What interests me most about this text is that el Periquillo Sarniento is not portrayed as an inherently flawed individual (prone to listlessness, irresponsibility, arrogance and deceitfulness) but instead as a mirror that reflects the hollow morality and lack of reason in colonial society. The protagonist reminds me of a kid who has just seen an authority figure doing something they shouldn’t, and while this moment causes disillusionment it is also an invitation to anarchy, because the kid can say “If you do it then so can I.”
El Periquillo Sarniento has seen that governors have merely an economic rather than personal connection to the land they govern and that doctors and lawyers don’t even use or understand the books that line their library shelves – if they can pass off as respectable members of society then why can’t he? The second half introduces us to the hypocritical professional class and the useless nobles who can’t stand to work. The doctor for example is, ironically, an unhealthy fellow with a bulky stomach and no teeth, and he is also something of a thief. In reference to the doctor, the protagonist invokes the adage “quien roba al ladron…” which indicates that people must resort to their own morality, perhaps even a “natural” or divine morality, when the official one fails.
In the final part, when El Periquillo finds himself shipwrecked and has an interesting exchange with a Chinese man, there are various echoes from the first part, when he is relating his flawed upbringing. The other man says that citizens are poorly defended by hired soldiers (using the term “brazos alquilados” just like el Periquillo’s childhood nurses) and that in his country every citizen is a soldier. This is one of the ways that Lizardi rejects the Spanish colonial government, by asking how Mexico can prosper if governed by those whose heart resides in another country and interests lie only in the accumulation of money and power. In the end it is not el Periquillo’s fault that he is without knowledge or purpose, but that of society for allowing this to be so.