775. Deportee - Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Woody Guthrie)

On January 29, 1948, a plane crashed near Los Gatos Canyon in California. The fatalities consisted of four Americans and 28 illegal immigrant farm workers who were being deported back to Mexico.

Woody Guthrie noticed that radio and newspaper coverage of the incident only gave the names of the American casualties, referring to the Mexican victims merely as "deportees." His response was to write a poem in which he assigned names to the dead: Juan, Rosalita, Jesús and María.

The Mexican victims of the accident were buried in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno. Of the 27 men and one woman, only 12 were ever identified.

The opening lines of the poem - "The crops are all in, the peaches are rottening,The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps" are a reference to the government policy of the time to pay farmers to destroy their crops in order to inflate the prices of farm products. Woody felt this was morally wrong when there were hungry people in the world.

It is interesting to note that, under an agreement between Mexico and the U.S. (1947) "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 often called 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 known 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, p. 39.]

Woody's poem was not set to music until a decade later, when Martin Hoffman, a schoolteacher, put a tune to it. It was popularised by Pete Seeger.

Other artists who have recorded it include The Kingston Trio (1963), Cisco Houston (1963), Judy Collins (1964), The Byrds (1969), Joan Baez (1971), Arlo Guthrie (1974), Dolly Parton (1981), Paddy Reilly, Sweet Honey in the Rock (1985), Christy Moore (1985), Billy Bragg, The Highwaymen (1985), The Dubliners, Peter, Paul and Mary (1995), Bruce Springsteen (2000), Barbara Dane (2004), Arlo Guthrie, The Battlefield Band and The Wolfe Tones.

You can see a playlist of my Woody Guthrie songs here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=17655A5F634428D4

For lyrics and chords of all my songs please see my website: http://www.raymondcrooke.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• folk
• song
• mexico
• mexican
• border
• migrant
• refugee
• wetback
• media
• judy
• collins
• joan
• baez
• byrds

[blazer61]

I live in Fresno. (near). The illegal immigrants vastly outnumber Americans in most of the surrounding cities.

[raymondcrooke]

@blazer61 Hard to find an answer to this problem. We also have a lot of immigrants jumping the queue to come into Australia seeking a better life.

Thanks for subscribing.

[SirCoughsalot]

I just thought I'd come back and listen to this one again and try my hand at backing you up on the harmonica. What a song. Thing ain't changed much, have they?

[raymondcrooke]

Thanks for the accompaniment. No, we still need to sing songs like this!

[tokyodave661]

Ray,

This song is a heart breaker. You render it so well.

Thanks for posting it.

[raymondcrooke]

You're welcome. It is a great song.

[fasterthanbolt]

This is cool

[raymondcrooke]

I'm sure you'll find a lot of great songs. Good to see young people can still appreciate his work.

[verk89]

this was great mr. crooke. i'm 20 and just getting into woody guthrie

[allenshepard]

The first time I heard this song I was watching a Dylan concert from 76 or 77