DEPORTEES 

(Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) 

words by Woody Guthrie, music by Martin Hoffman 



The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting 

The oranges are packed in the creosote dumps 

They're flying you back to the Mexico border 

To pay all your money to wade back again 



Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y 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 

My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees 

They rode the big trucks till they lay down and die 



Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y 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 

A fireball of lightning, and it shook all the hills 

Who are these comrades that died like the dry leaves 

The radio tells me they're just deportees 



Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria 

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

All they will call you will be deportees 



We died in your hills and we died in your deserts 

We died in your valleys we 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 



Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria 

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

All they will call you will be deportees 



Some of us are illegal, 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 thieves. 



Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria 

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

All they will call you will be 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 and rot on the top soil 

and be called by no name except "deportee" 



Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria 

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

All they will call you will be deportees