Plane crash in Los Gatos; Humanity for Deportees

In December 1948, a plane carrying 32 passengers crashed in the Los Gatos Canyon, Fresno County, California, killing everyone on board. 

The media, including the New York Times, reported the crash and listed the names of the pilots, the flight attendant and the immigration guard while the 28 migrant workers (braceros) were labeled simply as, "Deportees" and buried in a mass grave.

Angered at the dehumanization of dead migrants, Woody Guthrie was stirred to write a poem about the crash. This poem. Deportee" stands as perhaps Guthrie's most directly polemical work culminating in the bitter final verse, "Is this the best way we can harvest our orchards?"

A decade later, school teacher Martin Hoffman composed a melody to Guthrie's poem. The song was subsequently recorded by many artists and became well known.  

In 2010 Central Valley writer Tim Z. Hernandez discovered the story and began a project to find the names of the migrant workers and their surviving relatives. Soon after, musician Lance Canales joined the project and recorded his own version of the legendary song with Hernandez reading all the names of the deceased workers. A fundraiser spearheaded by the two artists led to the placement of a new head stone in the area honoring all 32 passengers.

Guthrie's poem stands as an enduring plea for basic decency and humanity that transcends politics. 

This is Woody's poem, followed by several of the many recordings to honor the deceased.

Deportee
(aka. "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos")
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman

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"?

CISCO HOUSTON - 1958

Joan Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter & The Indigo Girls (2017)

Johnny Rodriquez, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson