Jason De León

Jason De León[1] is an anthropologist, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2013), and a MacArthur Foundation 2017 Fellow.[2] He studies the migration from Latin America to the United States of clandestine migrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. De León is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles[3] and Director of the Undocumented Migration Project[4], a non-profit research/arts/education collective aimed at documenting and raising awareness about migration issues. Since 2009, he has traveled frequently to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona to collect artifacts left behind by migrants trying to gain access to the United States. His Undocumented Migration Project[5][6] includes more than 9000 objects, some of which are on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. He also had an exhibition with some of the artifacts called State of Exception at the New School in New York City.[7] He is Head Curator of the global participatory exhibition Hostile Terrain 94 that will be installed in 130 locations on six continents in 2021.[8] Jason Patrick De León, PhD is a 43-year-old male Mexican-American who grew up by McAllen, Texas near the Mexican border in the Rio Grande Valley [9]. His native language is English and he is also fluent in Spanish.[10] Outside of his academic work, he is a musician who has been involved in various bands and musical projects over the years.[11] He hosted a television show on the Discovery Channel in 2011 called "American Treasures[12]."

Jason de León

Education

De León received his BA in anthropology in 2001 from the University of California in Los Angeles, CA. He received his MA in 2004 anthropology from Pennsylvania State University, PA where he completed his thesis titled, “Aztec Salt Production in the Basin of Mexico: A Domestic Perspective. He received his PhD in anthropology in 2008 from Pennsylvania State University, where he completed his dissertation titled, The Lithic Industries of San Lorenzo-Tenochtitlán: An Economic and Technological Study of Olmec Obsidian on the 10 years he spent in Mexico excavating obsidian tool artifacts left by indigenous people thousands of years ago.[10]

Academic positions

De León is currently a Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies and is also Affiliate Faculty in the Latin American Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA. His lab is located in the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology CA. From 2013-2014 he was a Weatherhead scholar at the School for Advanced Research.[13] He is currently President of the Board of Directors for the Colibrí Center for Human Rights.

Publications and awards

De León has published a book and is currently working on two more, has 22 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, has been involved in 22 museum works and exhibitions, and has been the recipient of numerous research grants, awards, fellowships and honors, including a 2017-2022 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He received the 2016 Margaret Mead Award for his book The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail, with photos by Michael Wells, which combines the use of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to document the human consequences of US immigration policy.[14] He is the author of the book The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (University of California Press, 2015).[15] The book received the 2016 Margaret Mead Award [16][17] and the 2018 JI Staley Prize[18] and has received positive reviews in many media outlets includingThe New York Times. His scholarly articles have been published in American Anthropologist, Journal of Forensic Sciences, and Journal of Contemporary Archaeology.[19]

Areas of interest and study

De León’s self-described areas of interest and methods include undocumented migration and deportation, human smuggling, violence, materiality, archaeology of the contemporary, photo-ethnography, and forensic science. [11]His work has been described as a multidisciplinary approach to Latin America to US migration and involves ethnographic analysis of migrant stories, forensic science, and archaeological research.[20] It has also been described as an “intersection of physical geography, cultural geography, and archaeology,” as he uses tools like GPS to document sites.[21] He says that archaeology is “studying the past through material traces." We tend to think these must be ancient things” and asks us to question, “What happens if you think about the archaeology of the recent past, as recently as this morning in some cases”?[22]

Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) and Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94)
The Things They Carried: Undocumented Migration Project

As Executive Director of the long-term Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) Inc., a 501(c)(3) that began in 2009, De León uses fieldwork to “collect, catalogue, and interpret nearly 10,000 objects left in the desert by migrants making the treacherous, undocumented border crossing from Mexico into the United States” and says these objects become artifacts.[23]

The UMP project has focused on the last 150 years, but broadened more recently in 2020 to include longer histories of migration, labor, and environmental changes centered on Arizona, which is a main area of undocumented crossings from Mexico; they will conduct interviews and collect oral histories.[23]

As part of UMP, De León directs Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94), a participatory art project resulting in an exhibition of “3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. These tags are geolocated on a wall map of the desert showing the exact locations where remains were found”. HT94 was shown in the US and around the world, debuting a virtual exhibition on July 17, 2020.[23]


Beyond Borders: Hostile Terrain 94 Virtual Exhibition Opening

Beyond Borders: MacArthur Fellows in Conversation with Jason De Leon and Steven Feld

Hostile Terrain 94 Moment of Global Remembrance Video Compilation

Hostile Terrain 94 7/24 Border South Documentary Virtual Screening & Q/A

References
  1. "Jason De Leon website".
  2. "National Geographic Explorer Jason De León Named MacArthur Foundation 2017 Fellow". National Geographic Society Newsroom. 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  3. "Penn State alumnus Jason De León receives 2017 MacArthur Fellowship | Penn State University". news.psu.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  4. "Undocumented Migration Project website".
  5. Campoy, Ana. "The gory research that helped an academic anthropologist get a "genius" grant". Quartz. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  6. "Anthropologist Jason De Leon Awarded MacArthur 'Genius' Grant". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  7. Echenique, Martín. "MacArthur Fellow Jason De León on Documenting the Undocumented". CityLab. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  8. "Hostile Terrain 94".
  9. "Jason De León". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  10. "Curriculum Vitae", Definitions, Qeios, 2020-02-07, retrieved 2020-07-28
  11. "About". Jason De León. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  12. "American Treasures", Wikipedia, 2020-05-05, retrieved 2020-07-24
  13. "Yet Another SAR Alumnus, Jason de León, Wins the MacArthur "Genius" Award | School for Advanced Research". Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  14. "UCLA Social Sciences Division: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Curriculum Vitae: Jason De León, PhD. 2020" (PDF).
  15. "Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series with Dr. Jason De León - Texas Today: UT Events & Announcements Calendar". Texas Today: UT Events & Announcements Calendar. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  16. "Explorers Directory". www.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  17. "Jason De Leon". Tribeca Film Institute. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  18. "J.I. Staley Prize | School for Advanced Research". Retrieved 2020-07-24.
  19. "Jason De León - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  20. "Jason De León - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  21. Society, National Geographic (2013-06-27). "Anthropologist: Jason De Leon". National Geographic Society. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  22. "An Interview with MacArthur 'Genius' Jason De León". Longreads. 2017-10-18. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  23. Society, National Geographic (2013-06-27). "Anthropologist: Jason De Leon". National Geographic Society. Retrieved 2020-07-29.

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