Before I was born, someone said that there is nothing new under the sun
Recent Blogpatrol search:
22/07/2005 11:53:06 "Arlo Guthrie" song lyrics Over the border in Mexico (Google)
I could not find an Arlo Guthrie song entitled "Over the border in Mexico," but ArloNet does publish the lyrics to a song called "Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)." The lyrics were actually written by Arlo's father Woody Guthrie (of "This Land is Your Land" fame). Note that they were written in 1961; I've previously written a bit about the history of illegal immigration into the U.S.
Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again
My father's own father, he wanted 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
CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.
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.
CHORUS
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it 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?
©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)
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