Tag Archives: farm workers

A Rose for Cesar

A ROSE FOR CESAR

CHORUS

Come plant a rose for Cesar,
And pick a rose for Delores.
Sing a song of peace and justice,
Sing aloud de colores.

In a river town called Yuma
Cesar’s family farmed the soil,
But a banker grabbed their deed,
What they’d earned by sweat and toil.

So they loaded up the Studebaker
Joined the migrants going west,
Picking peaches, hoeing lettuce
In the hot sun with no rest.

Years later in Sal Si Puede,
Meaning: get out if you can,
Cesar, with his new wife, Helen,
Chose to make a stand.

He was joined by Delores Huerta,
A teacher with a heart of fire.
In Delano they formed a union.
Si, se puede, is still the cry.

In the valley San Joaquin
Filipinos pruned and picked the vines, 
Getting paid less than braceros,
They soon formed a picket line.

Yes, said Cesar, we will join you.
We will strike for decent pay.
Until the growers sign a contract,
On the vines the grapes will stay.

So the workers fought for rights,
Marching, singing, organizing,
Facing violence, hunger and low wages,
Beat down, they kept on rising.

Fought for toilets and clean water,
Long-handled hoes so backs wouldn’t break,
Housing, health care, and old-age pensions,
All that’s due for fairness sake,

For the children, for the parents,
Campesinos proud and strong,
Bringing us each day our food,
Teaching us the justice song.

And still the fight continues.
Pesticides still make us sick.
Growers, politicians, attack our union
Sowing seeds of harsh conflict.

But united we fight on.
La Causa is our way of life
Until all God’s children work together,
Free of fear and want and strife.

Can’t you see the smiles of children?
Can’t you hear the songs they sing?
Songs of flowers, birds and rainbows,
Songs of letting freedom ring.

Things go better with a contract
A flower grower one day said.
Then to honor Cesar Chavez,
That brave Chicano man who led,

They named a new rose after him,
A rose deep red so all would know
That those who own and those who pick
Can jointly sew the seeds of hope.

So plant a rose for Cesar
And pick a rose for Delores.
Sing a song of peace and justice.
Sing aloud de colores.

De colores,
de colores se visten los campos
en la primavera.
De colores, de colores son los pajaritos
que vienen de afuera.

De colores, de colores es el arco iris
que vemos lucir.
Y por eso los grandes amores
de muchos colores me gustan a mi.
Y por eso los grandes amores
de muchos colores me gustan a mi.

A corrido

by Ben Jacques

A Song for our Time, too

Woodie Guthrie wrote the lyrics. Martin Hoffman set them to music. Since then, It’s been sung by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen and a dozen others, including Arlo Guthrie.
The ballad tells of an airplane crash in California’s Los Gatos Canyon. On board were 28 migrant farm workers from Mexico.

The year was 1948, six years after the start of Operation Bracero, a government program which recruited Mexican laborers to work in American fields. Now the braceros were being rounded up and flown back to Mexico. At the same time, to keep prices high, the government was paying growers to leave their crops in the field. Peaches were rotting and oranges piling up in dumps.

The song is called “Deportee.” Guthrie wrote it after news reports listed the names of the pilots, attendant and immigration guard, but referred to the farm workers only as “deportees.” Unlike the four Americans, the braceros were buried in a mass grave without names, marked
“Mexican Nationals.” As the song goes,

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”
 
The roundup of the Los Gatos laborers was just one episode in several government campaigns to remove Mexicans from American soil. Mass deportations began during the Great Depression and continued through the 1940s. Then in 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) brought out “Operation Wetback.” Under this federal program, officials used military-like tactics to arrest tens of thousands of immigrants across the country. Caught up in the raids were farm and factory workers, including some American citizens.

In July of 1955, several thousand deportees were found wandering the streets of Mexicali, a desert town bordering California. Yanked from their jobs and families, they had simply been dumped across the border. According to one account, 88 died of heat exposure in the 112
degree heat.

In Texas, thousands of deportees were crammed onto boats bound for Mexican ports in conditions comparable with those on slave ships. Others were packed into trucks. By the end of Operation Wetback, the INS claimed it had “repatriated” 1.3 million Mexicans.

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”
 
Accompanying the mass deportations were media depictions of Mexicans as dirty, disease- bearing and irresponsible. News coverage focused on border and immigration officials planning and conducting raids. Only in time did most Americans come to see this as something shameful. In 2012 the state of California formally apologized for its role in deporting hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens.

On Labor Day in 2013, United Farm Worker President Arturo Rodriguez joined hundreds gathered at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California, to memorialize the 28 farm workers, 25 men and three women, killed in Los Gatos Canyon. This time, inscribed in the headstone, was each person’s name.

Next week American voters will choose a new president. One of the candidates has promised to resurrect Operation Wetback, only under his plan the government, in a military-style operation, will deport 11 million undocumented immigrants (Trump put the figure at 18 million).

Trump would also end deferrals for children (DACA) and temporary protected status (TPS) for migrants fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries. Such a massive deportation would throw our country into financial, legal and social chaos. As Slate authors Louis Hyman and Natasha Iskander have written, “To return to the era of Operation Wetback would be to return to an America ruled not by law but by terror.”

Perhaps worst of all, it would perpetuate the big lie that immigrants, asylum seekers, migrants and refugees are not like us, that they are less than human. That they don’t deserve names.

Once that lie is believed, we become silent to the cruel treatment of others.

Photo: Lance Canales & the Flood