Jealousy and Usury in “El celoso extremeño”

• Published in: Cervantes (Gainesville, Fla.) Fla.), 2013-03, Vol.33 (1), p.11-43
• Main Author: Brewer, Brian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Cervantes, Miguel de; Spanish literature
• ISSN: 0277-6995; 1943-3840
• DOI: 10.3138/Cervantes.33.1.011

Hacer una cosa de industria, hacerla a sabiendas y adrede, para que de allí suceda cosa que para otro sea a caso y para él de propósito; puede ser en buena y en mala parte" (666).17 In both ecclesiastical and secular sources, we find the word applied to those partners in commercial ventures who invest little or no capital but instead supply hard work and special skills. [...]according to Francisco García (1583): "Muchas veces acontece que uno tiene dineros, y le falta industria para negociar y granjear con ellos, y otro tiene la dicha industria, y le faltan dineros, y por eso, haciendo los dos compañía, el uno pone los dineros, y el otro ofrece su industria y trabajos" (501).18 In this context, industria is the morally licit human agency that makes capital investment grow, since money was otherwise held to be sterile and incapable of producing its own interest. In other words, his intention is for this money to "dar fruto" absent any "industria y diligencia" or risk on his part, a clear indication of a disorderly appetite for wealth or "sed inextinguible de lucro." [...]given the financial activities of the banks in Seville, their involvement with the royal finances, and the fact that they were all, to some degree, under the control of Genoese "hombres de negocios," the provenance of the interest earned on this money will be highly suspect (Pike 92; Bernal 632). Carrizales's actions upon returning to Spain, and particularly his investment decisions, indicate that his conversion to prudence and productivity in the New World was in fact not a true rebirth, but rather a different facet of his disorderly nature. [...]by seeking to increase his already considerable fortune without working or investing in productive commercial enterprises (in which case his money would be put to good use as well as at risk), as a character Carrizales is assimilable to the figure of the idle social parasite who was the object of sustained criticism in the period. [...]usurers charged immorally for time, thereby reaping unnaturally the fruit of others' industry, diligence, and risk.43 Carrizales further reveals his commercial conception of marriage through his statement: "Mas como no se puede prevenir con diligencia humana el castigo que la voluntad divina quiere dar a los que en ella no ponen del todo en todo sus deseos y esperanzas, no es mucho que yo quede defraudado en las mías y que yo mismo haya sido el fabricador del veneno que me va quitando la vida" (2: 133).