Fresh fruit and vegetables from highway stands can be one of the joys of travel, particularly in spring and summer. I recognized Chip Chao’s Chip Strawberry Farm stand when I saw him the other day south of Gridley next to Highway 99 — but I thought he was in the wrong place.
Chao once sold his fruit from a stand north of Chico, but when I stopped to sample a strawberry — which oozed juicy sweet — he explained that he lost his lease and moved to this 3-acre parcel north of Live Oak.
“I work hard to take care of them good,” Chao said of his strawberries. Chao drives to his little farm from Sacramento, arriving every morning at 5:30 a.m. to water and pick. The stand opens at 9:30 a.m., and from there Chao sells the strawberries, a strawberry jam his wife makes and cherries that he hauls from the Central Valley.read more
The grave marker now has the names of all who perished in the crash.
In folk music circles, most people know Woody Guthrie’s song “Plane Crash at Los Gatos.”
But few ever visit Fresno’s Holy Cross Cemetery where a mass grave holds the remains of 28 farmworkers who died in the fiery 1948 plane crash that the song is about.
The song bemoans the fact that the farmworkers who were being deported to Mexico had no names in either news reports at the time of the crash or on a diminutive stone that marked their common grave at the edge of the little graveyard. The media reported only the names of the plane’s crew and the immigration officer who died in the crash with them. In protest, Guthrie made up generic names for the migrants and his 1948 words were put to music 10 years later by Martin Hoffman.
Goodbye to my Juan, Goodbye Rosalita
Adios, mis amigos, José y Maria
But something happened 10 or 15 years ago that erased the demeaning anonymity of the farmworkers. Tim Z. Hernandez, the son of farmworkers who grew up in California’s Central Valley and now teaches writing at the University of Texas in El Paso, tracked down their names and, together with friends, raised funds to give the mass grave a decent memorial plaque. According to the New York Times, it was unveiled before a crowd of 600 people in 2013, thus negating a line from the song:
You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane;
All they will call you will be deportees.
Knowing something about Hernandez’ efforts, I went to the small cemetery just off Highway 99 on Memorial Day weekend. At first I was confused by huge memorial parks nearby, all located about three miles northwest of downtown Fresno. But once I discovered the sign to Holy Cross Cemetery I located the historic grave without a problem.
A young Latino man selling floral bouquets at the entrance to the cemetery had never heard of the crash or the song. I told him the story and gave him $12 for a colorful bouquet. I couldn’t help but think of the current Black Lives Matter motto: Say their names. After setting my flowers at the edge of the plaque, I solemnly read each name. Miguel Negrete Álvarez. Francisco Llamas Durán. Santiago Garcia Elizondo. I said each name aloud. I pronounced every name slowly, including one belonging to the sole female passenger: María Santana Rodríguez.
I hoped my words might compensate, if even a little, for the demeaning treatment the Mexican crash victims received 76 years ago. Saying their names is now possible thanks to the plaque which also includes the names of the pilot, co-pilot, flight attendant (wife of the pilot), and immigration officer whose names were always known and had been reported by the media years ago.
I, like others who have listened to the song “Plane Crash at Los Gatos” or “Deportees”– sung by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen and many more, never realized that Los Gatos is not the famous Silicon Valley city but a desolate canyon west of Coalinga and some 60 miles southwest of Fresno.
Hernandez also helped update Lance Canales’ version of Guthrie’s song by reciting the names of every victim as Canales punctuated the song with strong guitar chords. This fall, he will do one more thing to bring dignity to the crash victims. He plans to unveil a plaque where the plane went down.
Before I left Fresno, I went back to Holy Cross Cemetery with a dear friend who also loves Guthrie’s song. Fresno musician Barry Shultz, known for his sensitive and soulful singing of folk songs, told me that “Plane Crash at Los Gatos” is his favorite Guthrie song, the one that moves him far more deeply than any other.
I asked if he ever sang it.
“I have tried over the years,” Shultz said. “I can’t manage it without weeping.”
I then shared a poignant anecdote I had heard Hernandez tell on a YouTube video about Luis Miranda Cuevas, a young man hired to pick strawberries in Watsonville under the U.S. government’s Bracero Program. Cuevas had called his fiancee Casimira from the deportation center the day before the fateful flight. “They’re bringing all of us back on an airplane and when I arrive to Ojotepec, I’m going to be bringing you a mariachi and we’re going to get married,” he told Casimira.
The next thing Casimira knew, she was standing on the corner at the market, listening to the radio, and heard the news that there was a terrible crash.
I can’t manage to retell that story without weeping.
Hernandez tells many stories which humanize the deportees in two books, “All They Will Call You,” published in 2017, and “They Will Call You Back,” scheduled for publication this September.
Hernandez’s first book on the deported Mexican citizens was named the 2018-19 Book in Common by Chico State and Butte College, and in 2019 Hernandez was received enthusiastically by a Laxson Auditorium audience in Chico.
Lindajoy Fenley is a member of the ChicoSol Advisory Board and contributes frequently to ChicoSol’s Highway 99 series.
Editor’s note: ChicoSol is reviving its Highway 99 series that was popular some 10 years ago to mark this year’s Cesar Chavez Day. State Route 99 cuts through California’s Central Valley, where union organizing had a tremendous impact.
by Lindajoy Fenley
posted March 27
The final resting place of Cesar Chavez, who led strikes to improve the lot of underpaid and disrespected farmworkers nationwide more than 50 years ago, has the peaceful moniker Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz.
It has been headquarters of Chavez’s United Farm Workers union (UFW) since 1972 and a National Monument where the labor leader’s March 31 birthday has been celebrated annually since 2010. A warning sign that entry to the area is “impassable during high water” serves as a metaphor that the struggle for farmworker rights still faces challenges. Indeed, the bucolic spot tucked into the hills 30 miles east of Highway 99, a few miles before it merges into Interstate 5, is not immune from the controversy that marked Chavez’s life.
When the UFW purchased the 187-acres property in an auction in conservative Kern County in 1972, it had to hide its identity. The powerful agricultural community of the Central Valley did not like Chavez who, along with Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong, had successfully led a nationwide grape strike and boycott in 1968. Two years earlier Chavez had led a 250-mile march from Delano to Sacramento to call attention to the plight of farmworkers.
At the height of activity at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, more than 200 members of UFW families lived on the property, but now it is home to only a couple dozen people, according to Bernadette Farinas, Chavez’s granddaughter who works at the monument. Visitors come to learn about the farmworker movement from the museum, where they can see Chavez’s office, a model of a typical farmworker home and an extensive illustrated timeline of the organizer’s life.
Although widely revered today with many schools, streets and parks named after him, Chavez was a controversial figure when alive. His bold actions produced both friends and foes. Even after part of the UFW property became a national monument, security remains a concern.
Farinas recalls a man who carried an emotional burden when he visited several years ago. The man told her that when he was a boy, his father hated Cesar Chavez. So, he hated Chavez too without knowing why. This visitor sat for a long time to seek forgiveness at the gravesite where Chavez is buried next to his wife Helen. Soothing sounds from a water wall that flows into a reflection pond and the rumble of freight trains in the distance allow visitors like him a place for peace and quiet. Not far from the lawn-covered graves, potted flowers, cacti gardens and flowering pear trees add to the beauty.
This year, the Chavez birthday celebration will begin with a naturalization ceremony on Friday, March 29 and continue with mariachi music, folkloric dance and food through Sunday, March 31.
Lindajoy Fenley is part of the ChicoSol Advisory Group, a journalist, and a Spanish instructor.
