NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist & The Financial 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. scar Mart nez, 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.

Mart nez 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.

scar Mart nez writes for ElFaro.net, the first online newspaper in Latin America. His first book, The Beast, was named one of the best books of the year by the Economist and the Financial Times. In 2008, Mart nez won the Fernando Ben tez National Journalism Prize in Mexico, and in 2009, he was awarded the Human Rights Prize at the Jos Sime n Cäas Central American University in El Salvador.