Roxana Flores Santos, granddaughter, holds a picture of her grandfather Jesús Santso Meza who died in 1948 plane crash. Teresa Santos is the great-granddaughter and reads a statement of gratitude. Mother and daughter traveled from Atlanta to attend the ceremony.
For decades, the names of 28 Mexican passengers who died in a plane crash accident in Los Gatos Canyon, 20 miles west of Coalinga in Fresno County on January 28, 1948, remained largely unknown. Four others perished in that accident, the pilot, first officer, stewardess, and an immigration official were white and received proper burials. But the Mexicans were all buried in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno with only a small plaque and no names.
Seventy-six years later, on September 28, 2024, a memorial marker with the names of all 28 crash victims was unveiled just yards away from where the plane went down in a rural isolated area. Relatives of six of the victims attended a ceremony memorializing their loved ones, some came from as far away as Atlanta. Luis Carlos Estrada of Lamont lost his grandfather, Rosalio Estrada Padilla, who was returning to his hometown of San Julian, Jalisco.
“My father would talk about my grandfather being killed in a plane accident somewhere in California, but he never knew exactly where,” said Estrada during an interview at the ceremony. His curiosity to know more got the best of him when his father told him that the only item belonging to his grandfather, a wallet, had been returned to the family. “My father said there was no money in the wallet, only his identification and pictures of (unknown) women,” said Estrada. Had his father lived, Estrada said he would no doubt be present at the ceremony. “For me, this is like closing a circle, something that I’ve been searching for a long time, something that at least I know where the plane went down and where my grandfather is buried,’ said Estrada.
But had it not been for legendary folk singer Woody Gutherie and later Tim Hernandez, an author and professor at UT El Paso, this story might have remained a mystery and a tragedy in more ways than one. When media outlets of the day wrote of the plane crash, the headlines referred to the 28 Mexican passengers simply as “deportees.” No names were listed. The callous reporting angered Gutherie enough that he wrote a poem about the nameless victims and named it, “Deportee, plane wreck at Los Gatos.” It was later set to music and has since been recorded by many artists.
In 2010, Hernandez made it his mission to find out the names of each person killed and where they came from. It would be three years before he made his first contact with a family who lost a loved one on the ill-fated flight. Hernandez brushed aside any suggestion that this memorial event would not have happened had it not been for his 14 years of investigative work.
“I feel irrelevant in this story. I feel like it’s more for the families, they’re the ones who lost family members here,” said Hernandez. “I dedicated myself and made a vow that I’m going to keep searching until I find all the passenger’s families and let them know what happened,” said Hernandez.
The ceremony was marked by brief comments from each of the six families. We now know that the crash victims mostly consisted of people who came to work in the United States under the bracero program, a U.S. government plan that brought workers to the United States from Mexico to work in the fields and other jobs during the labor shortage of World War II. Their contracts had expired and were being sent back aboard a chartered plane. The only woman among the workers was María Rodríguez Santana, a 23-year-old from Los Guajes, in the state of Jalisco.
“We knew an accident had happened, but we had no idea that she was buried in that Fresno graveyard, we had no idea of anything, really,” said Mike Rodríguez, of Beaumont, the 77 nephew of Rodríguez Santana. Found among the debris from the crash was a bag with blue baby clothes Rodríguez Santana had been carrying. “Those clothes were coming for me when I was just 6 months old at the time,” said Rodríguez as his voice cracked. Having finished her contract as a bracero worker, Rodríguez Santana was scheduled to return to Mexico by bus. But things didn’t work out that way.
“There was another person who was sick and couldn’t make the plane, so my aunt volunteered to get on the plane and take that seat,” said the nephew. “And the rest is history.” One of the plane’s engines exploded and caught fire. The plane crashed in an isolated area.
The Gutherie Foundation covered the travel costs of some of the families to be able to attend the ceremony. Gutherie’s son Joady Gutherie and grandson Damon Gutherie were in attendance. “In writing “Deportee” Woody was trying to call attention to people so often ignored, the people who grow our good orchards and grow our good fruit,” said Damon Gutherie. “We often overlook and take for granted the people that are part of us, that are helping us,” said Gutherie.
The ceremony concluded with a reading aloud of the 28 passengers who perished. After each name was called out, the attendees answered by saying “presente!” In Spanish, “presente” means present. It is used to refer to a deceased person as still being part of the living, remaining in the hearts and minds of loved ones.
Hernandez has written two books on the plane crash at Los Gatos. The first is called, “All They Will Call You,” focusing on the families of the crash victims. His second just-released book is “They Call You Back,” which he originally didn’t plan on writing. But he kept getting called by more families of the crash victims who wanted to know more about the accident and also wanted to share their stories.
“The stories they shared with me, some of them were so rich and meaningful and information I had never heard. The mystery of it, the questions kept pulling me in,” said Hernandez.
