The Ballad of Felipe Escobar

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It don’t pay to be poor, when life is cheap,
When life is this cheap, it don’t pay
They don’t read your rights ???
And you don’t make the headlines, just one more bloody day

Oh my name is Felipe Orlando Escobar,
Honduran by birth of 23 years
I tread this land softly for the owner he knows me
And he swears he will kill me like my brother before me
So my mother begged me to run to go to South Arizona
To work with the others on the lawns of a land of LA
But I wouldn’t have family and I wouldn’t have papers
I’d be pleased if they found me and sent me away
So we moved the whole family across to O???
Hoping the landlord wouldn’t find where we’d gone
And I work where I can now though this time I stay silent
While they treat us like oxen and pay us like children

But this night of the 18th September 87
The village don’t move when the drunks haven’t sung
There’s something to silence and I remember my brother
Closing my eyes but the sleep never comes
Oh, was it 7 am when I opened the door?
Was it 7 am the order to fire?
There was some in their uniform, some dressed as peasants
Thirty soldiers had waited a night for this hour
And I was shot in the back and I fell back in the house
The children they screamed and my mother she helped me
But they broke down the door and the tear gas exploded
And they dragged me outside

It don’t pay to be poor when life is this cheap
When life is this cheap it don’t pay
They don’t read you your rights ???
And you don’t make the headlines, just one more bloody day
So thank you in Washington and thank you in London
Yeah thanks for this democracy you befriend and you pay
Enjoy the coffee and the fruit picked by Felipe Escobar
Here’s hoping it brightens another fine day

[These are incomplete, unofficial lyrics and may differ from the artist’s official version.]

The Ballad of Felipe Escobar Appears On