Music Series/Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

“Deportee, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,” written by Woody Guthrie in 1948 is a tribute to a group of “nameless deportees” killed in a plane crash in California. The victims were “illegal” Mexican immigrants being flown to the US by a fruit company as cheap labor. In the newspaper accounts none of the victims names were given but the workers were referred to only as deportees. In contrast the flight crew and security guard were named in the papers.  Those of us in the immigration rights movement can continue to honor the dead of this plane crash by speaking up in defense of the immigrant workers of today by demanding that ICE cease their operations and that the rulers of this country stop their attempts to use immigration as a wedge to divide workers.

The opening lines of the song refer to the practice of the government at that time which paid farmers to destroy their crops in order to keep farm production and prices high. One of the first programs in 1933 was the concept of paying farmers, not to farm, thus reducing supply and raising prices so farmers could afford to stay in business. People were paid not to plant, paid to dump milk, paid to slaughter pigs and destroy the pork, and of course paid to dump citrus crops as well.. Derick R. Larson. I wonder couldn’t that food have been used to feed the people who were out of work and lining up for a bowl of soup. 

Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps
They’re flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again

My father’s own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died

CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won’t have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.

Some of us are illegal, and others not wanted
Our work contract’s out and we have to move on
But it’s six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

CHORUS

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?

The beautiful images in this video were put together by Dulcimerea found on you tube.

*An agreement of 1947 between Mexico and the U.S contained a novel provision which established amnesty through deportation. Under its terms, undocumented Mexicans who were sent back across the border could return to the U.S. as temporary contract laborers; during the life of their contracts, they could not be again deported. In practice, employers ofter call Border patrol stations to report their own undocumented employees, who were returned, momentarily, to border cities in Mexico, where they signed labor contracts with the same employers who had denounced them. This process became know as “drying out wetbacks” or “storm and drag immigration.” “Drying out” provided a deportation-proof source of cheap seasonal labor. …Dick J. Reavis, “Without Documents,” New York 1978, pg. 39