Anthology of José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi is the author of El Periquillo Sarniento (1816), which is considered, strictly speaking, the first Spanish-American novel. However, he also approached the theater, either to criticize or write plays where he assumes the neoclassicist principles, predictable in a convinced enlightened.
This Anthology of José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi contains the following plays:

• The cry for freedom in the town of Dolores
• Unipersonal arquebusier
• The tragedy of Father Arenas

The cry of freedom in the town of Dolores is a short piece of theater written with an exalted and almost pamphleteering style. José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi chronicles the Mexican history of his time. It is, perhaps, a culterano pamphlet, which in some way reminds Bertolt Brecht.
The plot presents the precarious situation in which Mexico finds itself under the Spanish yoke, with its heart distressed by misery and ignorance. The main character, the priest Hidalgo, does not stop encouraging his parishioners to assert their rights and defeat tyranny.
The “Grito de Dolores” is considered the act or speech with which the Mexican War of Independence began.

On October 26, 1822 Lizardi unveiled the Unipersonal of the Arquebusier. It is an “exemplary” play, removed from urgent political considerations, this play condemns the judicial system that allowed criminals to repeat their crimes.

Shortly before his death, Fernández de Lizardi wrote the play La tragedia del padre Arenas. A chronicle of the Mexican history of his time where he tells the story of Joaquín Arenas, a Castilian religious accused of conspiring for the restitution of independent Mexico to the domains of King Ferdinand VII and condemned to death.

The cry for freedom

Act I

Act I is represented in a large and decent room of the priest Hidalgo, with the common ornament. Hidalgo, Abasolo and Aldama.

Hidalgo My friends have been crying in silence for the unfortunate fate of our country. Oppressed three hundred years ago by the harsh Spanish government, possessed the beneficent orders that as monarch has dictated in his favor, we have only experienced contempt and general mistreatment of the mandarins who send to govern us. Honorary and penguin jobs are exclusive to Spaniards: being American is an impediment to obtaining them. The password of the Spanish suitors is well known; Don Fulano de tal, they say in their requests, a native of the kingdoms of Castile and company: in this way made owners of the government, they have become owners of commerce, of the haciendas of labor, of the mines and of our fortunes, leaving us only the material work to eat, because not even the aid provided by industry is allowed to us. I myself wanted to encourage the cultivation of vines in this poor village.
Yes, I have planted some by my hand, and it has not been allowed to make wines because those that bring us from Spain are sold. In this way, having been born between wealth and abundance, we find ourselves heirs of a very precarious subsistence, infallible precursor of the greatest misery.
If such is the fate of the Creoles, that is of the children of the country who descend from Spanish parents, what will be the one suffered by the unhappy Indians? Finally, from those one or another obtains some employment, although not of the first hierarchy, and there are some descendants of the conquerors who possess rich mayorazgos; But the Indians, the Indians, the natural children of this country, the descendants of their rightful masters, lie in stupidity and misery. Three hundred years ago Mr. Casas painted his life miserable, and in so long they have not advanced a step in his favor. Always educated in superstition and ignorance, and followed by dejection and misery, they have neither talent to know their usurped rights, nor courage to claim them.

Fragment of the work