Do not be fooled by the strange jollity of the subtitle of this book. The world that Oscar Martinez, a Salvadoran journalist, set out to report on five years ago is so violent, depraved and hellish, you can hardly believe he survived to tell the tale. At one end of his journey, in Central America, men and women are executed by gangs for reasons no one can understand, forcing those around them to flee for their lives to the one place they think they can be safe, the United States. At the other end, these hapless Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, after weeks or months evading drug gangs and bandits across Mexico, float up "swollen, soft and pale", on the banks of the Rio Grande.
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