Professor’s work leads effort to restore the dignity of the names and stories of plane crash victims

Tim Z. Hernandez, associate professor and award-winning artist in the Department of Creative Writing was recently featured in the LA Times for his work related to the deadly California plane crash of 1948 where all 32 passengers onboard were killed- at the time it was the worst aviation accident in the country.

On January 28, 1948, a plane crashed near Los Gatos Canyon. When newspapers acknowledged the deadly incident only the four white people who had been on the plane were mentioned while the 28 Mexican passengers were only labeled as “deportees” since the flight was a U.S. Immigration Services charter. Furthermore, the Mexican individuals were buried in a mass grave without their names acknowledged. Those who perished had been part of the bracero program and had been in the country legally.

During a vigil held on January 27, 2023, to commemorate the deaths of the 28 Mexican individuals, professor Hernandez joined with a musical and spoken-word performance. Hernandez has spent the last 13 years traveling across California and Mexico, collecting fragments of what happened on that fateful day, and the stories of the people who were killed. Seven of the passengers’ stories are featured in Hernandez’s 2017 book, All They Will Call You.

He has also helped raise money for the new marker commemorating the Mexican victims of the crash and has tracked many of the victims’ descendants. In many cases Hernandez has provided details of the crash and aftermath of the events to the families, many of whom only knew that their relative had died in a plane crash.

A descendant of those victims at the vigil noted that, “They had a goal and purpose in life, and they had families that loved them. They deserved to be celebrated.”

Professor Hernandez is working on a sequel to his book that will continue to tell the stories of 6 additional families who lost loved ones during that tragic accident.

To read the full article on the LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-30/los-gatos-canyon-plane-crash-1948-deportees

Additional details on Hernandez and this story are also detailed in the following interview: https://www.kqed.org/news/11941279/all-they-will-call-you-will-be-deportee-75-years-later-uncovering-the-lives-of-the-braceros-who-died-in-a-fiery-california-plane-crash

For more information on the work of professor Hernandez: https://expertise.utep.edu/profiles/tzhernandez