Dear Festival Friends,

Like lots of kids growing up, Jason De León wanted to be Indiana Jones. Unlike most kids, he actually did become an archaeologist, though he quickly learned that the work had nothing to do with finding magical relics and cracking whips at bad guys. He also became an anthropologist, which taught him that judging others based on his own life experience was no way to operate. Understanding other people and cultures takes humility, an open mind, and enormous amounts of time. Anthropologists call it “deep hanging out.”

To better understand the dangerous world of human smuggling, De León spent seven years embedded with a group of coyotes who led migrants from Central America to the U.S.–Mexico border. Though we’re familiar with tales of people trying to escape their homeland, less is known about those on the supply side: the men and occasional woman who are paid to facilitate the trip.

De León writes about his experience in his indelible book Soldiers and Kings, winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction and named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, NPR, Time, and The Boston Globe. It’s a uniquely in-depth look at people who are often stereotypically portrayed as, in De León’s words, “potbellied Latinos with silver-capped teeth and slick hair.” In reality, most of them are low-level foot soldiers for whom smuggling is the best of their limited life options. De León focuses his narrative on one young coyote who falls in love and struggles to leave smuggling behind, with heartbreakingly disastrous results. “He rarely had more than $20 to his name,” De León writes, “and was often more desperate than his clients.”

De León is careful to emphasize that when migrants hire a coyote, there’s no guarantee that the person won’t rob or abandon them, or worse. “De León makes clear he’s not trying to romanticize smugglers, but rather give insight into their day-to-day experience and through them to the larger migration system,” said PBS News Hour. “They found themselves on the migrant trail having escaped danger and lack of economic opportunity back home.”

Soldiers and Kings is a companion to De León’s first book, The Land of Open Graves, which chronicles the journeys of people attempting to cross the Sonoran Desert into the United States. De León also uses his skills as an archaeologist to piece together the stories of those who didn’t make it and whose bones and personal effects are all that remain of their attempts to build a new life. In the course of his reporting, De León collected thousands of backpacks, water bottles, and other artifacts that had been left behind, and he worked with families to identify loved ones who had died or gone missing. “The conclusion is stark and inevitable,” wrote High Country News in its review. “The desert eats poor people.”

Both of De León’s books grew out of his work as executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project, which uses archaeology and ethnography to raise awareness of global migration issues. His unique blend of journalism and social science has earned him many honors, including a MacArthur “genius” grant and a Margaret Mead Award. We look forward to hearing his insights on immigration and border politics when he joins us at the Festival in May. For tickets to his event, please click here.  

Community News

A handful of Festival authors will be appearing at Santa Fe’s Collected Works bookstore in the coming weeks. On Monday, March 9, 2025 Festival author Terry Tempest Williams will discuss her new book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, with geologist Daniel Schrag of Harvard University and the Santa Fe Institute. On Wednesday, April 15, 2026 Festival author Peter Stark will share tales from his new historical narrative The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado’s Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance. On Saturday, April 18, 2024 Festival author Julia Alvarez will be in conversation with Festival co-founder Carmella Padilla and will read from her new poetry collection, Visitations. And on Thursday, April 23, the father-daughter team of Douglas and Aletheia Preston will discuss their new thriller, Extinction. To learn more, please visit the Collected Works website.

Board of Directors
Edward Gale, Chair

Janet Bailey | Juliet Erickson

Andrea Fellows Fineberg | Jenny Kimball

James McGrath Morris | Carmella Padilla

Jenna Scanlan | Mary Sloane

Maria Gale, Ex Officio

Founders
Clare Hertel | Carmella Padilla | Mark Bryant