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Rebecca Watson @skepchick.org

A new collection of Woody Guthrie’s home recordings just dropped and it features a never-heard version of Deportee, which he wrote as a protest poem when a plane crash killed 28 migrant farm workers and outlets like the New York Times only named the Americans who were deporting them.

Album cover for Woody Guthrie at Home Vol1 and 2The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting The oranges are filed 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, farewell Roselita Adios mes amigos, Jesus e 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 It's six hundred miles to the Mexico border And they chased them like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves Goodbye to my Juan, farewell Roselita Adios mes amigos, Jesus e 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 The great ball of fire it shook all our hills Who are these dear friends who are falling like dry leaves? Radio said, "They are just deportees" Goodbye to my Juan, farewell Roselita Adios mes amigos, Jesus e Maria You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane All they will call you will be deportees

Replies

  3. @jrootham.ca

    It was worse than that. Many were not identified at all, and the families in Mexico were not notified.

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