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Jason De León is professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies and Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. More about this author >
Filed in the following archives
From the publisher:
Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet the real lives and work of smugglers—or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services—are only ever reported on from a distance, using tired tropes and stereotypes, often depicted as boogie men and violent warlords. In an effort to better understand this essential yet extralegal billion-dollar global industry, internationally recognized anthropologist and expert Jason De León embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years.
The result of this unique and extraordinary access is Soldiers and Kings: the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. It is a heart-wrenching and intimate narrative that revolves around the life and death of one coyote who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. De León chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee ragtag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail.
Based on seven years of fieldwork on a trail that winds through Central America to the US-Mexico border, Soldiers and Kings is an engrossing narrative about the human desire for freedom. This profoundly political book holds the US to account for its cruelty, without getting lost in the bizarre American politics of “border walls.” Jason De León compassionately illuminates a world of limited choices, when young men are conscripted into gangs and violence, a life of constant vigilance and early death, but most of all, a life not of the smugglers’ own choosing.
