Carroll a friend is curious as to th original plane
crash to which this refers. Do you know?

Thanks and
cheers,
Peter
[log in to unmask]

Carroll Cox wrote:
> Someone once said something like 10 deaths are a tragedy, 10,000 deaths
> a problem in public sanitation. The first part of this anyhow is
> illustrated every time some public figure dies. The second part is
> illustrated daily. The nameless remain nameless in death. But the
> 20th/early 21st century catastrophe which will be remembered, at least
> in a footnote, when even the existence of the space program is long
> forgotten, is a catastrophe which entered history precisely because its
> victims were nameless. I posted the poem which recorded it, the greatest
> single poem of the 20th century in English, some time ago, but perhaps
> it is appropriate to repost it now.
>
> The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
> The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps.
> You are flying them back to the Mexican border
> To pay all their money to wade back again.
>
> Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
> Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
> You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
> And all they will call you will be deportee.
>
> My father's own father he waded that river,
> They stole all the money he made in his life.
> My sisters and brothers come working the fruit trees
> And rode the truck til 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 fly the big airplane
> And all they will call you will be deportee.
>
> Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted.
> Our work contract's out and we have to move on
> Six hundred miles to the Mexican border.
> They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
>
> Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
> Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
> You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
> And all they will call you will be deportee.
>
> 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.
>
> Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
> Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
> You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
> And all they will call you will be deportee.
>
> The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon --
> A fireball of lightning which shook all our hills,
> Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
> The radio says they are just . . . deportees.
>
> Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
> Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
> You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
> And all they will call you will be deportee.
>
> 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?
>
> Goodbye my to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
> Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
> You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
> And all they will call you will be deportee.