Starred review from February 15, 2016
Journalist MartÃnez (The Beast) tenaciously reports piece by piece on the accretion of gang-related violence besetting El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. This book is based on a series of articles he wrote for the website elfaro.net, and each entry details its own escapade." A well-connected mafioso twice escapes the clutches of the state and finally ends up serving time for murder. The bleak story of the paranoid informant's untimely end constitutes its own chapter. Another details how Los Zetas, a Mexican gang, consolidated power in Guatemala, which is crucial background for understanding a police massacre and the subsequent "chess game of criminal politics" analyzed later. MartÃnez pulls the tarp back from the snake-pit tangle of gang affiliations, offenses, and revenge in overcrowded prisons that lead to periodic massacres. He tells of the perseverance of El Salvador's only forensic investigator in excavating a well, a tale that approaches dark farce. The book enters "strange and impenetrable worlds filled with code words and carnage, in which players function as it were just another day at work." MartÃnez's reporting reveals shocking failures of the stateâparticularly of police and courtsâbut he avoids tidy lessons, preferring to let the intractable issues stand in all their cold brutality.
January 1, 2016
Hard-hitting exploration of the violence visited by globalization and the narco-economy upon Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Human Rights Prize-winning journalist Martinez (The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail, 2013) follows up his grisly, underdiscussed debut investigation of human trafficking with a similarly unflinching account of the circumstances and communities involved in the ongoing migrant crisis. "I want you to understand what thousands of Central Americans are going through," he writes. The author argues that the American expulsion of first-generation Mara Salvatrucha and other Central American refugee gangs led to the violent groups' expansion back home: "What the United States has tried to flush away has rather multiplied." Simultaneously, Mexican cartels (notably the brutal Los Zetas) firmed up their transshipment routes through these countries' rural, impoverished regions; this conjunction has resulted in the highest murder rates in the hemisphere, in areas where law enforcement is undersupported and easily corrupted. Martinez draws readers into this complex narrative by alternating between a panoramic social sweep and the beleaguered lives of civilians, victims, gang members, and cops, capturing the multilayered nature of a place whose indigenous traditions are being brutalized by modern criminals who commit murder casually. The punchy short chapters capture shocking tableaux of violence in distanced, nearly wry prose, with some characters and crimes recurring. The author follows one hardened gangster who's obsessed with his own inevitable murder: "It's clear that El Nino was recognized in the town as someone destined to die." Absurdity is captured in the account of investigators facing the Sisyphean task of excavating a rural well known to be packed with corpses. Martinez returns to his earlier topic, portraying the cruelty of the migrant experience: "What you think is stupid sitting at home can be the most logical thing in the world on the trails." Smart, angry immersive journalism from an author who warrants wider readership on this side of the border.
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January 1, 2016
Journalist Martinez (The Beast) narrates 14 troublingly contemporary stories of Central American crime and corruption, drawing from investigations he documented at ElFaro.net, a Salvadoran online news agency. Beset by astronomical murder rates and impotent or corrupt governments, Central America is ground zero for drug and human trafficking to the United States. Martinez interviews criminals, cops, and politicians as he builds a narrative around the themes of power vacuum ("Emptiness"), consequent narcotrafficking and horrendous gang violence ("Madness"), and migration or human trafficking of the dispossessed ("Fleeing"). One particularly telling example comes from Guatemala, where the government evicts peasants living on environmentally protected land--peasants initially displaced by land-grabbing U.S. corporations--but ignores the drug cartels that operate openly on that same land. Martinez calls out the United States as drug market and arms dealer, enabler of Central America's troubles. He tempers his outrage and frustration with empathy and deep sociological understanding. VERDICT Ripped from the headlines, these are powerful stories of Central America's chaotic and bloody present, sure to raise awareness among a broad audience of North Americans, whom Martinez refuses to let off the hook. "The solution?" he asks. "It's up to you."--Michael Rodriguez, Hodges Univ. Lib., Naples, FL
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