Labor Day, 2007. Arlo Guthrie and Emmy Lou Harris singing a song written by Arlo's father, Woody Guthrie.
On January 29, 1948 a plane, carrying 28 Mexican workers crashed in Los Gatos Canyon near Fresno, California, killing all aboard:
The crash resulted in the deaths of four Americans and 28 illegal immigrant farm workers who were being deported from California back to Mexico.
Guthrie was reportedly struck by the fact that radio and newspaper coverage of the event did not give the victims' names, but referred to them merely as "deportees." He responded with a poem, assigning symbolic names to the dead: "Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita; adios, mis amigos, Jesús y MarÃa..." In contrast, the flight crew and the security guard were named in the New York Times report. They were pilot, Frank Atkinson, his wife and stewardess, Bobbi Atkinson, co-pilot, Marion Ewing and the guard Frank E. Chapin.
The Mexican victims of the accident were placed in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California. There were 27 men and one woman, only 12 were ever identified. The grave is 84 feet by 7 feet, two rows of caskets . . . (from Wikipedia)
Sixty years later all we would call them would be "illegals."
"You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane.
All they will call you will be deportee.
The skyplane caught fire over Los Gados Canyon,
A fireball of lightning that shook all our hills.
Who are all these friends who are falling like dry leaves?
The radio said, 'They're just deportees.'"
Hoyt Axton's version of this with Arlo Guthrie is heartrending. Just thinking of it puts a lump in my throat. How can any American not understand that?
Further details on the crash.
Apparently the crew took off in the wrong airplane, which was overloaded and overdue for maintenance. Talk about pilot error!