The Beast

September 16, 2013
This searing account of the hardships suffered by Central American migrants headed through Mexico to the United States comes from true shoe-leather reporting. In 2007 and 2008, Salvadoran journalist Martinez criss-crossed the most dangerous parts of Mexico to capture stories of Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans traversing what's increasingly become a criminal narco-state. Robbery, kidnapping, rape, and assault are "the inevitable tolls of the road" imposed by cartels that have branched out into human trafficking and extortion. Martinez observes that today, human trafficking and prostitution isn't "â¦a scar-faced man tending a cage of women. It's a complex system of everyday lies and coercions that happen just behind our backs." A journey marred by armed assaults and fatal accidents on "The Beast" (a freight train running north through the state of Oaxaca) is a trip "soaked with blood." This straightforward translation, first published in Spanish in 2010, doesn't flinch at migrants' plight, and as the drug wars further rend Mexico asunder, it's hard to imagine the situation changing.

September 1, 2013
Grim, grisly account of the predations suffered by impoverished migrants on the hazardous journey to el Norte. Previously published in Spain in 2010 and in Mexico in 2012, Martinez's debut is the hard-won result of immersive journalism. After several large-scale kidnappings of migrants, the author spent two years following the routes used by undocumented travelers though Mexico. He found that the rise of powerful, violent drug cartels has eradicated the rules of an already challenging journey; now, the migrants are universally viewed as human chattel to be exploited. Martinez writes precisely, with bleak gallows humor, as when he notes of cops unhappy with his investigation, "a dead migrant is commonplace, but a couple of dead journalists is another matter." Yet all his observations are numbingly bleak. He finds border cities, like the notoriously violent Ciudad Juarez, to be "racked by a madness akin to civil war," while the feared Los Zetas "have infiltrated everywhere. Not even the Army is clean." The narrative is a litany of horrors: casual murder, near-universal sexual assault and frequent accidental deaths via freight-hopping. Martinez portrays a Mexican society in which these pathologies are universally understood, yet cartel intimidation and bureaucratic corruption have destroyed the social order: "There is, simply put, nobody to assure the safety of migrants in Mexico." Meanwhile, the United States' high-tech border militarization has resulted in a "funneling" effect, forcing vulnerable migrants and drug smugglers to share increasingly constricted routes. "Where is it safe to cross? And the answer is, nowhere," he writes. "The US government has made sure of that." Martinez develops attentive portraits of the migrants, officials, aid workers and criminals he encounters; his first-person account is executed with passion and grit, illuminating a heartbreaking yet easily ignored reality. A harrowing look at the real costs of globalization, immigration and drug-prohibition politics, short on solutions and absent hope.

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