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Summary and Reviews of Soldiers and Kings by Jason De León

Soldiers and Kings by Jason De León

Soldiers and Kings

Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

by Jason De León
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 19, 2024, 400 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

An intense, intimate and first-of-its-kind look at the world of human smuggling in Latin America, by a MacArthur "genius" grant winner and anthropologist with unprecedented access

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. In a powerful, original voice, De León expertly the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee rag-tag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail. Soldiers and Kings is not only a ground-breaking up-close glimpse of a difficult-to-access world, it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

Introduction

Roberto's murder doesn't warrant much attention. This is not surprising in a place like Honduras, where homicide has become woven into the fabric of daily life. Still, a local newspaper in San Pedro Sula manages to give him three sentences, although it gets his first name wrong:

José [sic] Roberto Paredes died Friday night at Mario Rivas Hospital. Family members reported that he had tried to travel mojado [illegally] to the United States but in Chiapas, Mexico, was stabbed during an assault and admitted to a hospital. After his discharge, he returned to Honduras and a few days later his condition worsened and he was brought to Rivas Hospital, where he died after several days.

The story gets most of the basic details right. Roberto was in Mexico illegally when he was stabbed. He later died in Honduras from his wounds. But he wasn't a migrant headed to the United States, at least not anymore. He'd given up that fantasy a while ago. For the past few years, he'd lived as a...

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  • award image

    National Book Awards
    2024

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

While De León painstakingly illustrates the stories of smugglers who have accepted him into their clique, he cannot separate his own story from theirs. He understands their motivations and the unspeakable: PTSD, bad dreams, anxiety about surviving. While Soldiers and Kings offers little political commentary, it exposes the structural problems of troubled countries and the loose barriers in place that cannot prevent migrants from leaving their homelands. Despite De León's engaging and conversational prose, it isn't an easy story to read. The actors on all sides are complicated and sad; yes, some are monsters. Others are trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents...continued

Full Review Members Only (1251 words)

(Reviewed by Valerie Morales).

Media Reviews

Los Angeles Times
A unique read that emerges from seven years of research and firsthand experiences lived by the author amidst smugglers, or 'guías,' on the U.S.-Mexico border…De León offers a glimpse into a world rarely seen or understood.

New York Times
A rare inside look at human smuggling on the border … Smuggling, [De León] says, 'is not the problem.' But as his own book memorably recounts, in a world with no shortage of problems, it's nevertheless one of them.

Orange County Register
UCLA anthropology professor De León embedded with a group of coyotes, or migrant guides, over the course of several years to study the people behind the industry of human smuggling. His book seeks to dispel stereotypes about those involved with moving migrants across Mexico.

The Boston Globe
This anthropological deep dive with an unmistakably human (and humane) voice is the result of seven years embedded with smugglers moving migrants across Mexico. Without fear, favor, or judgment, De León honors his subject's complexity, neither sentimentalizing nor condemning.

The New Republic
The book's great virtue is in its close attention to the individual lives of its small group of central characters…toggling between the macro and the micro: the globe-spanning, incomprehensibly vast forces that have brought these smugglers' lives into being, as well as their own individual struggles to make something of what the world has made of them.

Time Magazine
For seven years, de León tracked the lives of both migrants crossing the border and the coyotes who shepherded them. He unveils a profoundly intimate account of their world—of the work, the terror, and the human connections made on their treacherous journeys. A National Book Award finalist, Soldiers and Kings seeks to buck the dangerous stereotypes that are often associated with migrants and smugglers, and instead, shows their fully nuanced stories.

Booklist
Anthropologist and MacArthur fellow De Leon offers a staggering view of the people who help move asylum seekers. His conversations with participants in a vast migration put human faces to a shadowy concept, and his story is illuminating and often heartrending in its telling.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A harrowing account of the work of human smugglers in bringing aspirational immigrants to America's southern border...[and] an exemplary ethnography of central importance to any discussion of immigration policy or reform.

Author Blurb Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Evicted and Poverty, by America
This is a real one. A work of extraordinary reportage and compassion, Soldiers and Kings takes us deep inside the lives of smugglers guiding desperate migrants across Latin America. One breathtaking scene follows another, rendered in vibrant, unsparing prose documenting grinding poverty and violence, but also young love and redemption. It will shock you, move you, and leave you changed.

Author Blurb Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of The House on Mango Street
A terrifying journey alongside men who have given up being men and are transformed into "ghosts or demons or dust." De León, our guia, documents their inter-generational tragedies with full complexity. This book ultimately leads one to question what it means to be human, and, as such, to examine what one's own responsibility is to this global issue. An enlightening, frightening, unforgettable read.

Reader Reviews

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Beyond the Book



The Long and Exhausting Journey for Central American Migrants

Black and white photo showing a line of migrants outside a tented area For seven years, anthropologist Jason De León followed low-level smugglers to understand the motivation, culture, hopes, and dreams of those guiding migrants to the US-Mexico border and beyond. De León documents their stories, some of which ended in death, in Soldiers and Kings. While his work is centered on the smugglers, a fuller picture of today's Central American migrants and the danger they encounter when they flee their home country emerges.

Migrants are at the mercy of gangs whose presence dominates the trail to the US-Mexico border. One of the first stops for migrants entering Mexico from Guatemala is an enclosed structure called "the chicken coop." Doesn't matter if you are walking, or a passenger in a van or bus...

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