The Border, the Recurring “Non-place” in Recent Mexican Literature. A Brief Journey from the Margins

Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of some contemporary Mexican literary works, in which the southern or northern geographical border of Mexico is represented as a counterhegemonic, violent, and geopolitically vulnerable space. For this purpose, the novels 2666 (2004), by Roberto Bolaño To the other side (2008), by Heriberto Yépez; The Scorched Lands (2015), by Emiliano Monge, and the testimonial collection of poems The Central American Book of the Dead (2018), by Balam Rodrigo will be reviewed in particular. In these texts, the border is configured as a territory of multiple sociocultural relations and economic transactions, in which particular values ​​and interests are conditioned by the laws of the market. In each of these texts, drug trafficking is present directly or indirectly, who controls, manages, or eliminates everything that seems useless.