52 pages • 1 hour read
Tim Z. HernandezAll They Will Call You
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Sections 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 4: “The Power of a Song (One More Name)”
Section 4, Chapter 41 Summary: “Pete Seeger”
On September 21, 2013, folk singer Pete Seeger’s grandson Kitama drives Hernandez to Beacon, New York, from the city. Hernandez had been told that, although Woody Guthrie wrote the words to the song “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee),” he had never sung it. Instead, Pete Seeger was the one who sang and performed the song. This was how Hernandez learned of the plane crash.
At Pete Seeger’s table, Seeger talks about how the song became part of his repertoire. Woody Guthrie wrote the words and Marty Hoffman wrote the tune. As told to the author by friend of Mary, Dick Barker, in April 1958, Seeger came to Denver and one of their friends picked Seeger up and drove them all to Fort Collins for a concert. Afterward, Marty plays his tune for Pete Seeger and later, when Seeger recorded it, Seeger made sure Marty got credit.
Hernandez plays the only known recording of Marty singing “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” for Pete Seeger. He seems moved and remembers that something “happened” to Marty.
Section 4, Chapter 42 Summary: “Rough Rock, Arizona, Navajo Nation”
Lucy Moore, former Apache County coroner, recounts how she came to the scene of Marty’s suicide.
One night, Marty is living in a simple, spare house in Rough Rock. He thinks about his children and the music. He makes himself a drink, pets his dog, Shunka, and plays some guitar. At that moment, in Nashville, Joan Baez is recording a cover of his tune, “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).” Marty goes into his room and shoots himself. Before he died, Marty went to all his friends and “told them how much he appreciated each one of ’em” (197). His former girlfriend Sue tells Hernandez Marty connected with the sense of loss in Woody Guthrie’s songs and music.
Section 4, Chapter 43 Summary: “The First Recording”
On May 22, 1957, Marty and Dick are in Fort Collins playing music with a group called the Ballad Club. They have a reel-to-reel recording machine they use to record songs. On that day, Marty records the tune he wrote for Woody Guthrie’s poem “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).” The tune is styled after a kind of country ballad popular in Mexico known as a ranchera valseada, or simply ranchera. Marty’s voice is “distinct” (200). Before he begins to sing, he notes that the words are Woody Guthrie’s and that the song is about the death of 28 Mexican migrant workers in Los Gatos Canyon on January 28, 1948.
The chapter ends with a list of the names of the dead passengers.
Section 5 Summary: “Field Notes (2012-2015)”
In this section of the text, Hernandez provides a sample of his field notes from his research beginning in September 2012.
Hernandez contacts someone from St. John’s Cathedral named Carlos Rascon and learns that the documentation simply lists the names of the dead in mass grave as “Mexican National.” Hernandez says he would like to have a headstone made with the names on it. Rascon says he is interested, and Hernandez writes a request to Bishop Ochoa to make a headstone. In November, at the gravesite, Rascon gives him a new list of names from the Hall of Records. They realize there are errors in the documented names. In February, Rascon tells Bishop Ochoa has approved the headstone. They will need to raise $10,000 to put it up. By the end of February, Hernandez is feeling discouraged at the difficulty of finding all of the names with the poor documentation and his own limited Spanish. Further, the bishop wants to do the headstone ceremony on September 2.
Hernandez has a friend put an article in Vida en el Valle about his search for the names in the hopes that some of the families of the deceased will contact him. Three weeks after the story runs, he has not heard from anyone. One of the families he contacted threatens to call the police. On April 4, 2013, Hernandez gets an email from Jaime Ramírez in response to the article. Jaime and Guillermo are eager to talk in the interview.
On September 2, 2013, the memorial headstone celebration is held. The traffic on Highway 99 reminds Hernandez of when his mother took him to Cesar Chavez’s funeral in 1993. The day before, the few family members he had found had visited the crash site with him. At the cemetery, there is press. The bishop gives a sermon to the crowd of over 800 people. Then there is a procession to the gravesite with traditional Aztec dancing. The moment the headstone is revealed, Hernandez feels faint. He feels that the headstone is not enough—the stories behind each of the names still remains to be told.
On January 28, 2015, on the 67th anniversary of the crash, Hernandez is in Los Gatos Canyon at the crash site with some of the family members who were not able to attend the headstone ceremony. He has not stopped looking for family members and names. At the house of Fermin, Guadalupe’s adopted son, the family is holding its own memorial. They ask Hernandez questions, especially about why his Spanish is so poor. Fermin tells the family about a white American named John Reed who wrote a book called Mexico Insurgente about the Mexican Revolution and how important that book was. Fermin thinks it’s good when North Americans take an interest in Mexican culture and history.
Sections 4-5 Analysis
In Section 3, Hernandez describes his research into the creation and recording of the song that introduced him to the story of the plane crash. The song is the work of many artists. Woody Guthrie wrote the words of “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).” Guthrie (1912-1967) was an important American folk singer whose songs dealt with subjects like the struggles of the working class and the fight against fascism. His best-known song is “This Land Is Your Land.” He wrote many song lyrics that were never put to music, especially after he was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a degenerative disease that causes erratic behavior and loss of muscle control. In keeping with the folk music traditions, other artists took his words as a springboard and set them to their own music, as seen in the album Mermaid Avenue by Billy Bragg and Wilco (1998). It was in this tradition that folk guitarist Martin “Marty” Hoffmann set Guthrie’s words to music in 1957. Finally, it was recorded and popularized by the folk musician Pete Seeger, although other folk artists such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Peter, Paul and Mary have also recorded covers.
Marty’s choice of tune for “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” is significant. As Hernandez writes, “No melody could’ve been more fitting for Woody’s words than the ranchera, one of Mexico’s musical pillars” (200). This choice of tune reflects the musical culture of the plane crash victims. Hernandez alludes to this explicitly. He describes how Ramón would sing the ranchera “Valentina, Valentina” to his family. In Hernandez’s description of the moments before the plane crash, he imagines Ramón “whisper[ing] a few lines from his favorite song” (156). As told by Hernandez, the song memorializing Ramón’s death is set to a similar tune as the song he was singing before he died.
Both Section 3 and 4 address different Forms of Remembrance and Memorial. Section 3 is about the way that song, and particularly folk song, is an important way that historical events are remembered. “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” is one of many folk songs about historical events that impacted poor and working-class people, such as “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” by Bob Dylan and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot. These songs preserve the memories of these tragic events and transmit them through the generations. As Hernandez writes, “the impact of this one song would last seven decades, until it found the grandson of migrant farmworkers, moved by a question posed in the lyrics, ‘Who are these friends all scattered like dry leaves?’ enough to go searching for the answer” (200). The grandson here mentioned is Hernandez himself, the author.
In Section 4, Hernandez documents his efforts to find the names of all the plane crash victims and have a headstone erected on their gravesite. A headstone is a more traditional form of memorial. However, prior to the efforts of Hernandez and the community, their grave was only marked with a small plaque that did not include their names. Finally, Chapter 43 ends with a list of the names of the passengers who died. This is the apotheosis or height of the book, which is a form of memorialization unto itself. It is especially poignant given the difficulties Hernandez documents in assembling an accurate list of the names of the passengers who died in the plane crash both in Section 4 and elsewhere in the text.
