Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

Lyrics by Woody Guthrie

Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting

The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps

They're flying you back to the Mexico border

To pay all your money to wade back again

My father's own father, he wanted 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

CHORUS

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris

You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane

And all they will call you will be deportees.

Some of us are illega, 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 theives.

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.

CHORUS

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon

Like a fireball of lightning, it 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?