Anthropologist and award-winning author Jason De León discussed human smuggling and its importance to the Latino immigrant population at the Lewis Honors College.
De León discussed his 2024 National Book Award winning work in nonfiction, “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling,” at an event of the same name hosted by the Honors College on Thursday, March 6.
Organizer of the event and Lewis Honors College professor, Zada Komara, said De León’s storytelling informed others on the ongoing conversation regarding human rights in relation to migration in Mexico and the United States.
“They (smugglers) are people, no matter how American politicians and journalists and citizens like ourselves try to distance ourselves from their humanity,” Komara said.
Komara said she had found a “kindred spirit” in De León when partnering with him in the Undocumented Migration Project’s Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit.
According to De León, the exhibit memorializes the deaths of 3,992 migrants who crossed the U.S. border through the Sonoran Desert of Arizona from 1994 to 2024.
Lewis Honors College student Ander Rosenthal, who worked in the exhibit alongside Komara and De León, said he believed it was important to shed light on some of the systems that affect Latino immigrants coming to the U.S.
“It is important to note the struggles that people go through and to highlight the human struggle aspect of it,” Rosenthal said.
During the event, De León talked about the stories of two smugglers named Roberto and Chino, who referred to themselves as “guías,” which translates to “guides” in English. De León said the title of “guía” was important for the smuggler community, as many seemed to misunderstand the services smugglers provide.
“To most people Roberto and people like these (smugglers) are nobodies,” De León said. “He’s (Roberto) just another young man from Honduras with a history of substance abuse and violent behavior.”
De León said there is a common misconception of mistaking human smugglers like Roberto for human traffickers, saying the people Roberto smuggled were willing participants who actively sought him out and paid for his services.
“Everyone should know that this resilience, this part of the human condition, our ability to move across the landscape in search of new resources and habitat is what has allowed us to succeed as a species,” De León said.
According to De León, factors such as poverty, violence, political instability and climate change have contributed to millions of immigrants leaving their countries in search of a better existence.
“Human mobility cannot be stopped, and I would argue too that the human spirit cannot be stopped,” De León said.
De León said the intent behind his work was to explore the lives of smugglers, since many of them feel “trapped in a world of violence and fast money while in search of hope.”
During the event, De León talked about other figures in his book such as Chino, a Honduran smuggler who memorized migration routes running thousands of square miles from Guatemala to Mexico.
De León said many migrants pay about $100 or more for a smuggler to take them almost 40 miles.
According to De León, many of the low-level smugglers he worked with referred to themselves as soldiers because of the “grunt work” they did. De León said many of the Honduran men he worked with would also refer to each other as “king,” a term of endearment.
“They give off this vibe that they’re in control, that they are like these sort of powerful individuals who have this sort of kingdom, but in reality their position is very precarious,” De León said. “They’re giving off this vibe that everything is fine, that they have all this money and control, but they really don’t.”
He also said the book explores the complexity behind fully understanding the role of a smuggler.
“I’ll say it one more time, human smuggling and human trafficking are different things,” De León said. “The popular media seems to fail to recognize this a lot.”
De León said he believed college students should have a good understanding of what undocumented immigration looks like, saying his writing has presented the various circumstances regarding immigration as accessible and readable information.
He also did not want to “demonize” the men whose stories were reflected in his writing, according to De León.
“They wouldn’t have described themselves as heroes either,” De León said. “Rather as complicated folks who have had difficult lives and have had to make difficult decisions.”
De León said he believed people shouldn’t associate negative stereotypes with smugglers.
“When someone says smuggler or migrant, I want them to think of someone like Roberto or Chino,” De León said. “I want them to have names and stories that go with that.”
De León said by the end of his time spent with Roberto and Chino, he learned more about empathy and hope.
“I’m still in touch with a lot of these folks, even though I’m not writing about them anymore,” De León said. “I’m definitely connected to them forever.”
