Bracero

by Phil Ochs

Wade into the river, through the rippling shallow water
Steal across the thirsty border bracero
Come bring your hungry bodies to the golden fields of plenty
From a peso to a penny, bracero
Oh, Welcome to California
Where the friendly farmer will take care of you

Come labor for your mother, your father and your brother
For your sister and your lover, bracero
Come pick the fruit of yellow, break the flower from the berry
Purple grapes will fill your belly, bracero
Oh, Welcome to California
Where the friendly farmer will take care of you

And the sun will bite your body, as the dust will draw you thirsty
While your muscles beg for mercy, bracero
In the shade of your sombrero, drop your sweat upon the soil
Like the fruit your youth can spoil, bracero
Oh, Welcome to California

Where the friendly farmer will take care of you

When the weary night embraces, sleep in shacks that could be cages
They will take it from your wages, bracero
Come sing about tomorrow with a jingle of the dollar
And forget your crooked collar, bracero
Oh, Welcome to California
Where the friendly farmer will take care of you

And the local men are crazy, and they make too much of trouble
Besides we'd have to pay them double, bracero
But if you feel you're fallin', if you find the pace is killing
There are others who are willing, bracero
Oh, Welcome to California
Where the friendly farmer will take care of you.

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Deportee

by Woodie Guthrie

The oranges are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps,
You're flying them back to the Mexico border
To pay all their money to wade back again

CHORUS:
Goodbye to my Juan, Goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You don't have a name when you ride the big aeroplane
And all they will call you will be deportee

My father's own father he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life.
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
They rode the truck till they took down and died

CHORUS

Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted
Our work contracts out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to that Mexico border
They chase us like outlaws, and rustlers, and thieves

CHORUS

We died in your hills; we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died in your plains
We died 'neath your trees, we died in your bushes
Both sides of that river, we died just the same

CHORUS

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon
A fireball of lightning, it scarred the hills
Where are our friends all 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 6000 fruit?
To fall like dry leaves, to rot on the top soil
And be known by no name EXCEPT DEPORTEE