This article analyzes the novels Memorias de un perro escritas por su propia pata y Vida y Milagros de un pije [Memories of a Dog Written with His Own Paw and Life and Miracles of a Snob] by the Chilean author Juan Rafael Allende (1848-1909). This study takes into account the guidelines of social literature proposed by Edward Said, as well as an analysis of the dialogue between these novels and their Spanish counterpart from the XVI and XVII centuries; the appropriation and use that the author makes of the poetics of the picaresque genre, connecting it with the immediate present, and using it to question institutions of power and their dogmatism.