Deportee Plane Wreck At Los Ga Lyrics & Chords By Nanci Griffith

(lyrics: Woody Guthrie / Music: Martin Hoffman)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges are stacked in their Creosote dumps.
They're flying them back to the Mexico border
To pay all their wages to wade back again.

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 on the trucks till they took down and died.

Chorus:
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita.
Adios, mis amigos, Jesus and Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane.
All they will call you will be "deportee."

Somos ilegales y mal recibidos
(Well, some are illegal and some are not wanted)
Se a caba el contrato y de alli a caminar
(Our work contract's out and we've got to move on)
Six hundred miles to that Mexico border
They chased us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

(Chorus)

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.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon.
A fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills.
Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.

(Chorus)

Is this the best way we can grow our best orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit—
To fall like dry leaves and rot on our topsoil
And be known by no name except "deportee?"

Chorus