Orange County Register's "20 Highly Anticipated Books Coming in 2024 We Want to Read"
“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 Boston Globe's Best Books of 2024
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 treachero's 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.
—Time’s “100 Must Read Books of 2024”
“‘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.”—Los Angeles 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.” —The New York Times
“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.” —The New Republic
“Anthropologist and MacArthur fellow De León 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.”—Booklist
“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.”—Kirkus *Starred Review*
“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.”—Orange County Register
“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.”
—Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Evicted and Poverty, by America
“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.”
—Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of The House on Mango Street
“Rigorously researched and deeply felt, this book is for everyone who wants to understand the despair, sorrow, and violence that migrants and their guides experience each and every day while trying not to lose their humanity. Eloquent and urgent, it calls out to all of us to imagine what a better world might be.”
—Ruth Behar, author of The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
“Soldiers and Kings is utterly captivating from page one. Jason De León’s groundbreaking access to the lives of coyotes, or guías, offers a rare and intimate glimpse into their humanity. Soldiers and Kings is a powerful, immersive experience that will challenge readers’ preconceptions and leave a lasting impression. Beautifully written, surprising, deeply informative, and intellectually provocative, this is a must-read for anyone seeking a deep understanding of the human experience in the face of adversity."
—Laurence Ralph, author of Sito: An American Teenager and the City that Failed Him
“The stories of the guides made me cry at their immense suffering, laugh at their playful jokes, rage at the injustice they face, and feel inspired by their will to survive… Soldiers and Kings [is] holy work.”
—The Christian Century
★ 2024-01-04
A harrowing account of the work of human smugglers in bringing aspirational immigrants to America’s southern border.
Anthropology professor De León writes of the men—almost always men—who work as smugglers bringing undocumented immigrants from Central America through Mexico to the U.S. There’s a world of difference between smugglers and traffickers, and while they’re commonly called coyotes, polleros, and the like, at least one of his subjects prefers to call himself a guía, a guide, “a designation with potentially less negative semantic baggage and one that directly reflects the work.” Traveling to Honduras and throughout Mexico over seven years, De León encountered numerous such guides, who have a difficult job requiring a split-second decision on whether to trust someone, especially someone like him who was asking invasive questions. Notes one police officer whose job it is to keep coyotes and would-be immigrants from their homeland, “Many migrants that I’ve interviewed have also told me they would prefer to die en el camino than stay home and wait to die from gang violence or hunger.” Both outcomes are entirely possible in lands riven by internecine gang wars and poverty, as in the case of Honduras, being second only to Haiti as the poorest nation in Latin America. Importantly, De León writes, both outcomes are also the product of late capitalism, as is the very movement of masses of people to places of greater economic opportunity, less violence, and better environmental conditions. Many of the author’s informants die along the way, as do some of their charges, and many others seek to change their lives and do something else. To his credit, so does De León in dispirited moments when he laments “peddling stories of other people’s misery.”
An exemplary ethnography of central importance to any discussion of immigration policy or reform.
