinions of the Dominican friars, who promoted the end of the encomienda system on the basis that it was directly to blame for the abuse, exploitation and misery of the Indigenous population. In this article, we analyze the document in the context in which it was written to weigh good governance versus maintaining native privileges and traditions. Our central hypothesis is that the text, along with a considerable collection of official secular and religious texts on good governance and establishing Christian policy in the Peruvian kingdoms, is part of a general discourse in the 1560s that positively underscored the practices of the Inca government. At the same time, it empirically ratified the natural inferiority and colonial decadence of the Indigenous people.