An Economist and Financial Times "Best Book of the Year"
"Harrowing"
true stories from two years of immersion reporting on the migrant
trail from Chiapas to Arizona--an "honorable successor to
enduring works like George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier" (New
York Times)
One day a few years
ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of
Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released,
many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest
vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in
Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant
disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from
two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central
America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million
Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year,
and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped.
Martínez writes in
powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight
trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels;
and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning
full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed
light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the
narcotraficantes.