{"id":15274,"date":"2015-01-27T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=15274"},"modified":"2026-07-16T16:42:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T23:42:24","slug":"cover-me-deportee-plane-wreck-at-los-gatos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2015\/01\/27\/cover-me-deportee-plane-wreck-at-los-gatos\/","title":{"rendered":"Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 28, 1948, a DC-3 charter plane with seating for 26 passengers took off from Oakland with 32 people aboard–almost all of whom were Mexican citizens being deported from the United States.*<\/strong><\/p>\n

The plane never made it to its refueling stop in Burbank–a fuel leak in the port engine’s fuel pump ignited, and the entire port wing ripped off, taking nine passengers with it. The rest of the passengers and crew died when the plane crashed and exploded near Las Gatos Creek.<\/p>\n

Plane crashes were hardly unheard of, but what made this particular crash so infuriatingly memorable was the way the deceased Mexican passengers\u00a0 were identified in the media only as “deportees.” (The crew and guard were identified by name, however.) The unidentified victims were buried in Fresno, in a mass grave marked only as “Mexican Nationals.”<\/p>\n

Later that year, Woody Guthrie wrote a poem about the event, called “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos.”<\/p>\n

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning,<\/em>
\nThe oranges piled in their creosote dumps;<\/em>
\nThey’re flying ’em back to the Mexican border<\/em>
\nTo pay all their money to wade back again<\/em><\/p>\n

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,<\/em>
\nAdios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;<\/em>
\nYou won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,<\/em>
\nAll they will call you will be “deportees”<\/em><\/p>\n

My father’s own father, he waded that river,<\/em>
\nThey took all the money he made in his life;<\/em>
\nMy brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,<\/em>
\nAnd they rode the truck till they took down and died.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,<\/em>
\nOur work contract’s out and we have to move on;<\/em>
\nSix hundred miles to that Mexican border,<\/em>
\nThey chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.<\/em><\/p>\n

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,<\/em>
\nWe died in your valleys and died on your plains.<\/em>
\nWe died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes,<\/em>
\nBoth sides of the river, we died just the same.<\/em><\/p>\n

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,<\/em>
\nA fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,<\/em>
\nWho are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?<\/em>
\nThe radio says, “They are just deportees”<\/em><\/p>\n

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?<\/em>
\nIs this the best way we can grow our good fruit?<\/em>
\nTo fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil<\/em>
\nAnd be called by no name except “deportees”?<\/em><\/p>\n

…and a decade later, college student Martin Hoffman set it to music, and the song known as “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” was born. It became popular when Pete Seeger recorded and performed it.<\/p>\n