Hispanic Review

This article uses geographer Neil Smith’s concept of the politics of scale to argue for a renewed reading of Rosario Castellanos’s first novel, Balún Canán (1957), within the context of regional narrative. That reading is accomplished by combining recent contextual investigations in history and sociology with crucial allusions to economic structures in the novel. In keeping with Smith’s formulations, Balún Canán is shown to be a work in which no simple resolution can be made between global, regional, and national contexts.