Written by: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger & Martin Hoffman
Performed by: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash & special guest: Johnny Rodriquez.
Appears on: Highwayman-1985, The Highwayman Collection-2000, et al.
[Cash:]
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotten.
The oranges are packed in the creoste dumps.
They're flyin' them back to the Mexican border,
To save all their money then wade back again.
[Rodriquez:]
My father's own father he waded that river.
Others before him have done just the same.
They died in the hills and they died in the valleys.
Some went to heaven without any names.
[All 3:]
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita.
Adios mi amigo, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "Deportee."
[Cash:]
Some of us are illegal and others not wanted.
Our work contracts out and we have to move on.
[Nelson:]
Six hundred miles to the Mexican border,
They chase us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves.
[All 3:]
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita.
Adios mi amigo, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "Deportee."
[Instrumental break.]
[Cash:]
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon.
A fireball of thunder, it shook all the hills.
[Nelson:]
Who are all of these dear friends scattered like dry leaves?
The radio said they were just "Deportees."
[Rodriquez:]
Adios mi Juan, adios Rosalita.
Adios mi amigo, Jesus y Maria.
No tendras ningun nombre en aquel aeroplano,
Solo te van a poner, "Deportee."
[All 3:]
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita.
Adios mi amigo, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "Deportee."
[*In January 1948 an airplane carrying Mexican Nationals crashed near the Los Gatos canyon in California. Woody Guthrie, the voice of everyman, wrote a poem about the crash that was later put to music by Pete Seeger. That version is done by The Highwaymen.]
