Don Catrín de la Fachenda, here translated into English for the first
time, is a picaresque novel by the Mexican writer José Joaquín Fernández
de Lizardi (1776-1827), best known as the author of El Periquillo
Sarniento (The Itching Parrot), often called the first Latin American
novel. Don Catrín is three things at once: a rakish pícaro in the
tradition of the picaresque; a catrín, a dandy or fop; and a criollo, a
person born in the New World and belonging to the same dominant class as
their Spanish-born parents but relegated to a secondary status. The
novel interrogates then current ideas about the supposed innateness of
race and caste and plays with other aspects of the self considered more
extrinsic, such as appearance and social disguise. While not directly
mentioning the Mexican wars of independence, Don Catrín offers a vivid
representation of the political and social frictions that burst into
violence around 1810 and gave birth to the independent countries of
Latin America.