It is Filipino American Month and here is the essay that inspired Delano Manongs — Forgotten heroes of the United Farm Workers.” It was published in Filipinas Magazine in 2005. It won first prize in ethnic journalism.
Like tens of thousands of their fellow compatriots of the 1920s and 30s, they crossed the Pacific filled with dreams of adventure, better-paying jobs, access to higher education, and personal and social advancement. What most found on their arrival in America were economic oppression, brutal working conditions, and racial exclusion.
Hardened and humbled but not humiliated by their experiences, they became a generation of labor organizers and women very conscious of their status as “unskilled” workers and immigrants at the bottom of American society. In response, they published newspapers, wrote books, and led strikes. They were radicalized by the repressive actions taken against them by both business and government.
During the 1920s, the Filipinos in Hawaii, led by Pablo Manlapit, learned how to organize labor unions, stage work slowdowns, and hold strikes. After the bloody labor strikes of 1924, many fled from blocklisting and government and goon violence and headed to the mainland, bringing leadership experience and skills with them. They quickly formed unions to defend themselves when confronted by the oppressive labor conditions.
Bulosan wrote, “In many ways, it was a crime to be a Filipino in California” because both the growers and the racially prejudiced American Federation of Labor (AFL) were alarmed by their militant stance when they threatened farmers with strikes to earn a “living wage.”
In the 1920s, Pablo Manlapit led Filipinos in strikes to better their working conditions. In the 1930s, Filipino leaders Rufo Canete, D. L. Marcuelo, Tomas Lascetonia, Johnny Estigoy, Nick Losada, and Alfonso Castillo created the Filipino Labor Union (FLU). They successfully fought for a minimum wage of 35 cents an hour, an eight-hour workday, the elimination of labor contractors, and the end to racial hierarchy in the assignment of farm jobs. 1938, the Filipino Agricultural Laborers Association (FALA) was founded, opening its membership to Mexicans and other ethnic groups. It was later renamed the Federated Agricultural Laborers Association (FALA) and fought for higher wages and better working conditions.
In 1959, labor leaders Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, and Pete Velasco joined with the AFL-CIO to create the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). Larry Itliong was the vice president of AWOC. Itliong, Vera Cruz, and Velasco led a strike in September 1965, when grapes were ready to be harvested, to raise their pay to $1.40 an hour and 25 cents for each box of grapes picked. They also hoped to force the growers to recognize their union. On September 16, 1965, at the Filipino Hall on the West Side of Delano, Cesar Chavez held a meeting where the Mexican laborers decided to join the Filipino workers in the strike. Filipino Americans have a proud history of fighting for the rights of farm laborers. Here is a list of a few of those Filipino leaders.
Pablo Manlapit was a labor organizer and lawyer who helped fight for better pay and better working conditions for Filipino plantation workers in Hawaii. In 1920, Manlapit led a strike of Japanese and Filipino plantation workers in Oahu to raise wages and get breaks in their work days. In 1924, Pablo Manlapit was convicted of perjury in the Hanepepe Massacre in Kauai on September 9, 1924, though Manlapit was not at the scene. He continued labor organizing in California and Hawaii until his permanent expulsion from Hawaii and deportation to the Philippines in 1935.
Rufo Canete was a labor organizer in the 1930s. In 1933, Rufo Canete and other Filipino labor leaders met in Salinas and formed the Filipino Labor Union (FLU). The FLU organized farm workers of all nationalities to fight for an increased minimum wage (to 35 cents per hour), an eight-hour day, employment without racial discrimination, recognition of the union as a bargaining agent, and the abolition of labor contractors. On March 19, 1934, they led the Salinas Lettuce Strike, which completely shut down the lucrative industry, and the union’s demands were soon granted.
D. L. Marcuelo was a businessman and attorney who helped found the Filipino Labor Union in 1933 and the Filipino-American newspaper Three Stars in 1928. As a co-editor, Marcuelo pointed out the problems of imperialist exploitation of natural resources and cheap labor. Marcuelo criticized discrimination and violence against Filipinos in California, especially a riot in Watsonville, California, in 1930, where 500 white youths attacked Filipinos for dancing with white women at a dance house.
Larry Itliong was a farm worker and labor organizer who organized cannery and agricultural unions in Alaska, Washington, and California from the late 1930s to the 1960s. In Alaska, he helped found the Alaska Cannery Workers Union. In 1948, Itliong (along with Rudy Delvo, Chris Mensalvas, Philip Vera Cruz, and Ernesto Mangaoang) became involved in the 1948 asparagus strike in Stockton, California, which was the first significant agriculture strike after World War II—utilizing served as a steward and a vice president of the Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 37 in Seattle in the early 1950s. In 1956, Itliong founded the Filipino Farm Labor Union in Stockton.
In 1965, Larry Itliong led the AFL-CIO Union Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, which voted to strike against the Coachella Valley Grape Growers and the Delano growers. During the strike in Delano, Larry Itliong’s group joined Cesar Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association in the strike and eventually formed the United Farm Workers.
Philip Vera Cruz was a labor activist who helped Larry Itliong found the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. Vera Cruz was briefly in the International Workers of the World as a young man. In the 1950s, he was a member of the National Farm Labor Union, an AFL-CIO group that worked to improve conditions for farm workers. Philip Vera Cruz was one of the leaders of the 1965 Delano Grape Strike and served as the second vice president of the United Farm Workers Union.
Andy Imutan was in charge of the Stockton and Delano, California chapters of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). In 1965, Imutan was part of the Coachella and Delano strikes that eventually led to the formation of the United Farm Workers. During the grape strike, Imutan, Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, and the strike leaders insisted that strikers from different races walk the same picket lines and share the same union hall and strike kitchen. Andy Imutan was the first vice president of the United Farm Workers, leading the grape boycott in Baltimore and other East Coast cities. In 1974, Imutan helped to found the Paulo Agbayani Village, a 58-unit adobe-brick retirement home for elderly and displaced Filipino-American farm workers.
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