Overview

As a boy, Miguel Ángel Tobar fled a small town in El Salvador torn apart by warring guerrillas and US-backed death squads. As a teen in Los Angeles, he fought discrimination and beatings by joining a gang, MS-13. By the time the US deported him to San Salvador, the Hollywood Kid joined a wave of US-bred gangsters, whose violence—in concert with corrupt offiicals—have in turn helped propel new waves of refugees. The incomparable Salvadoran journalist Óscar Martinez got to know the Hollywood Kid and met with him as he first turned on MS-13, killing gang members, and then in turn was assassinated by other gang members. In intensely vivid scenes, Martínez and his anthropologist brother Juan tell the story of a violent life and death—and of the geopolitical forces that propelled a country into becoming one of the most violent on earth.

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9781786634931

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Reviews

The Hollywood Kid is a revelation. As they track a single tragic life, Los Hermanos Martinez delve deep into El Salvador's tortured labyrinth, into the macabre working of the Mara Salvatruches, into the sinister consequence of failed US policies, and in the process recover what Neil Smith called the lost history of the American Empire. This is reportage made literature, darkness made light, and one of the most important books of investigative journalism I've read in years. --Junot Diaz, author of This Is How You Lose Her As the poet William Blake famously put it, 'General forms have their vitality in particulars, and every particular is a Man.' The Martinez brothers' beautifully written account of the life and death of the feared gangster El Nino de Hollywood, based on hours and hours of interviews with him and those close to him, starkly reveals the underlying dynamics of the Central American gang phenomenon in vivid and insightful detail. --Dennis Rodgers, author of Global Gangs Praise for Oscar Martinez: Martinez dives into the underworld of his subjects, navigating barrios that police won't enter, spending days and nights with gang members. His methods resemble war reporting and his prose is cinematic ... Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the beloved Colombian writer, Martinez pens scenes that are suspenseful, moving, and vivid. --Sarah Esther Maslin, New Republic Oscar Martinez deserves praise not only for his efforts, and for what he writes about, but because he writes so very well. --New Yorker Martinez's ... first book, The Beast, drew on eight trips clinging to the roof of the infamous migrants' train through Mexico, chronicling their desperation in grippingly graphic detail. His [second] book, A History of Violence, takes a step back to explore what the migrants heading to the US are running away from. The unflinching cameos it paints offer a chilling portrait of corruption, unimaginable brutality and impunity. --Financial Times

Author Information

Óscar Martínez writes for ElFaro.net, the first online newspaper in Latin America. El Faro was awarded in 2016 the Gabriel García Márquez Prize for Excellence in Journalism. He is the author of The Beast and A History of Violence. Juan José Martínez is a sociocultural anthropologist from Universidad Nacional de El Salvador. He has studied violence and gangs since 2008. He has been a lecturer at Universidad Mónica Herrera and has worked as a consultant for several institutions such as Action on Armed Violence, UNICEF, Soleterre and American University.

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