From the enigmatic author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre comes The Carreta , the second volume in B. Traven's epic multivolume Jungle Novels series. Andrés is a young Indigenous oxcart driver in the mahogany camps of southern Mexico, bound to a system of debt slavery he scarcely understands. Unlike many of the men around him, he can read, and he holds fast to a single hope: that one day he will return to his wife. Yet the terms of his captivity reach beyond his own labor. Around him, work continues without end, enforced by habit, coercion, and the illusion that freedom can be earned. Andrés believes he can clear the debt and go home. Thesystem ensures that he cannot.

The Carreta presents a grim vision of lives controlled by forces beyond their power, where endurance replaces hope, duty becomes a burden, and aspirations gradually give way to reality.