Completed in 1819 and approved by the censorship in 1820, "Don Catrin de la Fachenda" was the last novel written by Jose J. Fernandez de Lizardi, and the only one that remained unpublished until 1832, five years after the death of its author. At first glance, the novel does not seem -at least morally- to doubt: bad characters die, "catrinismo" is sensationally defeated and the truth left standing is monopolized by the clergy, military, and nobility. Perhaps dazzled by the canonization process that Fernandez de Lizardi underwent at the hands of liberal historiography towards the end of the...

El Zarco by Ignacio Atamirano in a US printed edition with preliminary study and notes by Maria Eugenia Mudrovcic Ignacio Manuel Altamirano's posthumous novel, El Zarco (1901), is much more than a novel about bandits. Written amidst the pax porfiriana, at the height of Altamirano's reputation within the cultural elite, the novel is a narrative that deals with the chaos and the banditry that prevailed in the 1860s to celebrate the insertion of Mexico into the international markets undertaken by Porfirio Diaz. Considered to be the first Mexican novel because of its carefully constructed...