From the recording Sarah Barker & Gypsy Twang
In addition to being a lament for the farm workers killed in the crash, the opening lines of "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" are also a protest by Woody Guthrie:
"The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps”
At the time, government policies paid farmers to destroy their crops in order to keep farm production and prices high. Woody felt it was wrong to render food inedible by poisoning it in a world where hungry people lived.
Lyrics
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges stacked in their creosote dumps
They’re flying them back to the Mexican 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 the trucks ‘til they took down and died
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won’t have your name
When you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be ‘Deportee’
Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted
The work contracts out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to the Mexican border
They chase us just like we have done something wrong
We died in your hills and we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and 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
Chorus
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills
Who are these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio tells us they’re just deportees
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can pick our good fruit?
To fall like the dry leaves and rot on your topsoil
And be known by no name except ‘Deportee’