Eclipse of Dreams: The Undocumented-Led Struggle for Freedom

After the DREAM Act failed, many young undocumented activists understood that pinning their hopes on a piece of legislation had been a bad idea. They also saw that the DREAM Act would have fragmented communities, families, and social movements, because it designated only a subset of immigrants as worthy of assimilation (and its rewards), while others, who often lived under the same roof, would be further criminalized.Eclipse of Dreams creatively tells the stories of a new generation of young people, awakened “Dreamers” who see the injustice built into the American dream. Using a collective writing process, as well as testimonials, photography, poetry, and art, this book is an invitation to reconsider the myths we tell ourselves, in order to find another way forward for migrant justice and human dignity, one that might allow us all to recover our global humanity. From direct action to the infiltration of immigrant detention centers, these youth are leading a movement for human liberation.

Marco Saavedra is an artist and works at his parent’s restaurant in New York City, La Morada. He is co-author of Shadows Then Light and “Make Holy the Bare Life”: Theological Reflections on Migration Grounded in Collaboration with Youth Made Illegal by the United States. The story of his clandestine work in an immigrant detention center is told in the award-winning film The Infiltrators (2019).

Claudia Muñoz is a graduate of Prairie View A&M University. She lives and works in Austin, Texas, where she works with Grassroots Leadership to end the criminalization, detention, and deportation of immigrants.

Mariela Nuñez-Janes, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of North Texas. For more than a decade she has worked with undocumented youth and migrant families as a scholar activist publishing collaborative articles and book chapters on Latino/a education, youth activism, and feminist pedagogies and supporting their journeys in schools and universities.

Stephen Pavey, PhD, is an anthropologist & photographer at Hope in Focus. His scholarship and activism with undocumented youth has grown through intersectional solidarity building to include activist photography with indigenous and people of color led movements for Black Lives Matters, Not 1 More Deportation, Free Palestine, and Mni Wiconi among other efforts to challenge state violence, mass incarceration, militarization of the police, and the securitization of borders.

Fidel Castro Rodriguez is an undocumented immigrant living in the shadows despite being in the US for almost two decades. He is a graduate from the University of North Texas with degrees in anthropology and French. He works at odd jobs to support himself with hopes to finish his master’s degree in business.