United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement: Philip Vera Cruz, Unsung Hero United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement: Philip Vera Cruz, Unsung Hero PHOTO: EL MALCRIADO STAFF Photo: Jerry Whipple (center), regional director for UAW Region 6, presents a $100,000 check to the UFW executive board at a ceremony in Los Angeles in 1974. From left to right: Marshall Ganz, Eliseo Medina, Pete Velasco, Mack Lyons, Jerry Whipple, Richard Chavez, Cesar Chavez, Gil Padilla, Phillip Vera Cruz, Dolores Huerta. United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement: Philip Vera Cruz, Unsung Hero Workers For Justice Today 23 United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement: Philip Vera Cruz, Unsung Hero Kent Wong What I learned from Philip Vera Cruz first met Philip Vera Cruz when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the early 1970s. I remember thinking how out of place Philip looked on campus. He wore old Iwork clothes, a sweater vest, and a crumpled brown hat. His hair was gray and his face lined from the years he had worked in the fields of California under the relentless sun. Philip had come to UC Berkeley to speak before an Asian American Studies class. When he opened his mouth to speak, the students were in for a surprise. Despite the quiet demeanor usually associated with older Asian immi- grants, Philip spoke with great force and passion. Philip was a vice president of the United Farm Workers Union, the highest-ranking Filipino in the union. advancing justice-la.org 2 aasc.ucla.edu Untold Civil Rights Stories: Asian Americans Speak Out for Justice United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement: Philip Vera Cruz, Unsung Hero 24 Untold Civil Rights Stories “My life within the union, my life now outside the union, are all one: my continual struggle to improve my life and the lives of my fellow workers. But our struggle never stops.” lthough I was active with the United Farm my wife and I chose “Philip” as his middle name, in Workers, Philip had to teach me that it was honor of Philip Vera Cruz. And in 1994 when Philip the Filipino Americans who first organized passed away, I organized a memorial service in his Aa farmworkers union in the San Joaquin Valley. He hometown of Bakersfield, California, and presented proudly shared the story of how the Filipino Ameri- his eulogy. cans launched the historic Delano grape strike. He explained that the establishment of the United Farm The Delano Grape Strike Workers Union was a merger between two separate and the Role of Philip Vera Cruz unions, one representing Filipino American workers and the other with a primarily Mexican member- he Delano grape strike in California, which ship. began in 1965, led to the birth of the United Philip was a courageous union leader who dared Farm Workers Union (UFW). The strike es- Ttablished the reputation of Cesar Chavez nationally to speak up, organize, and challenge the arrogance of power. He was convinced that although the wealthy and worldwide. growers, politicians, and the courts opposed the But few people know that it was in fact Filipino union, the workers could prevail if they stood up and American workers, under the leadership of Philip organized. Vera Cruz and others, who on September 8, 1965, vot- Through the years as I became more involved ed to strike and therefore helped to begin this historic in the labor movement, I kept in touch with Philip, movement in American labor. The Filipino American and we became good friends. When I began travel- members voted to strike to oppose the growers’ threat ing across the country to organize the Asian Pacific to reduce wages. The Delano grape strike did not end American Labor Alliance (APALA), Philip was al- until the UFW finally won contracts with the growers ways there to give me advice and counsel. The forma- in 1970. tion of APALA was a dream-come-true for Philip. For With little formal education or training, Philip so long he had been discouraged because the contri- emerged as a leader of the United Farm Workers butions and potential of Asian American workers in Union, a leader in the Filipino American community, the labor movement had gone unrecognized. and as an Asian American labor pioneer. Philip saw In 1991 when I began work as director of the the farmworkers movement in a broad context as a UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, I struggle against racism, worker exploitation, and a helped to publish a book on Philip’s life written by system that is driven by profits. Craig Scharlin and Lilia Villanueva. In 1992 when I The story of Philip represents a chapter of U.S. was elected president of the Asian Pacific American labor history and Asian American history that has Labor Alliance, we honored Philip as an “Asian Pa- seldom been told. Philip’s story embodies the spirit cific American Labor Pioneer” at the founding con- of the manong, the first Filipino Americans, and the vention. When my second son was born in 1993, spirit of all workers struggling for liberation. advancing justice-la.org 3 aasc.ucla.edu Untold Civil Rights Stories: Asian Americans Speak Out for Justice United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement: Philip Vera Cruz, Unsung Hero Workers For Justice Today 25 How Filipino American Workers Reached America “When my mother asked me how exempt from the racially restric- the most physically demanding long I planned to stay away, I told tive immigration policies because jobs, with substandard pay and her three years. Well, I’ve been here the Philippines was a U.S. protec- working conditions. In addition in the U.S. over 50 years now and I torate, and Filipinos were clas- they were subjected to intense haven’t been back yet…” sified as U.S. nationals. By 1930 prejudice and discrimination. In –Philip Vera Cruz about one hundred thousand the 1930s, anti-Filipino riots per- Filipinos were living in Hawaii and petrated by white vigilantes were Philip’s life is part of the story the U.S. mainland. of the manong generation, the common throughout the state of first wave of Filipino immigrants 1930s In 1934 U.S Congress California. passed the Tydings McDuffie In- who came to the United States in Filipino Americans were also the 1920s and the 1930s to seek a dependence Act. This act granted subjected to antimiscegenation better life. Almost all were young, the Phillipines independence and laws that prohibited men from single men. They worked in the changed Filipinos’ status from fields, in the factories, and in low- U.S. nationals to aliens. As a result, marrying outside their ethnic wage service jobs. Filipinos were subject to the same group. Due to the much lower Asian exclusion acts previously number of Filipino women than 1920s The large influx of Fili- imposed on other Asian immi- men in the United States and the pino workers began in 1924, fol- grants. The Tydings McDuffie restrictions prohibiting future lowing the passage of a restrictive Act reduced the influx of Filipino immigration act that barred im- Filipino immigration, the manong immigrants from a steady flow to migration from China and Japan. generation was effectively pre- In the West Coast, the demand for a slow trickle. vented from marrying or raising low-wage laborers was filled by Life in America was harsh for families. Most lived their entire immigrant Filipinos. Filipinos were the manongs. They found work in lives as single men. His Times and Life An American Immigrant Farmworker hilip’s life, which spans almost the entire twen- hilip was born in the Philippines on Christmas tieth century, represents the untold story of Day of 1904. His family originated in the prov- American immigrant farmworkers from the ince of Ilocos Sur on the island of Luzon north P Pof Manila, the country’s capital. In 1926, he came to early 1900s through the 1990s. In reflecting upon life, Philip Vera Cruz once said: the United States. “I see life as a continuous progressive struggle Philip said, “When my mother asked me how long — a group of people struggle to survive. They get I planned to stay away, I told her three years. Well, I’ve older and they are gone. But the next ones will come been here in the U.S. over 50 years now and I haven’t together and solve some of their problems. They’ll been back yet… That’s the way it has been for most of 2 align themselves with others and make advances that us Filipino old-timers.” He spent the next fifty years the previous generation wasn’t able to accomplish... working in a wide variety of jobs, in a box factory in Seattle, as a busboy in Spokane, as a beet harvester in If more young people could just get involved in the North Dakota, and as a hotel worker in Minneapolis. important issues of social justice, they would form a But most of the time, he worked as a farm laborer in golden foundation for the struggle of all people to im- California’s San Joaquin Valley. prove their lives.”1 In August of 1942 during World War II, he was drafted and sent to San Luis Obispo, California, for basic training. Because he was in his late thirties, he 1. Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement, Craig Scharlin and Lilia was discharged and assigned to work on the farms in Villanueva, UCLA Labor Center and UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1992, p. 141. 2. Ibid., p. 17 advancing justice-la.org 4 aasc.ucla.edu Untold Civil Rights Stories: Asian Americans Speak Out for Justice United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement: Philip Vera Cruz, Unsung Hero 26 Untold Civil Rights Stories the San Joaquin Valley to assist the war effort with The toilet was an outhouse with the pit so filled-up it food production.