"Just Deportees"

Published in edited form in The Foothills-Sun Gazette, May 1, 2013

     "Deportation has become a near-taboo word," opened Victor Davis Hanson in his column on immigration reform in Sunday's Fresno Bee, ending with the suggestion that we might have to get over it.  I'm not writing to dispute him, but to provide background on where that word got some of its negative meaning.

     It came from a songwriter, Woody Guthrie, and many folk singers since then carrying his song "Plane Wreck Over Los Gatos" to the public's ear.  His song, which has come to be known as "Deportees," was written after he read a news article describing the deaths of 28 unnamed farmworkers being deported to Mexico in early 1948.  The song wasn't just about their deaths, but also about their impossibly difficult lives as well.  And without pointing a finger, it showed some impacts of agribusiness that scholars like Paul Taylor and Ernesto Galarza were documenting and trying to draw attention to with their lives.

     Occurring in the final years of the Bracero Program, which was a Federally regulated labor importation program operated in conjunction with the Mexican government, the plane wreck killed farm laborers who had entered the country illegally, competing with the Braceros for jobs and keeping wages lower than they would have been.  In his book about the Bracero Program, Merchants of Labor (1964,)  Ernesto Galarza called the illegal workers "Wetbacks," and estimated that in 1948 there were 40,000 in California.  The story of what pulled the "Wetbacks" over the border time and again, then pushed them back, is told compassionately and with clear sight on his pages.

     But Woody told it in 6 verses and one beautiful chorus, and I loved the song the first time I heard it, now decades ago.  It opens with "The crops are all in and the peaches are rottening; the oranges are piled in their creosote dumps.  You're flying them back to the Mexican border, to pay all their money to wade back again."  The harvests are over; now send 'em home.

     The second verse:  "My father's own father, he waded that river.  They took all the money he made in his life.  My brothers and sisters come work in the fruit trees.  They rode that truck till they took down and died."  It's been going on for generations, it doesn't change.

     The fifth:  "The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon.  Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills.  And though all our best friends were scattered like dry leaves, the radio said they were just deportees."  Nobody anyone in the mainstream would care about except us, the invisible ones.

    And the beautiful chorus:  "Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita.  A Dios, 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."  Their names were not recorded before take-off; no official knew who died.

     I've always known the song was written about a real event, a real social issue, and real people.  What I didn't know until a few weeks ago, all thanks to a Valley poet named Tim Z. Hernandez, is that these unnamed farmworkers were buried in a mass grave in 28 gray caskets at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno.  Hundreds of people attended the funeral, as well as officials from the Mexican Consulate and the U.S. Immigration Service.  And I didn't know that Tim, for the last two years, has been working to find their names and restore them to their bodies' headstone, which currently reads "28 Mexican Nationals who died in a plane crash are buried here."

     With the help of many people, Tim is raising funds for a new headstone, which will be dedicated Sept. 2, 2013, Labor Day.  With Lance Canales and The Flood, he has recorded an arrangement of "Deportee" in which all 28 names are read, and they have performed it most recently at a Fresno fundraiser.  He's working on a book about the research process discovering their names, tentatively titled  "All They Will Call You..."  For a beautiful glimpse of these efforts, visit timzhernandez.com online.

     They weren't just deportees:  they were people with names and families and stories like the rest of us.  If you want to add your name to the list of contributors for the Deportee Memorial Headstone, send a small check to Tim Z. Hernandez, 302 Casper Dr., Lafayette, CO 80026 or to St. Peter's Cemetery, 264 Blythe Ave., Fresno, CA 93706.  Make the check out to St. Peter's Cemetery and mark both the check and the envelope ATTN:  Holy Cross Memorial.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer and singer who's still often astounded at the power of words put to song.  You can send her your thoughts on this column % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247 or leave a comment below.