A fiery plane crash here decades ago that killed 32 people, most of them unidentified Mexican farmworkers, inspired a protest song by Woody Guthrie that has been performed by Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, among others. Yet here in the heart of the Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural counties in the country, the story of that crash had been largely forgotten.
But two years of painstaking detective work by a writer who is a descendant of farmworkers has answered the question posed in Mr. Guthrie’s song, “Deportee.” The victims were honored this week by more than 600 people gathered here at Holy Cross Cemetery for an elaborate memorial service and the unveiling of a large headstone that lists each victim.
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.
Although acres of headstones bear Spanish surnames, those crash victims remained unidentified. Near the mass grave, a diminutive stone read only: “28 Mexican Citizens Who Died In An Airplane Accident Near Coalinga California On Jan. 28, 1948 R.I.P.”
The anonymity inspired Woody Guthrie's poem "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)":
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 were just deportees."
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."
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.”
Together with Carlos Rascon, the cemeteries director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno, Mr. Hernandez dug through records at the Fresno County recorder’s office and coverage of the crash from a local Spanish-language newspaper. Where he could, Mr. Hernandez filled in information and double-checked name spellings by talking with surviving family members.
At the ceremony on Monday, farm workers stood side by side with folk music fans as a mariachi band played, the bishop of Fresno prayed, incense burned and more than a dozen Aztec dancers performed.
Caritina Paredes Murillo was 11 when news of her father’s death in a plane wreck reached her family in Guanajuato State in central Mexico. For days, everyone in her house wept. But after 65 years, her memories of her father feel more like impressions now: the way he left for long stretches to work, and the sound of his voice singing ballads to her mother when he returned home.
“In my heart I feel happy and sad at the same time,” said Ms. Paredes, 77, who traveled from Mexico to attend the ceremony. “It feels like they were all buried for the first time today.”
During the first of two renditions of “Deportee” on Monday, musicians read the victims’ names as the crowd chanted in Spanish, “descansa en paz,” rest in peace.
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.”
Wednesday 4 September 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/us/california-memorial-names-crashs-forgotten-victims.html?_r=0
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