Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2020
In a scene in the novel Los Bandidos de río Frío (the bandits of RíO Frío [1888–91]), by the Mexican writer manuel payno, one of the characters, a businessman named Manuel Escandón, tells his friends that he gained four hundred pesos from being robbed by a group of bandits led by Mariano Evaristo, an artisan turned murderer. Bernardo Couto, a victim of the same robbery, tells Escandón he doesn't believe the claim. Escandón shows him a piece of paper where he has scribbled some numbers and tells him, “In these double entries there is no mistake” (415). Joaquín Pesado, another friend, sides with Escandón and compares the results of double-entry bookkeeping to theological truths.