[2] The death of Lizardi's father after a short illness in 1798 forced him to leave his studies at the Colegio de San Ildefonso and enter the civil service as a minor magistrate in the Taxco-Acapulco region.

[3] Though Ferdinand VII later became a target of nationalist rage among pro-independence Mexicans because of his tendency toward despotism, Lizardi's politics were still unknown in 1808, the year of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain.

With Napoleon's brother-in-law usurping the Spanish throne and the legitimate king in exile, raising a public voice in his favor was a patriotic stance for a Mexican intellectual, and in line with Lizardi's later proto-nationalist views.

The first issue of his El Pensador Mexicano [es] ("The Mexican Thinker", a title he adopted as his own pseudonym) came out on October 9, just four days after press freedom was allowed.

In his journalism, Lizardi turned from the light social criticism of his earlier broadsheets to direct commentary on the political problems of the day, attacking the autocratic tendencies of the viceregal government and supporting the liberal aspirations represented by the democratic Cortes of Cádiz in Spain.

His articles show the influence of Enlightenment ideas derived from clandestine readings of forbidden books by Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, a hazardous route to take in those hopeful but uncertain times.

When victory over Napoleon in Europe led to the reestablishment of an authoritarian monarchy, the overthrow of the Spanish Cortes, and the abrogation of freedom of the press in 1814, Lizardi turned from journalism to literature as a means of expressing his social criticism.

This social and political conjuncture led to Lizardi's writing and publication of El Periquillo Sarniento, which is commonly recognized as the first novel by a Mexican and the first Latin American novel.