The Hollywood kid : the violent life and violent death of an MS-13 hitman
(Book)

Translation of: Niño de Hollywood.

Martinez and his brother Juan tell the story of a violent life and death of a Salvadoran gangster--and of the geopolitical forces that propelled a country into becoming one of the most violent on earth. As a boy, Miguel Angel Tobar fled a small town in El Salvador torn apart by warring guerrillas and US-backed death squads. Still a preteen, he joined a different kind of death squad--the Hollywood Locos Salvatrucha--a clique of the Mara Salvatruchas, better known as MS-13. This international criminal organization began on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s, as Salvadoran children, whose families had fled their country's civil war, banded together to defend themselves from LA gangs. Denied refugee status, the Salvadorans found themselves pushed into the shadows and besieged by violence, and MS-13 itself mutated into a gang. When large-scale US deportations began, violence was exported from the United States to El Salvador, helping make it one of the world's deadliest countries and in turn propelling new waves of refugees northward. 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. --Adapted from publisher description.

Translated from the Spanish.