'Song of the Deportees' Woody Guthrie, 1959

'Song of the Deportees' 

The crops are all in and the peaches are rottining. 

The oranges are piled in their creosote dump 

You're flying them back to the Mexico border, 

To pay all their money to wade back again. 

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, 

Adios, mi amigos, Jesus and Maria, 

You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane 

And all they will call you will be 'deportee'. 

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? 

Woody Guthrie, 1959