Elmore Leonard, Robert Duvall, and a neglected corner

I enjoy Elmore Leonard.  His Westerns are mind candy, but with good grit.  I am grateful to him for getting me to pay more attention to Jose Marti, who showed up in the background of one of his stories.  I also think very highly of Robert Duvall, who played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, had parts in a long list of great movies, and directed his own powerful and complex movie, The Apostle.  So when I came across an old movie with screen play by Leonard, co-starring Duvall, I checked it out.  Joe Kidd, starring Clint Eastwood, 1972 – when Clint’s glints were amazing.

Netflix summary: A wealthy landowner (Robert Duvall) attempts to hire former bounty hunter Joe Kidd (Clint Eastwood) and a band of killers to track down a group of armed revolutionary Mexicans (led by John Saxon's Luis Chama) whose U.S. land claims were denied and then burned by the government. At first, Kidd turns down the offer, until Chama steals his horse and terrorizes his friends. John Sturges directs from an original screenplay by Elmore Leonard.

“… Mexicans whose land claims were denied and then burned by the government.”  Interesting background, and another aspect of the immigration horror show.

Check it out, for a great show!  (And think it over.)

by the streams we sat and wept

1948.  In the Bracero program, Americans hired Mexicans to work the fields, then deported them when the work was done.  In a friendly fashion.

Larry Hamm, a good friend since 1962, sent me a great article today about Woody Guthrie, and in the article I came across a reference to “The Plane Wreck at Los Gatos.”  There was a plane crash in California in 1948.  The people who died were "just deportees." Pete Seeger said that Woody Guthrie wanted to give their names back to the deportees.

 I found the lyrics (below) and a performance (http://www.woodyguthrie.de/deportee.html). 

Deportee
(also known as "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos")
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

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"

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,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

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.

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 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"?

© 1961 (renewed) by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

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