"Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)"

The Bracero Program from 1942-1964 brought Mexican agricultural migrants into the United States to fill a labor shortage of American workers. In 1948, during yet another sad period of mass deportation, a plane carrying 28 Mexican migrant workers back to Mexico crashed in California’s Los Gatos Canyon. There were no survivors. Newspaper reports of the crash identified the pilots and the government agents onboard. The Mexican laborers were not named, and instead, referred to as “twenty-eight Mexican deportees.” Woody Guthrie, who had also worked as a migrant laborer, saw the wire reports, and inspired him to compose the song, “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)."

After all these decades, the song takes is even more relevance today as the Trump Administration uses warrant-less, masked vigilantes to carry out its cruel deportation policy. It only sees migrants as the faceless Others, simply statistics to reach its 3,000-a-day quota. I often think of this quote from historian Ernesto Gamboa: “We did not cross the border, the border crossed us.”

Mexican schoolgirls. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

I spent two seasons picking daffodils on the coast of northern California, one dismal, rainy spring planting trees on the muddy slopes of western Washington and a very short stint cutting hops in southern Oregon. That story is here:

https://www.thecommononline.org/hops/

I am not in any way suggesting that my experience matches what migrant workers go through each and every day, but at least I have an inkling of what it’s like to be stooped over eight hours a day in all kinds of weather doing piece-work for non-sustainable wages and non-existent benefits.

Mexico. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

I once met a remarkable woman, Maria Mabbutt, a child of migrant workers herself. At the time, she was the project director of the Farm Worker Empowerment Project in southern Idaho which, in its first year, reached 500 workers. I wrote about her life and her dream about Cesar Chavez for High Country News. Here is the link:

https://www.hcn.org/issues/issue-158/inspired-by-cesar-chavez/

Each individual in this world is a singular universe. But we all share the same basic needs: safety, food, shelter, health, family and, most importantly, love and respect. When we cease to see a group of people as individual human beings we cease being human ourselves. Today, thanks to the Trump-FOX News-Republican-Congress propaganda machine, this is where we find ourselves: Empathy is weakness, brutality is strength. The roots of this twisted ideal can be traced back to the establishment of our country, a nation founded on slavery and genocide. Now, more than ever, we must break this trend and plant roots of fellowship and charity toward all. Otherwise, why do we exist?

Mexico. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.

So, I offer my cover of Woody’s song as a way of honoring all migrants, refugees and the stateless, past, present and future, with the hopes that we can someday return to an America that we can all be proud of, an America I sorely miss with each passing day.

Mexico. Photo by Stephen J. Lyons.