( Words by Woody / Music by Martin Hoffman Live with Ellen Verdries, his mother )
The crops are all in and the are rotting, The oranges are piled in their dumps. They're flying you to the Mexico border, To pay all your oranges to wade again.
My father's own father, he that river, They all the money he made in his life. My brothers and sisters come the fruit trees, And they rode the till they took down and died.
to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, y Maria. You won't have a when you ride the big airplane, All will call you will be "deportees".
Some of us are illegal, and are not wanted, When contract is out, got to move on. Six miles to the Mexico border, They chase us outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
We in your hills, and we died in your deserts, We in your valleys and died on your plains. We died your trees and we died in your bushes, Both sides of the river, we just the same.
to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, y Maria. You won't have a name you ride the big airplane, All they call you will be "deportees".
The sky caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon, A of lightning, it shook all our hills, Who are these friends, all like dry leaves? The says, "They are just deportees".
Is this the way we can grow our big orchards? Is the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry and rot on our topsoil, To be by no name except "deportees"?
to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, y Maria. You won't have a name you ride the big airplane, All will call you will be "deportees". All they will call you be "deportees".