“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.’” – Woodie Gutherie
Recently a group supporting immigrant farm-workers held vigils in many communities in up-state New York. One of the places this group stopped was at the site of a horrific bus-truck crash that killed six people—all immigrants working to construct a solar farm.
That stop was planned by a organizer who calls themself “Anarchy”, and it involved temporarily placing rocks with the names of the six immigrant workers who were killed around a pole and then each person at the event tying a piece of cloth to the pole.
The event may have been inspired by the stone marker erected in 2013 to honor the 28 individual migrant workers who were killed in the 1948 Los Gatos Canyon plane crash, and who had been buried in a mass grave in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California.
The passengers aboard the 1948 flight included both bracero workers who had completed their contracted labor terms and undocumented immigrants being deported. Media coverage initially identified only the flight crew, and referred to the remaining passengers simply as “deportees.” Of all the victims, just 12 were initially identified by name. The farm-worker victims were interred in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California, marked with only the inscription “Mexican Nationals.”
Writer Tim Z. Hernandez, whose parents were migrant farm-workers in California’s Central Valley, researched the 1948 Los Gatos DC-3 crash for over a decade, and successfully campaigned to install a proper stone monument at the mass grave site in 2013, and the crash site in 2024. His books All They Will Call You, published in 2017, and They Call You Back published in 2024, are based on his investigation. His deep roots in farm worker communities obviously inform his writings, and the monument is one that recognizes the dignity of each person who was killed.
In contrast, the event at the site of a bus crash January 2023 that killed six immigrant workers on their way to build a solar farm was a makeshift monument made from rocks painted with the names of the victims and a long stick. Each person at the event tied a scrap of cloth to the stick. The Watertown and Malone newspapers quoted the organizer Anarchy as saying: “there was no justice, even in an unjust system, for these people who came here to work and build a better life and left their families. We are here today to give them justice outside of the system, to name them and to honor them.”
Unlike the Los Gatos Canyon plane crash, New York State Police released the names of the victims in the fatal Louisville bus accident shorty after the crash and at least one survivor was interviewed by local news. All indications are that the workers at the solar farm were well compensated.
The issue shared by both crashes was the unsafe transportation infrastructure provided to workers.
According to the investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board, the 1948 crash was caused by a fire in the left engine-from a fuel leak that acted like an oxy-acetylene torch, causing the port wing to separate from the fuselage. While not the direct cause of the fire, the DC-3 aircraft was overdue for a mandatory safety inspection, and the flight was overcrowded.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) spent over a year investigating the 2023 truck-bus collision. They blamed lax safety practices at the company operating the bus, LBFNY based in Weedsport, and the company operating the box truck that hit the bus, Aero Global Logistics. Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB Safety Committee said that LBFNY was under an out-of-service order, failed to show up for a safety audit, and then re-registered in Montana to avoid federal oversight.
The memorial for the farm-worker victims of the Los Gatos air crash was the result of a campaign by a person who had experienced the life of a migrant worker and was passionate about telling the victims stories. It is a memorial that truly brings dignity to the memory of the air crash victims. The event at the site of the January 2023 bus crash unfortunately brings no dignity.