I first heard Joan Baez singing this Woody Guthrie song some time in the 70s. It shocked me because of what I learned about the way Mexican migrant workers on California’s fruit farms were treated. But it shocked me more because I’d stayed in a motel in Los Gatos for six weeks some while before, thanks to on the job training from IBM. And it shocked me even more because, during that trip, I’d visited friends of friends of my parents for Sunday lunch. They lived in the fruit growing area of California and worked in the business.
And yet I did and said nothing.
Woody Guthrie – who was born in 1912 – experienced first hand the combined horrors of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. He hitch-hiked and train-hopped over much of the USA, meeting industrial workers, distressed farmers and migrant workers – writing songs telling of their experiences, as well as ones giving hope such as “This Land is Your Land”. In later life he teamed up with Pete Seeger in the Weavers, and traveled the folk clubs together and solo.
You can watch “Deportees” sung by Joan Baez & Bob Dylan.
And here are the words:
Deportees ~ Plane Crash over Los Gatos Canyon
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are packed in the creosote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name 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
They rode the big trucks till they lay down and die
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportees
The skyplane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon
A fireball of lightning, and it shook all the hills
Who are these comrades that died like the dry leaves
The radio tells me they're just deportees
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportees
We died in your hills and we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys we 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
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
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.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be 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 and rot on the top soil
And be called by no name except "deportee"?
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportees
Lyrics: Martin Hoffman & Woody Guthrie