Deportee Poem Analysis

In 1948, a plane that was carrying 32 people, the majority of whom were Hispanic farm laborers, crashed in California. One of the plane’s wings caught fire, and before the American pilot or co-pilot were able to do anything about it, the excessive heat which had enveloped the entire plane became too hot for the passengers to survive. Many of the Hispanic farmers decided to jump from the plane rather than burn to death. Unfortunately, neither the jumpers nor the ill-fated souls who remained aboard survived that plunging inferno. The majority of the Hispanic passengers were either being sent back to Mexico due to their contracts being up, or because they were in the United States illegally. These unidentified Hispanic individuals were buried in a mass grave in Fresno, California at Holy Cross Cemetery.

The rendition of this song at the presentation was extremely powerful and allowed the audience, myself included, to vividly imagine all that happened that day. The lyrics, “we died in your hills, we died in your deserts, we died in your valleys and died on your plains, we died beneath your trees and we died in your bushes, both sides of the river, we died just the same” invoked a strong emotional response from sorrow to anger in me personally as well as others whom I observed while watching. The words were so strong and meaningful that everyone was taken back. In his song, Woody Guthrie gave names to the nameless, trying to bring back their humanity that had been stripped away from them when all of the news outlets of the day described them only as “deportees”. “Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita. Adios mi amigos, Jesus y Maria; you won't have your names when you ride the big airplane, all they will call you will be