In bitterer, menschenverachtender Tradition…

…gesellen sich über Kontinente, Berge und Meere hinweg die übelsten der Üblen zusammen und stampfen mit plumpen Füssen alle Schranken der Humanität und Demokratie in Grund und Boden. Und wenn man dann von Kolumbien und dem amerikanischen Präsidenten liest, mag es einen nur würgen. Aber ist erst einmal die Brandmauer der Moral eingerissen, kann man alles postulieren und fordern. Drüben und bei uns. 1948 stürzte am 28. Januar – also heute vor 77 Jahren in der Nähe des Los Gatos Canyon in Amerika ein Flugzeug mit 28 mexikanischen Landarbeitern (und 4 Amerikanischen Staatsbürgern) ab. Zynisch wurden sie in den damaligen Medien als Deportee bezeichnet. Woody Guthrie schrieb damals das berührende Poem „Deportee – Plane Wreck at Los Gatos, das später auch vertont wurde. Na dann, Mr. Trump – MAGA…aber denk drann – the crops are not all in!

Meine Lieblingsversion singt Joan Baez mit Jackson Browne und Emmylou Harris https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CrGxHImg8Gw

Plane Wreck at Los Gatos
(also known as „Deportee“)
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They’re flying ‚em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be „deportees“

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,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died. 

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves. 

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. 

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

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? 
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? 
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except „deportees“?

Die wunderbare Joni Mitchell (die sehr früh in ihrer Kariere ebenfalls das Lied begleitet mit der Ukulele aufzeichnete) kommentierte:

Footnotes

The genesis of „Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)“ reportedly occurred when Guthrie was struck by the fact that radio and newspaper coverage of the Los Gatos plane crash did not give the victims‘ names, but instead referred to them merely as „deportees.“ Guthrie lived in New York City at the time, and none of the deportees‘ names were printed in the January 29, 1948, New York Times report, only those of the flight crew and the security guard. However, the local newspaper, The Fresno Bee, covered the tragedy extensively and listed all of the known names of the deportees.

Unaware of the extensive local coverage of the disaster, Guthrie responded with a poem, which, when it was first written, featured only rudimentary musical accompaniment, with Guthrie chanting the song rather than singing it. In the poem, Guthrie assigned symbolic names to the dead: „Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita; adiós, mis amigos, Jesús y María…“ A decade later, Guthrie’s poem was set to music and given a haunting melody by a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman. Shortly after, folk singer Pete Seeger, a friend of Woody Guthrie, began performing the song at concerts, and it was Seeger’s rendition that popularized the song during this time