Album: The Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie (1948)

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• 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"? Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 6

• Doc John from FranceIt is very curious that although the names of those who were killed did not appear at the time four do correspond with the names Woody Guthrie wrote in the chrous: there's a Juan, a Rosalio (near enough to Rosalita), a Maria, and a Jesus: probably common enough Mexican names at the times and pure chance. Nevertheless curious.
• James Martin from Denver, ColoradoIt wasn't just about the papers. The bodies were buried in a mass grave with no identification except for the white pilots and stewardess. It wasn't until about a decade ago that someone moved my Woody's song took it upon himself to search out all the names of those who died and mounted an effort to create a fitting memorial at the gravesite listing all the names mentioned by Mark A sad commentary but it is good know we have actually come a long way in our national consciousness about race since the 1040's when we had no second thoughts about Mexicans and penned up our Japanese citizens in concentration camps.
• Mark from San Pedro, CaWoody's poem (not written as a song) protested 1) anonymity of the workers that died, who by the way were in the US as part of a US government-sanctioned guest worker program, and were not illegal immigrants; and 2) US agricultural practices in which the US government paid farmers to destroy crops to keep the prices inflated, despite the fact that (obviously) hungry people could have eaten the food.
  
  The names of the workers were recently found. Here they are, for the record:
  
  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.
  
  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deportees-guthrie-20130710-dto,0,2642231.htmlstory#ixzz2nBr0vxFQ
• Gerard from Toulouse, FranceAs this song has been recorded and / or sung live by dozens of English-speaking and Spanish-speaking artists, it is rather logical to assume that a good many people have felt the lyrics convey something strong like, say, compassion for - and solidarity with - those who decide to leave their homeland and break the law somewhere else in order to survive or just raise their kids when harsh exploitation at home makes it difficult or impossible. Other people prefer to believe that employers of illegal immigrants are not to blame and only migrant workers are (see Alexander Baron , line 9 above). Sure! When a law is broken for material profit, make sure to always put the blame on the poor guy that gets the least and discharge the top cat that makes the most, as your representative or some big cheese in your capital city may have ordered the local chief of Police to turn a blind eye. You know what, Mr Baron? Runaway slaves in the US were indeed breaking the law, so when they were caught and had a foot cut off, it served them bloody well right, didn't it?
• Joan from Galashiels, United KingdomAlexander Baron; You have your own opinion on whether a song is great or not, and I am not going to argue. However, although it is usual to hold back names of flight fatalities until relatives are informed, that was not the reason for the song, I don't think. It was the way the papaers referred to the crash victims as "JUST" deportees. Illegal or otherwise, human deaths are equally as tragic for these families as for some white US businessman on a vacation trip, say.
• Joan from Galashiels, United KingdomIt was also sung beautifully by Julie Felix.

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