Reply #147: Woody heard them called "deportees" on the radio... [View All]

[Zomby Woof]

When the news broke of a plane crash that killed all aboard, the radio announcer said, "Well, it was just a planeload of deportees." So Woody Guthrie wrote a song about it, to put a human face on those poor, hard-working souls who lost their lives...


The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges are packed in their creosote dumps.
They're flying 'em back to the Mexico border
To take all their 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 came workin' the fruit trees,
They rode the big trucks 'till they laid down and died.

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 lightnin' an' it shook all the hills.
Who are these comrades, they're dying like the dry leaves?
The radio tells me, "They're just deportees."

We died in your hills and we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys, we died in your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died 'neath 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"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To die like the dry leaves and rot on my topsoil
And be known 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."

All they will call you will be "deportees."