“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
—Donald Trump, June 16, 2015
Moments after castigating Mexican immigrants in his infamous gilded escalator speech, presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested that many who cross our southern border are Middle Eastern terrorists. Not only do they bring their problems, he implied, they also mean us harm.
Ten years later, the crackdown on immigrants has moved beyond the hateful and ignorant rhetoric and into the lives of millions of human beings who now live in fear that the next raid will come knocking down their door. The most disheartening aspect of all of this is that tens of millions of Americans, despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary, have repeatedly supported the hate.
One of the dedicated gatherers of this evidence is anthropologist Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicano Studies at UCLA, who has spent years studying the harsh realities of those struggling to reach the United States. After “five years of fieldwork on the Arizona-Mexico border” De León published The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (2015).
“From 2009 to 2013, I interviewed hundreds of men and women between the ages of eighteen and seventy-five who were in the middle of the migration process,” he writes. “This one is an up-close and personal account of the lives of migrants and the lengths they are willing to go to taste just a sample of what many of us seem to take for granted. The result is a great deal of human suffering and violence occasionally peppered with hope.
Vivid descriptions and harsh language bring this book alive. De León opens with, “[F]lies. I mostly remember the goddam flies.” On his first day among the migrants, a corpse lays on the ground. “This dude,” he adds, “had been dead for less than an hour and yet the flies were already there in full force. They were landing on his milky eyeballs and crawling in and out of his mouth. His head was turned and facing the crowd of migrants. He seemed to be staring right through everyone.”
Overwhelmed by the site and smell, De León was equally flummoxed by the casual manner in which the migrants seemed to accept the presence of a dead body. “Death lay there like a casual summer breeze,” he writes. Traumatic stories such as this, and the resilience these people bring to bear to deal with it, populate De León’s book; one whose “primary theme… is violence.”
The willingness to risk the depredations and the violence endured during migration speaks to both the desperation of the lives immigrants have left behind and the hope they have for a new life. Here in the United States, we are familiar with the lives they hope for; the opportunity to work for a decent wage and take care of their families. Much less is spoken of the lives they are escaping; especially the manner in which they came to live under such deplorable circumstances in the first place. As we struggle to determine a just and humane immigration policy for this country, we should first examine how the policies of our past have contributed to the problem.
Any discussion about immigration to the United States across the country’s southern border should begin with the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the emergence of the US as a world power, President Theodore Roosevelt announced to the world that the country now held sway over the entire Western Hemisphere. In as much, he asserted that the US had the responsibility to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries when conditions merited it. According to TR, this was not an exercise of American might, but rather, it was a duty of the US to its neighbors.
It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention… and in the Western Hemisphere [conditions] may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.
Much more often than not, the many interventions into Latin America during the last 120 years were carried out in defense of American interests. While some benevolent justification has always been put forth, the overwhelming majority of American activity has been catastrophic for the peoples of Latin America. In the first half of the twentieth century the US regularly intervened to protect American corporations that economically controlled several Latin American countries, especially in the case of Guatemala and Honduras. And protecting American business interests usually meant propping up dictators who resisted laborers and others attempting to improve their wages and working conditions through democratic reforms of the government. These oppressive American-supported governments came to be known as “banana republics.”
Following World War II, the United States intervened repeatedly into Latin America with the stated purpose of fighting communism. Again, this typically involved US military and economic support for authoritarian governments who opposed any type of resistance from the left in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.
For the purposes of this commentary on immigration today, it must be recognized that the current oppressive and often-violent conditions throughout Latin America have been heavily influenced by the United States. Today’s mass migration in the Western Hemisphere is a near-direct product of American foreign policy over several generations.
Another overlooked aspect of today’s immigration problems is the billion dollar industry that has arisen around millions of human beings heading north for a better life.
The face of this “immigrant-industrial” complex is the “coyote” or human smuggler. Just as the migrants have been portrayed as criminals, so too human smugglers have been regularly portrayed by politicians and the media as ruthless exploiters of desperate human beings.
Unfortunately, this stereotype begins, as most do, with a kernel of truth. For example, in 2022, 53 migrants died after being locked inside a tractor trailer in the unforgiving San Antonio heat. The two smugglers held responsible for these tragic deaths were recently sentenced and will spend the rest of their lives in prison. It is stories such as this one that captivate Americans while framing in many minds the raw brutality experienced by those who struggle to enter this country.
While the two found guilty have been subjected to the justice they deserve, to what degree do they represent the countless thousands of those who escort hundreds of thousands of migrants from Central America and the Caribbean across Mexico to the US border every year?
To answer this question, I turn once again to anthropologist Jason De León whose most recent book is backed up by years of painstaking and extremely personal ethnographic research. The result is Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling (2024).
In this heartbreaking collection of stories, De León heads to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala; very near the beginning of the migrant journey for many, especially those escaping the widespread violence and soul-crushing poverty of Honduras.
The intrepid researcher recognizes the difficulty of challenging a powerful stereotype. “In Western popular media,” he writes, “smugglers are often portrayed as potbellied Latinos with silver-capped teeth and slick hair. They reek of cologne and drive shiny trucks bought with the hard-earned (or borrowed) money of desperate people trying to get to la USA. Roberto [the young man he introduces to us in his Introduction] defied these stereotypes. He was a skinny, banged-up Honduran kid who was often homeless and living hand to mouth. He rarely had more than $20 to his name and was often more desperate than his clients. He knew how to guide people along the train tracks and through the jungle because he came of age in those dreadful places.”
Over nearly seven years, De León developed close relationships with smugglers nicknamed Flaco, Alma, Papo, Santos, Kingston, and Roberto. They come from the same conditions that motivate millions to flee. The difference is that they have struggled so many times to escape that they have learned where and, more importantly, where not to, go. They know the bribes they will need to pay to gangs that control specific areas of the train tracks that lay a grid for the path north. They have become expert at bribing local police and immigration officials. They understand the hierarchy of the smuggling process and the rules that govern its existence.
They also feign fearlessness as a means of survival in the violent and oppressive system within which they operate. For example, watching a smuggler leaping from one train car to another, De León asks his friend why he is taking such great risks. His response is that he is demonstrating “that he is nuts and not to be [f—-d] with…”*
Defying the stereotype, these human smugglers are often subject to more violence than the average migrant. Facing constant threats, the smugglers who got to know De León live a precarious existence fueled by alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs which seem to be readily available to entrepreneurs periodically flushed with cash. Many carry the scars of knife and machete wounds.
Just as our history with Latin America is fraught with trouble and disruption, American intervention more recently has made the immigration problem worse. “As countries like the United States (and now places like Mexico), attempt to beat back migrants from their front door,” De León writes… “the human smuggling industry has ballooned. Sneaking people past border guards has grown from a mom-and-pop business into a billion-dollar global industry that will only become more important as parts of our planet grow to be less and less livable.”
Due to the obstacles created by American immigration policy, smugglers are needed now more than ever.
While many smugglers within the “immigration-industrial” complex are “thieves, traffickers, murderers, and/or rapists,” as De León admits, the majority appear to be simply taking advantage of the opportunity to make money in order to provide a service that millions of migrants are willing to pay for.
Of course, the smugglers who were willing to interact with De León excluded those whom he feared or those who gave him a “bad vibe.” However, there is a great deal of evidence that many smugglers resemble De León’s “good” smugglers; namely, the millions of migrants who have successfully reached the United States and also those who have been deported repeatedly, only to try once again.
As De León adds, “[t]here are just enough ‘good’ smugglers in the world for the economy of clandestine movement to function, even with the constant risk of things taking a bad turn at some point on the journey.”
De León’s smugglers definitely provide a service, albeit a violently regulated one. As De León writes, “[m]any have come to see the labor of people like Roberto as necessary and sometimes lifesaving.”
De León is also sensitive to the language used to describe human smugglers. He is specifically bothered by the interchangeable use of “smugglers” and “traffickers.” “Smugglers” are providing a service for those “willing” to pay. In contrast, human “traffickers” are exploiting the “unwilling.” Solving the problem means getting the language right.
Racist language doesn’t help either. De León puts forth that the problem is much larger than race. To the scientist who has studied these conditions on the ground for well over a decade, he says that “the problem cannot be reduced to just racism… it’s a much bigger problem that we are facing globally… climate change, the brutality of capitalism, misogyny, patriarchy, the long-term impacts of colonialism… this is all happening at once…”
One thing is clear to me. The steps taken by the current administration are not the solution; they are simply a continuation of our long hegemonic history over Latin America. De León concludes that the current immigration problem is “very much a mess driven by the United States; and Donald Trump’s rhetorical “bluster” and misguided policies have done absolutely nothing to ameliorate it. Indeed, in addition to those directly affected by the current crackdowns, Trump immigration policies have also debilitated America’s standing in the world and embarrassed those of us who hope that our country can some day strive to serve as a beacon of hope for others. As De León confidently predicts, “The mass deportation of 12 million people is not going to happen” simply because “border walls [and all that they symbolize] are no match for human determination and the will to survive.”*
Unfortunately, De León is at a loss for viable solutions and he warns the reader of his books to “prepare yourself to be disappointed.” Regardless of the futility of this decades-long catastrophe, De León has at least taken a step in the right direction because the first thing one must do to solve a problem is to understand it. And, unless one is a cruel and unforgiving person, understanding the current calamity requires a close examination of the human suffering that underscores it. De León’s two fine books do just that.**
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLzgpVBxwE8
** Hearty thanks to TNT Contributor Jill Cotu for recommending the work of Jason De León.
