The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps They're flying you back to the Mexico border To pay all your money to wade back again
My father's own father, he wanted that river They took all the money he made in his life My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees And they rode the truck till they took down and died
CHORUS Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illega, and others not wanted Our work contract's out and we have to move on But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts We died in your valleys and died on your plains We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
CHORUS
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves? The radio says they are just deportees.
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 to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except deportees?