As a boy, Miguel Ángel Tobar fled a small town in El Salvador torn apart by warring guerrillas and US-backed death squads. As a teen in Los Angeles, he fought discrimination and beatings by joining a gang, MS-13. By the time the US deported him to San Salvador, the Hollywood Kid joined a wave of US-bred gangsters, whose violence-in concert with corrupt offiicals-have in turn helped propel new waves of refugees.The incomparable Salvadoran journalist Óscar 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. In intensely vivid scenes, Martínez and his anthropologist brother Juan tell the story of a violent life and death-and of the geopolitical forces that propelled a country into becoming one of the most violent on earth.