It commemorates the bicentennial of the original publication of José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi's masterpiece, El Pensador Mexicano.
200 years have passed since the original publication of "El periquillo sarniento", the masterpiece that José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi wrote in 1816, halfway between Independence and the fall of the viceroyalty of New Spain, starring Pedro Sarmiento, a freckled young man between 19 and 21 years old, biting and incisive, a rogue who exhibits the tricks of the doctor and the lawyer, the carpenter, the priest, the teacher and the dysfunctional justice system of his time.
This is how Felipe Garrido, Vicente Quirarte and Rosa Beltrán outline it, who agree on the validity and importance of this work, whose bicentennial celebration, until now, has gone unnoticed by cultural institutions such as the INBA and the Ministry of Culture (formerly Conaculta), except the digital edition made by Felipe Reyes, UNAM researcher, to remember how these pages were born under the sign of resistance.
Because in addition to recovering the popular speech of its time and occupying the place of honor as the first in America, its publication had to overcome censorship and the imprisonment of its author, the lack of resources, the high cost of its publication... and the absence of readers.
“It is a magnificent story where everyone cheats and steals what they can, a narrative that shows a society that is violated and without principles,” explains Garrido. “Although if something hurts about reading it, it is that Lizardi – known as The Mexican Thinker – seems to talk about our days, where we could find very similar characters; This amuses me, but at the same time it scares me.”
While Rosa Palazón, researcher at UNAM, highlights the peculiarity of the fictional narrator, who splits into the person who tells the anecdote, as an agent of antisocial adventures that have a disastrous end, without leaving aside the fact that he is assumed to be the father of a better Mexico.
It was originally published in five volumes, but only the first three were published in 1816, halfway through Independence and shortly after the death of Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos, while the last two were banned for addressing the issue of slavery. and were printed after his death.
Something valuable about this novel, Garrido points out, is that Lizardi not only rescues the different forms of speech of his time, but also the way he presents his reality. “He never tried to disguise or soften reality, and as a journalist he presented a social critique where he sought the truth, not through reporting, but through his novels, as revealing as they were penetrating and hurtful.”
Furthermore, with this novel Lizardi not only rescued the rogue in the Mexican home, Quirarte adds, but he turned the novel into a vehicle for entertainment and awareness, perhaps more precisely awareness through entertainment, which is why its first readers " "They will find themselves captivated by the wide spectrum of everyday speech and the exploration of the city in its multiple spaces, such as the prison, the hospital, and fundamentally the street."
Bullets like printing presses
It is paradoxical but Lizardi wrote "El periquillo sarniento" at a time when the country had six million inhabitants, of which only 30 thousand knew how to read, as Felipe himself has stated.
This means that El Pensador Mexicano wrote the first novel at a time when this genre was prohibited in America, notes Rosa Beltrán, where “royal decrees prohibited the so-called “fake stories,” except in cases of texts that had religious content.” .
In addition to this, Beltrán adds in the prologue he wrote for the 2013 edition, the books written had to be approved by the colonial authorities, while in these lands “the monopoly of Spanish printers was all-powerful and impenetrable, the costs of publishing were very high, the large printing presses were at the service of the clergy and the small ones were closely monitored.”
This was a consequence of the second war that Mexico was experiencing, complete with Garrido, where beyond cannon shots, bayonets and assaults on cities, there was a war of writings. “For that reason, the insurgent captains carried a portable printing press, because writing against the enemy was as important as firing bullets at them.”
At that time the most sensitive topic was slavery, Garrido points out, and when she addressed that topic in her novel she was arrested. “So, when Lizardi stated that women should study or that children need compulsory education, nothing much happened; But when he openly opposed slavery, Periquillo stopped him and he went to jail.”
At the pita inn
José Joaquín Eugenio Fernández de Lizardi Gutiérrez (1776-1827) was born on November 15, 1776. The data collected by Palazón indicates that he had a crossed eye and that much of his childhood was spent in Tepozotlán, until he became a slender young man. of medium height and walking stooped.
Afterwards he returned to the city, studied grammar, learned rhetoric and philosophy and became a public notary. He founded eight newspapers, which he financed, wrote, distributed, and was taken several times to the inn of the pita, as the prison was known.
Vicente Quirarte defines him as "initiator and pioneer", a "son of the Enlightenment who knocked on the doors of Romanticism", excommunicated and publicly reviled in 1822. Shortly after he was invited to join the Trigarante Army, as head of the press; in 1825 They named him editor of the Gaceta, the official organ of Guadalupe Victoria, and during the last years of his life he received 65 pesos a month for his services to Independence.
An avid reader of the Spanish and French picaresque, of "El Buscón de Francisco" by Quevedo, "Lazarillo de Tormes", Guzmán de Alfarache by Mateo Alemán and "El Quijote" by Miguel de Cervantes, he died of consumption on June 21, 1827. .
History indicates that his remains were lost in the parish of San Lázaro, but before he died he made time to write his own epitaph full of irony and patriotism: “Here lie the ashes of El Pensador Mexicano, who did what he could for his homeland".
* Main image, illustration by Ernesto Rivera - Excelsior
