DEPORTEE

The artist is a priest. Maximino Cerezo Barredo. OK the image is a little brutal. Or not. Christ on the cross replaced by a ragged, Latino field worker. The ones that make it to the border aren't quite that ragged. Stop and think about it. If you are just this side of starvation poor you probably can't even afford to make the trip to the border. 

Or Plane Crash at Los Gatos Canyon. The Highwaymen Version. Had the album once upon a time. That's the first time I heard this song. However the lyrics in this version are a little different from Woody's original. 

Woody Guthrie wrote this back in 1948 after a plane carrying Mexican migrant workers went down in Los Gatos Canyon near Fresno. The Bracero program was still in effect and if the employers didn't foot the bill to return workers to Mexico, as they were supposed to, the INS did it for them. Somehow, someway the pilots picked up the wrong plane. How the heck they didn't notice that the damn plane didn't have enough seats for the number of passengers, nobody knows. And it was overdue for maintenance checks. Witnesses saw the plane lose a wing, then go down in flames. When the New York Times covered the story the names of the flight crew and the INS agent were listed. The passengers wre identified only as agricutural workers whose work visas had expired. 

Twnety eight people were buried in a mass grave with a single marker. It wasn't until around 1968 that three different people embarked on a similar mission for slightly different reasons. Visa records were searched, victims identified. Finally a new marker was erected with all their names. One of those attending lost a grandfather and uncle on that plane. They had names. They had faces. They had families that mourned their loss. Their anonymous loss because they just "deportees." Not worth the trouble to send sombody to learn their names. Well Someone knew their names even if the mainstream couldn't be bothered to find out. See above image. 

Miguel Negrete Álvarez Tomás Aviña de Gracia Francisco Llamas Durán Santiago García Elizondo Rosalio Padilla Estrada Tomás Padilla Márquez Bernabé López Garcia Salvador Sandoval Hernández Severo Medina Lára Elías Trujillo Macias José Rodriguez Macias Luis López Medina Manuel Calderón Merino Luis Cuevas Miranda Martin Razo Navarro Ignacio Pérez Navarro Román Ochoa Ochoa Ramón Paredes Gonzalez Guadalupe Ramírez Lára Apolonio Ramírez Placencia Alberto Carlos Raygoza Guadalupe Hernández Rodríguez Maria Santana Rodríguez Juan Valenzuela Ruiz Wenceslao Flores Ruiz José Valdívia Sánchez Jesús Meza Santos Baldomero Marcas Torres

The reference to the crops hails back to a time when farmers were paid to destroy crops to keep the prices up. Good leftie that Guthrie was, he was mad that good food was being destroyed while people were going hungry. Although why should just lefties be upset at the waste time, engergy, sheer creation that goes into the cycle that produces an apple, an orange or, an egg. 

That's a sin. That's damn sin. It's sin against the Creator because it wastes the resources, the gifts that went to create those crops. 

Deportee or Plane Crash at Los Gatos Canyon

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded 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.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
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.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and 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"?

Words by Woodie Guthrie music by Martin Hoffmann a schoolteacher

It's sixty years later and too many of our neighbors use names worse than "deportee." And to be honest I'd hate to think how many of them think potatoes come in bags and oranges come in crates with no dirt or trees involved.