"You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane, all they will call you will be deportees."
Sharing Jeff Tweedy's cover of "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)"
Last month, Jeff Tweedy shared a cover of Woody Guthrie’s 1948 song, “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” The protest song details a plane crash in which 28 migrant farm workers and 4 Americans were killed. As Jeff wrote:
The lyrics feel like they could have been written today, but Woody wrote them in 1948 after news outlets referred to victims of the Los Gatos plane crash not by name but instead as “deportees.”
Jeff was kind enough to allow us to share his cover of the song with La Cuenta’s readers (thank you!):
As you listen, consider this additional note from Jeff’s original post:
Many years later, author Tim Z. Hernandez traced their names, and I’m going to include them here:
Miguel Negrete Álvarez, Tomás Aviña de Gracia, Francisco Llamas Durán, Santiago García Elizondo, Rosalio Padilla Estrada, Tomás Padilla Márquez, Bernabé López Garcia, Salvador Sandoval Hernández, Severo Medina Lára, Elías Trujillo Macias, José Rodriguez Macias, Luis López Medina, Manuel Calderón Merino, Luis Cuevas Miranda, Martin Razo Navarro, Ignacio Pérez Navarro, Román Ochoa Ochoa, Ramón Paredes Gonzalez, Guadalupe Ramírez Lára, Apolonio Ramírez Placencia, Alberto Carlos Raygoza, Guadalupe Hernández Rodríguez, Maria Santana Rodríguez, Juan Valenzuela Ruiz, Wenceslao Flores Ruiz, José Valdívia Sánchez, Jesús Meza Santos and Baldomero Marcas Torres.
(Original reporting of the event named only the four Americans killed on the flight: Frank Atkinson, Marion Ewing, Bobbi Atkinson, Frank E. Chapin.)
The full story behind the names of these victims can be found in Tim Z. Hernandez’s powerful book: All They Will Call You.
Propina
We want to offer a huge thank you to Jeff Tweedy for allowing us to share his song. Please check out Starship Casual:
Additionally, Tim Z. Hernandez recently published a memoir:
Finally, if you would like some free Know Your Rights stickers, you can still request them here.
We’ll see you next week.
Just thinking of this exact song🥵