Fugitive Freedom by William B. Taylor

Author:William B. Taylor [Taylor, William B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, Mexico, World, True Crime, General
ISBN: 9780520368569
Google: HjgHEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2021-01-15T01:11:36+00:00

To start off, I banished a pretty girl from the town because she lived in debauchery. That’s what was said; but the true reason was that she refused to go along with my solicitations. . . . After that, with the help of a tiny gift of 300 pesos, I incriminated a poor man whose only crime was to be married to a beautiful, dishonorable woman. . . . Next I hunted down and threatened all the other poor men who were guilty of the same crime, and they, fearful that I might banish their mistresses as I was wont to do, paid me whatever fines I demanded. Nor did I neglect to revoke the most properly drawn-up documents. . . . To top it all off, I set up public gaming sessions in the government offices. . . . One night they took me for so much money that I didn’t have a penny of my own, so I unlocked the community chest and gambled away all the money it held.47

Sentenced to eight years of militia service in the Philippines, Periquillo wheedles his way into a comfortable desk job as the colonel’s adjutant, where he has the opportunity to show off his fine penmanship. He returns to Mexico unreformed and unabashed, now posing as a rich count. He falls in with a gang of thieves near Mexico City at the Río Frío pass, is unsettled by the sight of a hanged man, and resolves—not for the first time—to reform. But this time he attends a spiritual retreat in preparation for making a general confession, and the priest-confessor turns out to be his childhood friend and fellow delinquent Martín Pelayo, no longer “a dancing and scatterbrained boy, but a wise, exemplary and circumspect priest.”48 Periquillo makes a heartfelt confession, and the compassionate Father Pelayo arranges honest work for him as manager of an inn near Mexico City. Overcome with gratitude, Periquillo becomes a model employee, charitable citizen, and eventually the innkeeper. He rescues and marries the daughter of another old, true friend, Don Antonio, and lives out a virtuous life of marital bliss.

Those who do not regard Periquillo Sarniento as a picaresque novel by a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century European standard note that Fernández de Lizardi’s moral lessons, unlike those of the earlier novels, are not rooted in a theology of original sin.49 Rather, the author is seen as a child of the Enlightenment, interested in the perfectibility of humankind through educational reforms and useful knowledge, and the enemy of entrenched attitudes about hereditary privilege and authority that scorn honest work and civic and personal virtue.50 The hand of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the great outsider, is apparent in Periquillo’s resounding moral transformation, and in the theme of friendship that runs throughout the story, first as allegiance and regard taken for granted or betrayed by Periquillo and toward the end as friendship of an unqualified kind that Periquillo gives and receives: “I am your friend, and that’s what I’ll always be so long as you honor me with your friendship,” and “there are lots of friends, but few friendships.

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