Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

My first post on Woody Guthrie's "Deportee" was in 2018. It was timely then and it is sadly even more timely now.

On January 28, 1948, a plane crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California, killing 28 migrant farm workers who were being returned to Mexico, along with four crew members.  The New York Times carried a report of the accident the next day, but the story included only the names of the American crew members, while referring to the Mexicans only as "deportees." Deeply moved by what he considered racism, Woody Guthrie wrote a poem about the crash, in which he supplied names for some of the nameless farm workers. Some years later, the poem was set to music by a New York schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman.  The resulting song -- known as "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) -- has since been recorded by dozens of artists, although I found fewer videos than I'd hoped for.

Alas, there doesn't appear to be a recording of Woody himself singing the song. The Youtube clip claiming to be Woody is actually Arlo. The most well-known interpretation, I think, was by Cisco Houston, accompanied by Eric Weisberg.

(Alex: Don't miss the dulcimer instrumental at the bottom of the post.)

Arlo Guthrie

My first post on Woody Guthrie's "Deportee" was in 2018. It was timely then and it is sadly even more timely now.

On January 28, 1948, a plane crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California, killing 28 migrant farm workers who were being returned to Mexico, along with four crew members.  The New York Times carried a report of the accident the next day, but the story included only the names of the American crew members, while referring to the Mexicans only as "deportees." Deeply moved by what he considered racism, Woody Guthrie wrote a poem about the crash, in which he supplied names for some of the nameless farm workers. Some years later, the poem was set to music by a New York schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman.  The resulting song -- known as "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) -- has since been recorded by dozens of artists, although I found fewer videos than I'd hoped for.

Alas, there doesn't appear to be a recording of Woody himself singing the song. The Youtube clip claiming to be Woody is actually Arlo. The most well-known interpretation, I think, was by Cisco Houston, accompanied by Eric Weisberg.

(Alex: Don't miss the dulcimer instrumental at the bottom of the post.)

Arlo Guthrie

Disregard the dumb introduction and note Johnny Cash's concern about the "maltreatment of aliens."

Nancy Griffith, with some verses in Spanish

Ani DiFranco 

Los Super Seven

The Highwaymen (ft Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson)

Lyle Lovett and Los Texmaniacs

Cisco Houston

Joel Rafael and Eduardo Herrero

 Pete Seeger (audio only)

Dolly Parton

Bruce Springsteen

Joan Baez

Emmy Lou Harris and Arlo Guthrie (audio)

The Byrds

Lance Canales

Julie Felix

 

 

Disregard the dumb introduction and note Johnny Cash's concern about the "maltreatment of aliens."

Nancy Griffith, with some verses in Spanish

Ani DiFranco 

Los Super Seven

The Highwaymen (ft Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson)

Lyle Lovett and Los Texmaniacs

Cisco Houston

Joel Rafael and Eduardo Herrero

 Pete Seeger (audio only)

Dolly Parton

Bruce Springsteen

Joan Baez

Emmy Lou Harris and Arlo Guthrie (audio)

The Byrds

Lance Canales

Julie Felix

 

 

Comments

[Robert B Clarke]

An unfortunately timely but song and a wonderful collection of artists. I was surprised by the raw power of Lance Canales' rendition as well as the clarity and sympathy of Los Texmaniacs with Lyle Lovett. I think Ani DiFranco's version is the most haunting and poignant, perhaps because of its simplicity.

[Wayne Blessington]

Though I don’t doubt that there was racism against Mexicans in 1948, I do not think that the newspaper article on the crash manifested racism. The reports of the crash were published the day of the crash or a day later. As one of the Youtube videos of Deportees below shows the flight manifest only lists each of the passengers not by name but as “Mexican National.” So there was no timely way for the reports to list the names. As the video shows, the IDs of the passengers were not discovered until 2013.

Here’s the video as well as some other excellent covers of the song:

The Last Internationale (their version of Deportees starts at 3:50):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRCyps1Lwyc

A better version of Joan Baez’s Deportees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jWFPLjYEaw

Judy Blue Eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KIIBzUYZZU

Odetta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meWj_kuy1Cs

NRPS (New Riders of the Purple Sage):
https://youtu.be/LGQkAMN8-io?feature=shared

One more from NRPS (just because):
https://youtu.be/KU8kalZM4KE?feature=shared

[Jeff]

I dont think I have ever hard a rendition which I could listen to without tears but the Lyle Lovett/Los Texmaniacs may be my new favorite.

[anon]

Who was the President at that time? (January 28, 1948)
Of course, if this happened under President Obama or President Biden, you wouldn't hear a whisper from this crew.
The double standards today are pathetic.
At least then, "protest" was against BOTH parties on the basis of the CORRUPTION AND UNFAIRNESS objectively identified (see, e.g., Vietnam and the 1968 Democratic Convention), not perpetually lying and stretching the truth and endlessly spinning like cheap unethical attorneys to achieve naked power.
So, posture away. Just remember, if you find NOTHING about one party to find fault with, and EVERYTHING about the other to be evil, you are not only being intellectually dishonest (or willfully ignorant) but also mirroring the one party fascist regimes you constantly decry (seemingly, never even knowing how to define fascist).

[A non]

Anon,

How DARE you pretend that, although ruthless, these people actually care about (your) ethics, (your sense of) integrity, fairness, or justice.

They care about gaining and consolidating power and nothing else.

They don't care about your morality and wish to replace it.

They don't care about the laws as they are. They want to replace them all, too.

Appeals to civility, basic decency and so forth are futile. You've got different views of the law, or the political good life? Irrelevant.

Hell, even noting contradictions in their own "core" beliefs is useless. They don't care because they are post-truth. They don't even care about betraying their own supposed values, about fucking over the working and middle classes, about the growing gap between rich and poor, about the rule of law, and so forth. (That's why they don't care that the GOP and Trump aren't actually fascist. Why let the truth get in the way of your efforts to deligitimize your enemy? Not your colleagues. Not your fellow citizens. Not your rivals. Your [insert gender sex race ideology] enemy.)

These people are totalitarians. End of story.

Fortunately, the rest of the world's catching on to them now, even if they also hate Trump and the GOP.

Game over. They're going to lose completely, even if Trump and the GOP do as well. That's what's so beautiful about this new era.

[anon]

A non
I always long for some of these to wake up, especially those who, in their youth, supported identifying and protesting the excesses of THE GOVERNMENT, not just the Republicans.
For example, the Church Committee concluded, in its final report, "beginning with President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and continuing through the early 1970s, intelligence excesses, at home and abroad, were not the 'product of any single party, administration, or man,' but had developed as America rose to a become a superpower during a global Cold War."
Can you imagine this report being fairly presented on MSNBC? Or, would the parts of it critical of Republicans be filtered out and reported as the end of democracy and the rule of law, and the parts of it critical of Democrats ignored entirely or given brief mention, but no emphasis? It is doubtful the committee itself could be formed and function today.
Those who engage in the MSNBC group think are so pathetic because, while condemning those who rely on Fox, their herd behavior puts the republicans to shame. They literally cannot bear to hear the news about their own. See, e.g, Biden.