Overview

""A remarkable feat of reporting.""--Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises*WINNER OF THE LUKAS PRIZE*The definitive account of the most notorious street gang in America--the MS-13--as seen through the lives of gang members and their families caught in its malicious webThe MS-13 was born from war. In the 1980s, El Salvador was enmeshed in a bloody civil conflict. To escape the guerrilla assaults and death squads, many fled to the US and settled in Los Angeles. Among them were Alex and his brother.There, as a survival instinct, Alex and a small number of Salvadoran immigrants formed a group called the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners, a relatively harmless social network bound by heavy metal music and their Salvadoran identity. But later, as they brushed against established local gangs, the group took on a harder edge, selling drugs, stealing cars and killing rivals who threatened their territories. As authorities cracked down, gang members like Alex were incarcerated and deported. But in the prison system, the group only grew stronger, and in Central America, the gang multiplied, eventually spreading to a half-dozen nations in two continents.Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on earth, with an estimated ten thousand members operating in dozens of states and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year in the US and abroad. But it is also misunderstood--less a drug cartel and more a hand-to-mouth organization whose criminal economy is based mostly on small-time extortion schemes and petty drug dealing. Journalist and longtime organized crime investigator Steven Dudley brings readers inside the nefarious group to tell a larger story of how a flawed US and Central American policy, and the exploitative and unequal economic systems helped foster the gang and sustain it. Ultimately, MS-13 is the story of the modern immigrant and the perennial battle to escape a vortex of poverty and crime, as well as the repressive, unequal systems that feed these problems.

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9781094098395

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Reviews

Through painstaking reporting and clear-eyed analysis...Dudley captures the origins of the gang as a human story of migration and migrant communities, and a policy story, about the unintended consequences of US policy. By detailing the experiences of gang members and victims alike, he anatomizes the complex, fluid dynamics of this elusive transnational network. A startling book. -- Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author Steven Dudley's MS-13 is a remarkable feat of reporting; the ways in which the United States is complicit in the creation and preservation of MS-13 might well keep you awake deep into the night, as it did me. I can't shake this book, or the feeling that we have doomed so many young men to a life of violence. We have to do better for them, for our children, and for our collective future. -- Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

Through painstaking reporting and clear-eyed analysis...Dudley captures the origins of the gang as a human story of migration and migrant communities...A startling book. -- Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author The book benefits greatly from the perspectives of a gang leader, a recruit, the Salvadoran military, and U.S. federal and state agents...and reflects the author's deep knowledge of the subject, derived from his local reporting and codirection of a government funded three-year study of MS-13 in the United States. -- Library Journal (starred review) For anyone who has ever wondered why and how gang members are made, Dudley has the answers. -- Publishers Weekly A remarkable feat of reporting; the ways in which the United States is complicit in the creation and preservation of MS-13 might well keep you awake deep into the night, as it did me. -- Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises A cleareyed account of a criminal enterprise that is undeniably a threat to civil society wherever it turns up. -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

STEVEN DUDLEY is the cofounder of InSight Crime, a thinktank devoted to investigating organized crime and corruption in the Americas.As a journalist in Latin America, he spent the past two decades writing for theWashington Post, NPR, the BBC and the Miami Herald. MS-13 is the winner of theJ. Anthony Lukas Award. Christian Barillas is an Audie-nominated audiobook narrator and actor whose television credits include Modern Family, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Bridge. With a classical background in theater, he has appeared on stage at the Huntington Theatre Co., the Denver Center, and the Yale Repertory. He studied journalism and media at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and went on to receive his master's degree in acting from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television.

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