2020年经济学人 黑帮VS政府(4)（在线收听）

But they also see the childhood traumas that drove the Kid into the gang —such as the dark room into which his father’s boss at a coffee plantation disappeared with his 15-year-old sister— and the disillusion that made him try to leave it. His choice to become a government witness confined him to a precarious safe house, where the Martinez brothers interviewed him repeatedly. Behind-the-scenes details—the Kid’s tenderness toward his infant daughter, his openness, the permanent cloud of marijuana smoke—help humanise him. His life unspools through flashbacks and vivid prose that succeeds where Mr Dudley’s writing occasionally falls short. “Why do you want to tell my story?” the sicario asks. “Because we believe that your story, unfortunately, is more important than your life,” the authors answer sheepishly. When, predictably, the Kid was murdered by his own gang, they started writing.

但读者们也看到了主人公孩童时期就被带进黑帮的童年创伤，比如他父亲在咖啡种植园的老板和他15岁的姐姐一起消失在一间黑暗的房间里，以及自己试图脱离黑帮的幻想破灭。他选择成为一名政府证人，官方将他监禁在一个岌岌可危的安全屋里，马丁内斯兄弟多次在那里采访他。幕后的许多细节使主人公更加人性化，比如他对小女儿的温柔，他的开放，还有大麻烟一直燃烧产生的烟雾。他的生活通过倒叙描写和生动的散文跃然纸上，相比达德利的作品偶尔出现的不足之处要更胜一筹。“你为什么要讲我的故事？“西卡里奥问道。“很遗憾，因为我们相信你的故事比你的生命更重要，”作者们窘迫地回答。不出所料，主人公遭到了自己帮派的谋杀，而同时作者们开始了创作。

“The Hollywood Kid” shows why thousands of adolescents who have never heard of AC/DC or set foot in America have had their lives shaped by MC-13, in turn shaping the trajectories of their countries. Mr Dudley takes on a trickier question: what to do about it? Programmes to peel away gang members and reintegrate them into society are “woefully underfunded and politically unpalatable”, he laments. There is little appetite in either America or El Salvador to dismantle the elements of “the monster” behind the carnage: hardline policing, mass incarceration and deportation, inadequate social services, economic inequality and political populism.

《好莱坞小子》展示了为什么成千上万名从未听说过AC/DC乐队或从未踏入美国的青少年们的生活被MC-13组织所改造，进而改变了他们所在国家的发展轨迹。达德利提出了一个更棘手的问题：该怎么办？他哀叹道，剥离黑帮成员并让他们重新融入社会的计划的“资金严重不足，政治上也令人不快”。无论是美国还是萨尔瓦多，都不太愿意消除大屠杀背后的“怪物”：强硬的治安、大规模的监禁和驱逐出境、社会服务不足、经济不平等和政治民粹主义。

His subtitle is “The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang”. Double-dealing by Salvadorean politicians is a reminder that Central America suffers most.

他的副标题是“美国最臭名昭著的帮派的产生”。萨尔瓦多政客的两面派提醒我们，中美洲受害最深。