Ben Harper Deportees
( Words by Woody Guthrie / Music by Martin Hoffman
Live performance with Ellen Verdries, his mother )
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps.
They're flying you back to the Mexico border,
To pay all your oranges to wade back again.
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 trucks till they took down and died.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees".
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
When contract is out, we've got to move on.
Six hundred miles to the Mexico border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
We died in your hills, and 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.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees".
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills,
Who are 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 and rot on our topsoil,
To be known by no name except "deportees"?
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees".
All they will call you will be "deportees".
