The Hollywood Kid

Praise

“The Hollywood Kid is a revelation. As they track a single tragic life, Los Hermanos Martínez 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 Díaz, author of This Is How You Lose Her

“The book is simply amazing. Easily one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever read, one that gave me a visceral feeling for the ‘Kid’s’ pain and for the pain he caused. Besides the very great reporting, there is a real lyricism in the writing.”
—Joe Sacco, author of Palestine

“As the poet William Blake famously put it, ‘General forms have their vitality in particulars, and every particular is a Man.’ The Martínez brothers’ beautifully written account of the life and death of the feared gangster El Niño 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

“Masterfully told.”
—Belén Fernández, NACLA

“The Hollywood Kid is a gripping read, thoroughly researched and dramatically conveyed.”
—Hilary Goodfriend, Jacobin

“The Martínez brothers’ book tells the story of an MS-13 hitman known as the Hollywood Kid. He was recruited to the gang in El Salvador by a twenty-year-old former member of the National Police, escaped the civil war to California, was deported in 1994, then began his own clica (clique, or gang chapter) in Salvadoran coffee country.”
—Rachel Nolan, NYRB