All They Will Call You

Tim Z. Hernandez uses the context of the tragedy of the plane crash in 1948 to focus on the lives of the “deportees” on that flight. As a result, a key theme of the “documentary novel” All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon is Immigrant Migration and Labor. Hernandez focuses on the lives of the four passengers whose family members he was able to contact. He documents their experiences prior to the flight, including the hard work, deprivations, and challenges they face in their migrations from Mexico to the US as well as their motivations for making the difficult choice to leave their families and hometowns for long stretches of time. Hernandez also includes details about the immigrant backgrounds of the white American passengers on the flight, Bobbie Atkinson and Officer Chaffin. In so doing, he ties all of the passengers’ experiences together into a larger commentary on the history of American immigration and labor.

As documented by Hernandez, the lives of Luis Miranda Cuevas, Guadalupe Ramírez Lara, Ramón Paredes, and José Sánchez Valdivia were distinct. However, they share certain commonalities that address larger trends in immigrant migration and labor.