Martínez 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 … The collection’s strength lies in his ability to write the hell out of his material. Like Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family, it skimps on statistics and analysis, instead relying on description alone to create a world that captures the reader and doesn’t let her go. One of the stories, ‘El Niño Hollywood’s Death Foretold,’ evokes Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Like the beloved Colombian writer, Martínez pens scenes that are suspenseful, moving, and vivid.”
—New Republic
“Martínez is a gifted storyteller with an astute, observant eye and a voice that beckons to be followed … A History of Violence is a necessary read, especially for US government officials crafting immigration policy against migrants and refugees from the region. It sheds light on why so many are braving the treacherous trek through Mexico to reach the United States.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Martínez’s credentials for writing about this ignored human tide are impeccable: his 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 new 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
“If you take just one book to Central America on holiday, don't pick this one. Oscar Martinez has written a punishing account of the lives of the poor in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Melding acuity and anger, he unveils the scary realities of organised crime … Mr Martinez deserves credit for bringing it so effectively to life.”
—Economist
“As the current wave of US Immigration and Customs raids authorised by President Obama deports Latino migrants, and Donald Trump boosts his election campaign with promises to build a wall along the US–Mexican border, Martínez endeavours to explain why, for many Central Americans of the northern triangle, returning home is a death sentence.”
—Independent
“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 Martínez refuses to let off the hook. ‘The solution?’ he asks. ‘It’s up to you.’”
—Library Journal
“In Spanish, the tradition of the crónica is in-depth testimonial reportage blended with personal essay, and Martínez is a worthy inheritor. Martínez’s work conveys an intimate knowledge of the social and criminal ecosystem—both macro-level context and telling minutiae. But because he isn’t afraid to follow dangerous paths, the result are jewels with moments of intense emotion presented against a historical background that contemplates military, social, economic, religious, psychosclogical and all sorts of other factors … I am in awe of Martínez’s commanding style. ”
—Ilan Stavans, In These Times
“El Salvador’s best chronicler of this profound crisis is Óscar Martínez, a journalist based in San Salvador. Martínez has dedicated his career to documenting how the matrix of poverty, instability, and narcotrafficking has transformed the lives and prospects of Central Americans. As a writer, he’s a committed, old-school social realist, and traveled with migrants on their deadly northward route for his previous book about Central American migration, The Beast. His methods in A History of Violence are equally painstaking.”
—Caille Millner, New Inquiry
“Agonizing stories … [Martínez] urges readers to understand what Central Americans are going through and what compels them to seek refuge in the United States.”
—Ramón Rentería, El Paso Times
“Dives deep to the problems driving the region's violence and impunity … If The Beast was a look at the dangers of the journey, A History of Violence focuses on why people take it to begin with.”
—Jared Goyette, PRI’s The World
“Succeeds in fostering a better understanding of Central America’s crisis of violence and the resulting surge in migration. By itself, such understanding cannot bring about the peaceful future that Martínez clearly hopes for. But if his work raises greater awareness of the situation in the region, and spurs at least some readers into action, it will have accomplished its purpose. A History of Violence is a timely publication, and not only because of the ongoing exodus from the isthmus. The new US president’s policy agenda portends to have an unprecedented impact on migration and security policies in the Western Hemisphere. The ability to step back, reflect, and stand with vulnerable populations suddenly seems more critical than Martínez may have imagined when he penned these chronicles.”
—Sonja Wolf, Current History
“In this collection, Martinez, a journalist whose acerbic prose enlivens its dire subjects, covers stories that illuminate why so many Central Americans are willing to risk their lives to cross the border to the United States (and why, instead of calling them illegal or undocumented, we should be calling them refugees).”
—Mauro Javier Cardenas, The Millions
“A History of Violence is not simply about storytelling, and despite the gruesome subject matter, is certainly not sensationalist journalism … Óscar Martínez is a passionately engaged reporter who goes under the surface to get to the truth.”
—Ramor Ryan, TeleSur
“No place is dangerous enough to quell Martínez’s hunger for the truth, as the intrepid newshound sniffs around in occupied prisons, grim police stations, hellish whorehouses, desolate crack dens, isolated ranches and battered barrios, all the locales omitted from the tourism brochures. To understand how corruption operates in Central America, Martínez goes to where it operates … gritty journalism.”
—Hector Luis Alamo, Latino Rebels
“Reading Salvadoran journalist Óscar Martínez’s nonfiction portrait of violence in Central America, it seems fantastically lucky for all of us that he’s still alive … The reporting is an act of courage; the book is a plea for comprehension of the terror that drives people from Central America to the United States … Martínez’s portrait of Central America as killing field is a plea not only for comprehension of immigrants’ race for the border but also for empathy.”
—Nancy Nusser, Texas Observer
“Martínez 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 … Smart, angry immersive journalism from an author who warrants wider readership on this side of the border.”
—Kirkus
“Martínez tenaciously reports piece by piece on the accretion of gang-related violence besetting El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala … Martínez's reporting reveals shocking failures of the state—particularly of police and courts—but he avoids tidy lessons, preferring to let the intractable issues stand in all their cold brutality.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A History of Violence … stays close to the lives of gang members, victims of violence, and the quixotic public officials who try to offer some answers in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala … Martínez avoids the literature’s usual magnification of criminals’ power and pays attention to the fluid alliances and personal relations that determine, as one Honduran intelligence office puts it, ‘who’s in charge now.’”
—Pablo Piccato, Public Books
“A haunting portrait of a tragic, complicated part of the world.”
—Shelf Awareness
01/01/2016
Journalist Martínez (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. Martínez 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. Martínez 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 Martínez refuses to let off the hook. "The solution?" he asks. "It's up to you."—Michael Rodriguez, Hodges Univ. Lib., Naples, FL
2015-12-17
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 Martínez (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. Martínez 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. Martínez 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.
