Working in the Shadows: Cargo Culture in Oscar Martinez's "The Beast"

In “Working in the Shadows: Cargo Culture in Oscar Martinez’s The Beast,” Nancy Quintanilla argues that the complex system of modern-day human trafficking reflects how delimiting concepts of citizenship help turn human... [ view full abstract ]

In “Working in the Shadows: Cargo Culture in Oscar Martinez’s The Beast,” Nancy Quintanilla argues that the complex system of modern-day human trafficking reflects how delimiting concepts of citizenship help turn human beings into profitable bodies for consumption. She reads Oscar Martinez’s journalistic novel, The Beast, as a drive-by narrative that not only follows the trafficking of Central American migrants aboard cargo trains in Mexico, but also explores how such legally vulnerable bodies in transit become profitable cargo themselves. The Beast reveals the ways in which state policies deprive displaced people of their legal rights and design a politics of valuation that generates psychological abuse and manipulation. The women portrayed maintain a sense of self-possession and awareness that reveals both the complexities of human agency and its subjugation within shadow economies.