In her collection Mentiras que no te conté (2021), winner of Mexico’s Premio Nacional de Cuento Juan José Arreola, Elma Correa portrays young female protagonists whose average lives are affected by challenges unique to their time and space. The author narrates their coming-of-age experiences of love and breakup, friendships, and body image against a backdrop of violence, migration, and drugs, which are exacerbated by the cultural pressures arising from the proximity of the United States. Set on the border between Mexico and the United States, in an area running from Mexicali to Tijuana, the stories portray a geography that reflects the notion that, as the author stated in an interview, “las geografias nos determinan” where the border shapes not only power relationships but also culture and personal identity while a general precarity is a both social and spatial reality for those living in this transnational space.

This essay seeks to assess the dynamics between power and space in Mexico’s northern borderlands where both Mexico City and the United States, Claudia Sadowski-Smith states, wield “a constant pull” (105). I draw on spatial theory to examine how this region is imbued with power while perpetuating social hierarchies, then naturalizing them. Spatial theorist Edward Soja describes the dynamic as threefold: “The cultural politics of difference . . . arise primarily from the workings of power in society and on space in their simultaneously perceived, conceived, and lived worlds” (86-87). Focusing on the book’s representations of social spaces—urban centers, bars, barrios, and roads—in northern Mexico’s borderlands, I explore their role in controlling power and difference, thereby producing culture, gender, and the female body, and I argue the significance of violence in enforcing such divisions. I will then ask whether Mentiras que no te conté also offers possibilities for counterspaces of resistance and agency.