A Review of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
Review by Rey M. Rodríguez
During this moment of national madness, the work of Jason de León, winner of the National Book Award and Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies, forces us to confront the idea that either we are all sacred or none of us is sacred. If we are all sacred, then we will read his latest book, Soldiers and Kings, with an open heart and attempt to walk in the shoes of human smugglers to understand the complexities of why someone would undertake this work.
If no one is sacred, then as a country, we condone and engage in a U.S. immigration policy where, for decades, it has purposefully funneled migrants towards the Sonoran Desert to likely die, suffer, and face life-changing trauma. If no one is sacred, then we enlist masked men with military clothing and machine guns to kidnap our neighbors without due process from schools, churches, courts, and even Home Depots, leaving children without parents, helpless old tamal vendors zip-tied on street corners, and Venezuelan men, with no criminal record, being sent to countries like El Salvador or God knows where.
At a time of quick sound bites, fraying empathy, and divisive rhetoric, Soldiers and Kings, by Jason de León, reminds us of the importance of standing with, learning from, and listening to the marginalized and disenfranchised among us. We have much to gain by doing so, even if, at first glance, it may not seem clear why we should.
De León decides to stand with human smugglers, also known as coyotes, polleros, pasadores, and guías. Which begs the question: why would anyone want to study the lives of what the mass media portrays as “bad guys” who only rape, rob, kidnap, and murder the innocent? The short answer is that few things in life are as they seem. And the topic of human smuggling is much more complicated than what meets the eye.
De León corrects these mass media misconceptions with empathy, curiosity, and humility, allowing the reader to delve into this complicated subject and hopefully come away with a much more nuanced view of migration and those who find themselves guiding migrants through some of the most treacherous terrain and conditions imaginable. For example, he writes: “Obviously, a lot of guides do terrible things . . . But I also think that some actually try to help people. I also know that a lot of smugglers are struggling themselves . . . many of them are living on the streets and have nothing.”
As an anthropologist, he worked for close to 7 years by interviewing smugglers as they waited to make their next move north or for their next job. For the most part, he avoided interviewing migrants to safeguard their passage and not put them at risk if they said something that could anger the smuggler. While doing his participant observations with smugglers, he says he did not engage in any illegal or potentially dangerous activity.
What I appreciate most about de León’s work is the stories that he collects, and much like the character of Don Quixote, the manner in which he looks for light in the darkness of a complicated narrative. He writes near the end of his introduction:
“Some critics will undoubtedly say that I am doing the Devil’s work by trying to “humanize” smugglers. Let’s be clear. That is not my goal here. I am not trying to “humanize” anyone. Instead, I begin this book with the seemingly radical proposition that those who try to make a living guiding people across hardening geopolitical boundaries are themselves human.”
With this goal in mind, we read about characters with nicknames like Kingston, Flaco, Alma, Papo, Chino, and Santos. Their stories highlight our interconnectedness and the need to know and understand them to build a more humane world.
Around the globe, millions of people cross international borders seeking a better life because of horrific conditions at home. As de León writes, “Global inequality keeps the Chinos of the world in business.” It is easy to judge these smugglers negatively from a privileged position of relative comfort, especially when many of us gain from the benefits of migrants being abused and paid slave wages. But doing so ignores the global forces of climate change, poverty, transnational gang violence, the drug trade, and political corruption that fuel the smuggling, in addition to the inhumane border enforcement policies that force migrants to make extreme decisions to save themselves and their families.
This broader context explains why we must hear these stories, because immigration policies based on fear, insecurity, and self-interest harm us all. On the contrary, such policies must be centered on our humanness and the need for one another. At a time when U.S. leaders articulate a misguided and irrational notion that somehow the United States can isolate itself from global issues, the reality is that it can’t. Furthermore, the attempt to forcibly remove 11 million people from the country is so cruel and self-defeating that it boggles the mind.
We need to know that at age twelve, as de León writes, “Kingston had already been on the streets for almost four years and was no stranger to brutality.” Repeated exposure to chronic and traumatic violence at a young age often leads to these children committing “cruelties and atrocities of the worst kind.” This violence can only lead to more violence. Additionally, this unstoppable force intensifies when the US wrongly increases pressure on desperate people.
We need to know that everyone the author spoke to for the book knew someone who had been murdered; practically all of them (Flaco, Papo, Chino, Alma, Jesmyn) had witnessed someone being killed. We cannot bury our heads in the sand from such brutality. It must be brought to the light, and it is for this reason that the work of de León is so important.
It must inform us so that we begin to reimagine a different world and then begin to work towards it. A world in which our politicians are no longer promoting draconian immigration policies, but instead policies that are rooted in justice, including due process, and a path to citizenship.
It is clear that the current administration is carrying out a racial and ethnic cleansing of the U.S. in which Brown and Black people are removed and not permitted to enter, and white Afrikaner refugees and others of similar complexion are given carte blanche to enter and become U.S. citizens. The United States Supreme Court even supports such racist cleansing when it allows ICE to consider race, use of a language other than English, and low-wage employment to target people.
We must reject these ideas and policies with a counternarrative that the headwinds of climate change, poverty, and violence are too strong to defeat them with hate, ignorance, and fear. Instead, they must be met with an understanding of our common humanity and the need to work on these matters in concert with one another and across geopolitical borders.
De León’s compassionate writing, which describes these often tragic human guides and smugglers, shocks our collective conscience. And by so doing, it reminds us of the radical idea that we are all sacred, regardless of our worst acts. With this greater understanding of the least and most marginalized among us, we can see our mutual divinity and, in turn, build a more just world.
Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a non-fiction history of a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He also participates in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute for American Indian Arts' MFA Program. This fall his poetry will be published in Huizache. His other book reviews are at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Charter House's blog, IAIA's journal, and Los Angeles Review.
