Javier Zamora
Memoirist, poet, and author of Solito, and a winner of the 2023 American Book Award.
Jason De León
Anthropologist, professor, and author of National Book Award winnerSoldiers and Kings
Anthropologist Jason De León | 2017 MacArthur Fellow
Jason De León creates public dialogue, exhibitions, and media about undocumented migration and the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. He has been recognized with a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his work as an anthropologist and scholar examining the inequalities and brutalities of human migration through a variety of lenses. In his fireside chats and lectures, De León shines a light on the human consequences of U.S. immigration and border policies, offers a counterpoint to public media perception of migrants, and puts names, faces, and stories to the thousands of individuals who have died in their attempt to reach the United States.
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About Jason De León
Jason De León is the Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a non-profit that raises awareness about migration and assists families searching for their missing loved ones and Professor of Anthropology, and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. De León began his career as an archaeologist studying ancient tools in Mexico. During the course of archaeological fieldwork he met many people in Mexico who shared their often harrowing stories of migration with him. Inspired by those conversations, he began to study undocumented border crossings from archaeological, ethnographic, forensic, and visual perspectives. In his work, he investigates the lived experiences of people moving across various landscapes and borders to explain how poverty, violence, political instability, and climate change shape and fuel our current global migration crisis. For his internationally renowned work in shedding light on the complexity of migration and U.S. immigration policies, De León was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017.
Between 2000 and 2022, the bodies of over 3,600 border crossers were recovered in the deserts of southern Arizona with many more individuals still missing. In his award-winning book, The Land of Open Graves, and his lectures, Jason De León interrogates the U.S. border enforcement strategy known as Prevention through Deterrence (PTD). This federal strategy uses hyper-security measures around urban border zones to force migrants to cross through remote and depopulated regions where the natural environment functions as an impediment to human movement. This policy has resulted in the deaths and disappearances of thousands of people. Drawing on interviews from survivors and two decades of anthropological research, he concludes that not only did PTD fail to deter migration, but it turned border crossings into a deadly and violent social process experienced by millions of people. Recent increases in security measures at the US/Mexico border and across Mexico has led to a rise in robbery, extortion, and assault that has forced people to now rely on transnational gangs such as MS-13 for protection while migrating.
In his book, Soldiers and Kings, Jason De León outlines how human smuggling has changed since 2014 following a joint effort by Mexico and the United States to crack down on migration from Central America. Through the lens of anthropology, Soldiers and Kings provides an intimate and up-close look at the daily (and often dangerous) lives of those charged with getting people past immigration security forces. Human smuggling is a billion-dollar global industry that has long been understudied and misunderstood. Drawing on years of experience documenting the difficult and often brutal lives of the many Honduran smugglers he befriended in Mexico, De León illuminates the complicated nature of the border-crossing industry while introducing the reader to the many players who are caught up in its vicious cycle. Hailed as “An enlightening, frightening, unforgettable read” by Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street), Soldiers and Kings won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
As the director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a non-profit research, arts, and education collective, Jason De León raises awareness about migration issues while also working to help reunite families with their loved ones who died or disappeared while migrating. With the Undocumented Migration Project, De León has sponsored and organized the participatory art installation Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94), which is composed of over 3,800 handwritten toe tags. Each tag represents a migrant who died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2022, showing the exact locations where remains were found. With exhibitions in over 130 locations worldwide since 2020, the project raises global awareness about the realities of migration and the human costs of American border policies. De León’s work with the Undocumented Migration Project and his academic writing has been featured in numerous media outlets, including National Public Radio, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera, BBC, and Vice.
Jason De León is a 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and a National Geographic Explorer. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Penn State University in 2008, and his bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from UCLA in 2001.
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Speaking Topics
Uncovering the Stories at the U.S.-Mexico Border
In this lecture, Jason De León draws from his research and work as an anthropologist to not only speak on the human consequences of U.S. immigration and border policies but shares stories of hope and resilience. Starting with the history of these policies, he discusses "Prevention Through Deterrence," a strategy that is in place today to prevent migrants from coming into the United States by deliberately funneling people through the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. De León chronicles the journeys of people who have made dozens of attempts to cross the border and uncovers the stories of those who died during the process. Yet, within the hardship and grief, there is hope. De León shares stories of working with families of the deceased and missing to find closure and shares the inspiring tales of migrants that he has worked with over the decade.
Soliders and Kings
Based on the research for his upcoming book, Soldiers and Kings, Jason De León puts the spotlight on the billion-dollar human smuggling industry that resulted from both U.S. and Mexican immigration and border policies. Using his unforgettable photography and powerful prose, he documents the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who due to heightened security measures, make profit from transporting undocumented migrants across Mexico. In this eye-opening talk, he discusses the evolving, complicated relationship between transnational gangs, the human smuggling industry, and the migrants caught in this violent social process.
Art and Writing as Means for Political Change
In this impacting workshop, Jason De León speaks on how public outreach, art, and publicly engaged academic writing can act as powerful means of political change. Focusing on his global exhibition, the Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94), he shows how art can raise awareness of social issues. HT94, which memorializes the thousands who have died while migrating, creates a visual representation of the realities of the U.S.-Mexico Border and illustrates how decisions made by those elected to the U.S. government can lead to mass fatalities.
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Video
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Praise for Jason De León
Praise for Soldiers and Kings
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 RepublicA 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 TimesA 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 TimesPraise for The Land of Open Graves
The Land of Open Graves is an invaluable book, one full of rich ethnographic accounts of migrants, sharp analysis, and beautiful photographs by Michael Wells (as well as some by the migrants De León encounters). It is a strong indictment of the violence migrants face, particularly of a structural sort, and it calls us to "better understand how our worlds are intertwined and the ethical responsibility we have to one another as human beings." It deserves a broad audience.
— NACLA Report on the AmericasDe León confronts us with a vivid indictment of the killing fields on the US-Mexico border and reveals the brutality of global inequality in all its goriness and intimate suffering. A self-described refugee from archaeology, De León is revitalizing the field of anthropology by blowing apart the traditional subdisciplinary boundaries. With no holds barred, he offers new paths for theory, methods, and public anthropology.
— Philippe Bourgois, author of Righteous Dopefiend and In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El BarrioJason De León has written a remarkable book. I know of no other ethnography of life and death on the borderlands that is more moving, theoretically ambitious, or powerful than this eagerly awaited work.
— María Elena García, author of Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education, and Multicultural Development in PeruThe Land of Open Graves is a politically, theoretically, and morally important book that mobilizes the four fields of anthropology to demonstrate beyond a doubt how current US border defense policy results in deliberate death. Beautifully written and engaging, it is a must-read for the general public and students across the social sciences.
— Lynn Stephen, author of Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon and We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social MovementsThe Land of Open Graves is an invaluable book, one full of rich ethnographic accounts of migrants, sharp analysis, and beautiful photographs by Michael Wells (as well as some by the migrants De León encounters). It is a strong indictment of the violence migrants face, particularly of a structural sort, and it calls us to “better understand how our worlds are intertwined and the ethical responsibility we have to one another as human beings." It deserves a broad audience.
— NACLA Report on the Americas -
Books by Jason De León
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Featured Title
Soldiers and Kings
“A work of extraordinary reportage and compassion…[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
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