Heeding the call
From the wreckage of a plane crash comes a work of art and history
Author Tim Z. Hernandez is a dogged advocacy journalist and his doggedness is evident in his book “All They Will Call You.” Hernandez spent years investigating the Jan. 28, 1948, plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon near Coalinga, Calif., in which 32 people were killed.
His research identified for the first time the 28 Mexican nationals on board. Until his discoveries the 28 were nameless farmworkers being deported to Mexico.
After the crash their remains ended up in a mass grave in a Fresno, Calif., cemetery. Hernandez’s extraordinary efforts resulted in the placement of a granite headstone in the cemetery with the names of all of the deportees.
Hernandez applied the tools of an investigative journalist in his research. But the objective of his recorded interviews were not to assemble facts. The intent of the book, and the heart of the narrative, was to learn who the victims were — their personalities, their early lives, their family ties and their dreams.
Hernandez accomplished that by recording the memories of conversations family members in the United States and Mexico had with those who died.
Hernandez didn’t limit his research to the deportees. He interviewed at length families of the four named non-deportees on the flight, the pilot and co-pilot, the stewardess (the pilot’s wife) and an immigration official.
Hernandez also spoke to people who were eyewitnesses to the crash. He didn’t stop there. He sought out the historical records of the Douglas Aircraft Co.’s model DC-6. It was a Douglas DC-6 that went down in Los Gatos Canyon. (Another DC-6, Hernandez wrote, had crashed in Bryce Canyon in October 1947. All 52 on board were killed.)
Hernandez’s five years of relentless research resulted in the publication of the book last year.
The book title comes from a line in a poem “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” that folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote shortly after hearing about the California crash on the radio. Guthrie was apparently protesting the anonymity of the farmworkers. Here are the last lines of the poem: “Adios mis amigos Jesus y Maria/ You won’t have a name/When you ride the big airplane/All they will call you/Will be deportees.”
The poem later became the lyrics of a song. Martin Hoffman, a student at Colorado A&M, wrote the music.
Hernandez interviewed Guthrie’s close friend Pete Seeger to learn the origins of the song and obtained background on Hoffman. “Had it not been for the song, I would’ve never known about the plane crash in the first place. The song, by all definitions, was the beacon,” the author wrote in the book.
Hernandez would be the first to tell you that his research has produced a book of fragments, with its changing subjects and timelines. “The reader has to look at the book in a fragmented state. As much as possible I tried to put some organization to it,” Hernandez said in a phone interview.
“It’s not just following a story through fragmentation but to find something about it that is very human. It’s in these disparities that we find our humanity.”
The author is working on a documentary film about the backstory of “All They Will Call You.”
Hernandez is also a poet, performance artist and novelist. His novel “Mañana Means Heaven” won the 2014 International Latino Book Award.
He divides his time between Fresno, Calif., where he was born and raised and where he does much of his research, and El Paso, where he is assistant professor in the University of Texas-El Paso’s online bilingual MFA program in creative writing.