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"De 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 Barrio
"Jason 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 Peru
"This book sears itself into your memory. You literally can’t put it down."—Stanley Brandes, Robert H. Lowie Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
"An impressive piece of scholarship, The Land of Open Graves is a brilliant and important book that humanizes the realities of life and death on the migrant trail in southern Arizona."—Randall H. McGuire, author of Archaeology as Political Action
"Jason De León has written that rare and precious book—a masterful deployment of tools from across the broad spectrum of anthropology."—Danny Hoffman, author of The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia
"The 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 Movements
"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 Americas
List of contents
Introduction
PART ONE. THIS HARD LAND
1. Prevention Through Deterrence
2. Dangerous Ground
3. Necroviolence
PART TWO. EL CAMINO
4. Memo and Lucho
5. Deported
6. Technological Warfare
7. The Crossing
PART THREE. PERILOUS TERRAIN
8. Exposure
9. You Can’t Leave Them Behind
10. Maricela
11. We Will Wait until You Get Here
12. Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix A. Border Patrol Apprehensions, Southern Border Sectors, 2000–2014
Appendix B. Border Patrol Apprehensions, Tucson Sector, by Distance from the Border, Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Jason De León is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American Studies, UCLA; a 2017 MacArthur Fellow; Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project; and President of the Board of Directors for the Colibrí Center for Human Rights. In 2010, he hosted American Treasures, a reality-based television show on the Discovery Channel about anthropology and American history. He is currently organizing a global participatory exhibition called “Hostile Terrain 94” that will be installed in 150 locations simultaneously on six continents through the summer of 2021.
Summary
Sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time-the human consequences of US immigration policy. This book reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States.
Additional text
"A powerful book . . . The Land of Open Graves is very appropriately published in the California Series in Public Anthropology and represents just what public or engaged anthropology can and should be. . . . This is a book that all parties should read."
