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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Deportees

Deportees

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From the NYTimes:

… On Jan. 28, 1948, a plane chartered by federal immigration officials left Oakland, Calif., carrying two pilots, a flight attendant, an immigration guard and 28 Mexican farmworkers. Some were in the United States legally as part of the federal Braceros guest-worker program; others had crossed the border without documents. All 28 were being returned to Mexico.

Eighty miles southwest of Fresno, road workers reported hearing what sounded like an explosion, only to look up and see the left wing shear off the Douglas DC-3 passing high above them. Nearly a dozen bodies were seen falling from a hole in the fuselage before the plane burst into flames and plummeted into a wooded canyon.

Everyone aboard was killed. The bodies of the four crew members were shipped to family members, but the remains of the 28 Mexicans were buried in a mass grave here, at the edge of the cemetery…

“Woody always believed in the power of invoking people’s names; he wrote many songs using names,” Nora Guthrie, a daughter of the folk singer, wrote in an e-mail. “Sometimes, songs leave behind questions which ultimately can, and will, be answered by someone whose heart is pulled into the mystery.”

In the case of “Deportee,” that person was Tim Z. Hernandez, 39, a writer and a son and grandson of Mexican farmworkers. In 2010, Mr. Hernandez came across several newspaper articles about the crash at a Fresno library while he was doing research for a novel.

“When I saw the newspaper stories, Woody Guthrie’s lyrics became real to me,” he said. “I thought, someone somewhere must have those names.”…

Berenice Guzman, a history teacher at Dinuba High School in nearby Dinuba, Calif., had never heard of the plane wreck, or the Woody Guthrie song, until this year. Captivated, she told her students the story. They organized a bake sale to help raise $14,000 for the headstone and memorial service.

“They connected right away because many of their parents are farm workers from Mexico,” Ms. Guzman said at the ceremony. “This is an agricultural community. For many of us here, the people in that crash could have been family.”

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  3. 3.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    @? Martin: The same article, and the same song (while not the same video)? come on. Do you really think she does that much research?

  4. 4.

    ? Martin

    Can’t see the song. Flash is blocked. But Guthrie’s song is pretty well known (as is the background behind the story) to anyone familiar with Guthrie’s work (as AL appears to be). No research needed for anyone who read the article.

    Actually, a google search for ‘deportees guthrie’ gives ALs video as the first hit. So LGM did research. AL did very little.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    @? Martin

    Agreed, but in this case correct usage costs nothing beyond cultivating the habit.

    There is a school of thought premising that the paper has been lurching downhill ever since the powers that be dropped the period from the nameplate in order to save money on ink, in 1967.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax:

    Totally and completely pedantic (and yes, fussy)…

    See, you acknowledge that, and yet you are compelled to make the comment anyway. That’s the part I find mystifying.

    Do you imagine that you’re going to actually change someone’s behavior and thus spare yourself the trauma of encountering an unitalicized definitive article in the future?

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    @Betty Cracker

    Whether anyone changes or not is up to them, and not my intent.

    Some people may have not been aware of the fact, and knowledge is power – even trivial knowledge.

    It was not chastisement, it was information. If you choose to get huffy about that, that’s your lookout.

  14. 14.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    You are technically correct. The definite article is definitely part of the newspaper’s formal name, which it abbreviates to The Times when referring to itself. But even The Times isn’t entirely consistent on this. Its URL leaves out the “The”. Other newspapers calling themselves The [somewhere] Times don’t necessarily put an initial cap on the “The”, either. And not everyone recognises a definite article as part of a name.

    Incidentally: Why, in the first place, did The New York Times have a period at the end of a standalone name on its logo? Punctuation serves no purpose there.

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    @Betty Cracker

    Recommend stepping well back if in the the same room if I hear or read any of the following pet peeves (all examples actually encountered):

    free gift
    new innovation
    round circle.

    Those dial my ire up to the Vesuvius setting. :·)

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @NotMax:

    I believe the Chicago Manual of Style says it’s ok not to italicizes the “the” in the name of a publication, mostly because it’s too much work to determine which publications have “the” as part of their official name.

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    The logic of logos is a maze so murky and byzantine that even a minotaur would be forced to consult a “You are here” wall display.

    The side passages of tradition and of trademark twist and double back nearly interminably.

  18. 18.

    Randy P

    Despite the fact that misplaced apostrophes make me grind my teeth, I find myself suddenly, inexplicably drawn to write this:

    NY Time’s
    N.Y. Time’s
    The NY, Times

    OK, got that off my chest. I saw Arlo in concert last year, then a few days later re-watched the film of Alice’s Restaurant, which was only a few years old when I saw it for the first time. It was kind of depressing seeing how he’s gone from impossibly young to old and scruffy during my adult years, and since I’ve lived those same years, certain conclusions are inevitable…

    I believe Woody’s daughter, Arlo’s sister, is in the process of publishing a whole bunch of previously-unpublished work by Woody. I think a lot of it is poetry to which she’s commissioned new songs. So there are new Woody Guthrie songs appearing.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: If I were Grammar Queen, I’d abolish the inclusion of definitive articles in names because it creates too many writer dilemmas. For example, using “The” in the paper’s name in the following sentence would sound dumb:

    “Maureen Dowd’s trademark fusion of tired Boomer snark and over-reliance on alliteration was especially annoying in this weekend’s New York Times column.”

    I guess it would be easy enough to avoid the dilemma by recasting the sentence: “…this weekend’s column in The New York Times.” But I resent having to handle their name with tongs.

  23. 23.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    I remember a 1980s band called The The. That name would have been untranslatable into Malay, a language which has neither definite nor indefinite articles.

  24. 24.

    Randy P

    @NotMax: I have a degree from JHU. Whose name is The Johns Hopkins University. With article and please make sure you add the S to Mr. Hopkins’ first name, thank you very much.

  25. 25.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: Which is one reason I usually don’t bother being a pedant — too easy to make a bone-headed error like that and end up looking the fool!

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    @Randy P: Some OSU alums make a big deal out of insisting on THE Ohio State University, which strikes me as silly. The “Johns” in “Johns Hopkins” I can understand — leaving the “s” off is unambiguously wrong.

  27. 27.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: It’s not “some alums”:

    Why are we called “THE” Ohio State University”?

    In 1986, a new University logo was introduced in the hopes of moving away from the “OSU” symbol, which had been used since 1977. The change from simply “OSU” was said to “reflect the national stature of the institution.” University officials wanted the institution to be known as “The Ohio State University,” again, since OSU could also mean Oregon State and Oklahoma State University.

    However, the “The” was actually part of the state legislation when the university was renamed in 1878. The following excerpt is from the Board of Trustee minutes:

    “…the educational institution heretofore known as the ‘Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College,’ shall be known and designated hereafter as ‘The Ohio State University.'”

    Those who wanted the name change thought the original name was too narrow in scope, and that it was inadequate for the institution that was the only beneficiary of the land grant act. President Edward Orton was insistent that a new name would separate the institution from other colleges in Ohio.

    Legend also has it that “The” was used to show the other colleges which institution was supposed to be the leader in the state – both in size and in financial support from the legislature.

    library.osu.edu/find/collections/the-ohio-state-university-archives/buckeye-history/faqs#1

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: Yet another reason to be proud to be a Gator from the University of Florida, which avoids such silly pretensions.

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    @Randy P:
    When I started grad school at JHU, one of the pieces of orientation materials I was issued was a piece of paper with the text ‘It’s JohnS Hopkins’. With that S in roughly a 500 point font size, taking up the great majority of the space on the page.

  34. 34.

    gvg

    Just an personal coincidence, but my Woody Gutherie’s Children’s songs CD arrived last night and I was listening to it on the way into work. Introducing the five year old to my childhood memories. He has apparently already been introduced to one of the songs in kindegarten music class, which is once a week and we just started the 3rd week.
    Lots of reasons to remember his songs in the last few years.

  35. 35.

    Tokyokie

    @Randy P: What Nora is doing is actually the case with “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos.” Woody wrote the lyrics, but would just chant them. A schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman a decade later wrote the tune, and Woody’s old pal Pete Seeger popularized that version of it.

  36. 36.

    Steeplejack

    @The prophet Nostradumbass:

    The same article, and the same song [. . .]? Come on.

    The song was cited and quoted in the Times article itself, so their apposition is not some fantastic coincidence or LGF’s unique stroke of genius.

  37. 37.

    PurpleGirl

    I first heard Plane Wreck at Los Gatos sung by Joan Baez. It’s such a sad song.

    I’ve always associated it with the Bracero program and think it highlights a flaw in such programs — that the participants become nameless and faceless, being treated with no dignity for personhood or the work done. I would hope that in any future worker program we could somehow acknowledge and treat participants better.

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    The first three lines of the song mention an agriculture business practice of the times: destroying “excess” produce to keep supply down and prices profitably high. So not only were the braceros and their documented colleagues deprived of their common dignity, the result of their labour was often deliberately discarded for profit’s sake.

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