2020年经济学人 黑帮VS政府(3)（在线收听）

The best reporting on MS-13 is by local journalists, including El Faro, which has churned out cinematic dispatches from gang-torn barrios for more than a decade. A recent string of murders on Long Island led to a spate of stories in America, including a Pulitzer-winning series by ProPublica, a non-profit news outfit, which showed how Mr Trump’s immigration policies have inflamed gang tensions. But Mr Dudley’s book is uniquely comprehensive. Years of research have yielded a shrewd analysis of the structural forces that created the gang, which Mr Dudley calls “the bastard child that no one wants to acknowledge from an affair that most choose to ignore”.

有关“MS-13”帮派的最佳报道来自El Faro等当地新闻媒体的记者，十多年来，这些记者从帮派纷争的街区收集资源制作了大量的电影快讯。美国对最近在长岛发生的谋杀案进行了一连串的报道，包括一家非盈利新闻机构ProPublica通过系列报道荣获普利策奖，新闻中显示了特朗普的移民政策对激化帮派紧张关系的影响。但达德利所撰写的书内容全面，独一无二。经过多年的研究，作者对这个黑帮的结构力量进行了精辟的分析，达德利称这个帮派为“没有人愿意承认的私生子，而且大多数人选择了忽视”。

His sources include police reports from murder trials, testimony from asylum cases and scores of interviews with current and former MS-13 members. Many, he observes, were just children when they evolved from “victims of circumstance, caught in a system that marginalises, vilifies and destroys them” into victimisers who destroy the lives of others. Scarcely a year separates the day one wins $35 in a breakdancing contest and the day he gets into a knife fight with Barrio 18 members.

他的资料来源包括谋杀案审判的警方报告、避难案件的证词以及对现任和前任“MS-13"成员的大量采访。他观察到，许多人还只是孩子的时候，就从“被困在边缘化、丑化和摧毁自己的体系的环境中的受害者，”演变成了破坏他人生命的施暴者。其中一位帮派成员在霹雳舞比赛中赢得35美元，而那一天距离他与“Barrio18”的成员动刀子的时间不到一年。

Mr Dudley does not shy away from the violence—a brutal passage describes how gang members rape and murder women perceived to have slighted them—but nor does he sensationalise it. “MS-13 members were, to put it simply, not good criminals”, he writes. Their facial tattoos and lack of discipline made them easy targets for ambushes and wiretaps.

达德利并没有回避暴力行为，他描写了一段残酷的文章讲述了帮派成员如何强奸和谋杀他们认为轻视自己的妇女，但他也没有耸人听闻。他写道：“简言之，MS-13的成员并不是良善的罪犯。”。他们的面部纹身和缺乏纪律使他们很容易成为伏击和窃听的目标。

His book shares its subject’s transnational sprawl, jumping between countries and characters, sometimes confusingly. “The Hollywood Kid”, published in English last year, solves this problem by telling the gang’s story through a single anti-hero: an MS-13 hitman. Quickly readers learn of his 50-plus kills. “The Kid has euphemisms for everything,” write brothers Oscar Martinez and Juan Jose Martinez (a reporter for El Faro and an anthropologist, respectively). “If he kills someone and dumps him in a well, he’s sent him to get a drink. If he buries someone, dead or alive, in some field, he’s sent him to count stars.”

他的书分享了MS-13的跨国发展，讲述的故事从国家到人物来回跳跃，有时令人困惑。去年出版的英文版《好莱坞小子》解决了这个问题，通过一个单一的反派英雄,一个MS-13组织的杀手，来讲述这个帮派的故事：读者很快就知道了他犯下的50多起谋杀案。“《好莱坞小子》书中对所有事情的描写都比较委婉，”奥斯卡·马丁内斯和胡安·何塞·马丁内斯兄弟写道（分别是ElFaro的记者和人类学家）。“如果主人公杀了人抛尸井里，他就会去喝一杯。如果主人公在某个地方埋了人，不管埋的人是死是活，他都会去数星星。”