This text is based on a transcript of the performance by Arlo Guthrie & Friends at the Friends Of Chile Benefit, Felt Forum, NYC 5/9/74, supplemented by a performance by Joan Baez & Bob Dylan, Fort Worth 5/16/76, and by one from Cisco Houston, included on The Greatest Songs of Woodie Guthrie, Vanguard VCD 35/36. Cf. more performances by Dylan & Baez at San Antonio 5/11/76, Oklahoma City 5/18/76, Wichita 5/19/76 & Fort Collins 5/23/76.

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting.
 [Baez:  lettuce]
The oranges are piled in the creosote dumps.
 [Cisco Houston:  stacked]
They're flyin me back to that Mexico border
 [Baez; Houston:  'em, them]
To pay all your money to wade back again
 [Baez; Houston:  their]

Chorus:

Goodbye to my Juan, Goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be "deportees."

My father's own father he waded that river.
They took all the money he made in his life.
My brothers and sisters they worked in the fruit trees
And they rode the trucks till they took down and died               
 [B&D: till they laid down their lives]

Chorus
 [Baez & Dylan skip this Chorus]
Some of us are illegals and others not wanted
The work contract's out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to that Mexico border
 [Baez:  It's six ...]
They chase us like rustlers, like outlaws & theives

Chorus

We died in your hills and we died on your deserts                 
 [B&D: place this stanza after the next]
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died in your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river we died just the same.

Chorus

The skyplane caught  fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning it shook all our hills
[Cisco Houston:  and shook ...]
And though our best friends fall scattered like dry leaves
The radio says they are just "deportees."

Chorus

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 and rot on your topsoil
And be known by no name except "deportees"?

Chorus

*In the third verse of the penultimate stanza Baez & Dylan sing "Who are
these comrades who fall ...?"  and Cisco Houston sings "Who are all these
friends all scattered ...?"


typed and submitted by Jim Powell