Soldiers and Kings

Starred review from May 31, 2024

De Le�n (anthropology and Chicana/o studies, UCLA; The Land of Open Graves) provides an account of the guides who smuggle undocumented immigrants into the U.S. De Le�n spent seven years interviewing several guides as they trekked from Honduras into Mexico. He discusses how guides (primarily young men) often become part of gang-led smuggling rings, and he connects the dots between Central America's poverty rates and environmental crises to show how human trafficking at the southern border is a by-product of U.S. capitalism. Noting that his informants are foot soldiers who aspire to lead better lives without losing their humanity, he builds a strong character-driven case for policy change to improve border concerns. This must-listen account is narrated with precision and compassion by the author, who bears witness to the risky lives of people who would prefer to leave smuggling behind and follow their own paths. VERDICT Listeners will learn how smugglers' lives parallel those of the would-be immigrants who enter the U.S. every year. De Le�n vividly depicts how both groups are part and parcel of a dangerous global industry in pursuit of greater economic opportunity.--Sharon Sherman

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 28, 2024
Smugglers who help Central Americans traverse Mexico and cross into the U.S. are not the “slick haired... kingpins” portrayed in popular media but are usually themselves poor migrants who got waylaid and caught up in the trade, according to this outstanding, luminously written account. Drawing on seven years spent embedded with people smugglers in Mexico, anthropologist De León (The Land of Open Graves) depicts a hardscrabble world of almost mythically impossible proportions: terrorized by corrupt Mexican cops, fearful of being returned back to the brutal conditions of their home countries, and constantly at risk of violence from gangs, the smugglers serve as guides to desperate souls who’d “rather die on the train tracks in Mexico than be murdered on a street corner” back home. De León’s elegant prose brings pulsing life to this benighted underworld, observing it with a sharp eye and a noirish sensibility (“It is impossible to avoid him. It is unhealthy to run from him,” he quips about a gang leaderwho perches as “the guardian at the gate... the troll under the bridge” at a waypoint along the notorious La Bestia train route). His fluid storytelling builds to a gut-wrenching finish as De León reflects on the heartless reception his ethnographic work with smugglers receives from academic audiences, contrasting it with his own emotional fallout after the death of Roberto, a carefree, lively young smuggler he’d befriended. It’s a knockout.