The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail

Oscar Martinez

Jun 2020 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon

About this audiobook

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. Óscar Martinez, 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. Martinez 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. The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.

About the author

Óscar Martinez writes for ElFaro.net, the first online newspaper in Latin America. In 2008, Martinez won the Fernando Benitez National Journalism Prize in Mexico, and in 2009, he was awarded the Human Rights Prize at the Jose Simeon Cañas Central American University in El Salvador.

Timothy Andres Pabon is an actor and Spanish and English voice-over artist/audiobook narrator from Washington DC. He has recorded over 140 books, one of which was nominated for a 2015 Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Award and another which received an AudioFile Earphones Award as part of an ensemble cast in 2014.