Rant of the Week

Deportees

 

On January 29, 1948, the New York Times ran a story about a plane crash in California in which 32 people died, 28 Mexicans, and four Americans.  The four Americans were identified by names and professions.  The Mexicans were merely identified as "deportees". 

Woody Guthrie read the article and thought about those Mexicans.  He thought about their wives and children and girlfriends, and about the way they risked their lives at times to cross over into the U.S. illegally to try to make some money to send home to their families.  He thought about how they were often exploited and cheated by their "coyotes" (guides), and sometimes abandoned to die in the dessert.  He thought that they deserved to have names.

He wrote the lyrics for "Deportee (Plane Crash at Los Gatos Canyon)" and recited the piece at some performances.  Ten years later, a school teacher named Martin Hoffman took Guthrie's poem and wrote a melody for it.  Pete Seeger covered it and it became a hit.

It's a beautiful song.  It's flawed (that last didactic verse isn't necessary)-- like the faces of many great beauties-- but it has a zen-like clarity to it that entrances.  It builds slowly, laying out the scene, literally and metaphorically, and then hammering home it's point with

We died in your hills, 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.

Both sides of the river, we died just the same may the most eloquent summation of a liberal, progressive attitude that I have ever seen.  This is not about war between illegals and native sons, or Mexicans and Americans, or the owners and the dispossessed.  It's about how we treat each other as human beings.  It's about the dignity of the laborer, and the hypocrisy of a culture that openly hates illegal immigrants but depends on them to harvest their crops, look after their children, and wash their cars.

One measure of the greatness of a song is its enduring appeal.  Is there another song that has retained such a high degree of relevance?  Up to 500 Mexicans die every year trying to cross the border illegally to do work that Americans won't do, for willing employers.  In return, they are treated like "outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves". 

 
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