What is Roberto's main ambition in the novel, Where the Air Is Clear?

Roberto, a powerful lawyer, a political shark, and a social climber, manipulates everybody around him in order to maintain and improve his own social status. As a schoolboy, he destroys a teacher with false accusations; as an adult, he facilitates Robles's collapse and arranges to profit from it. Roberto marries his secretary Sylvia and gives her the prestige of upper-class living, but their marriage is a loveless one.