B. Traven's third installment of his Jungle Novels follows an Indigenous Mexican laborer whose brutal experiences in the mahogany camps awaken him to the systemic exploitation around him.
At first, Celso Flores wants only enough money to marry the woman he loves. But after his hard-earned savings are seized by the local landowners, he is forced into the brutal world of the monter as, the remote mahogany camps where Indigenous workers are trapped in a cycle of debt, violence, and forced labor. As Celso struggles to escape the system that has claimed his labor and his freedom, he begins to see that his misfortunes are not isolated acts of cruelty but part of a vast machinery of exploitation stretching from the plantations of Chiapas to the international companies profiting from their resources. Along the way, he encounters fellow workers who help awaken in him a new understanding of solidarity and resistance.