The Santa Cruz school for exposed girls was an institution created by the testamentary will of the husbands Mateo Pastor de Velasco and Francisca Vélez in 1655. This project was conceived at the time of Lima's greatest religious effervescence in the first half of the 17th century and responded to a need that both spouses clearly knew was to protect the orphan girls that the Atocha house received, through dowries. In this context, the hypothesis proposes that the dowry was an European practice, brought to America, which entered to Lima society, to the point that not only the elite assumed it but also the poor and orphans. In such a way that through dowries, the Santa Cruz school tried to transfer the care of orphans of Spanish descent to other paternalistic institutions, such as the family and the convent.