Filipino Organizers Built the United Farm Workers (UFW)
Editorial———-This interview of Aqui Soriano, a long-time Filipina organizer, first appeared in the México Solidarity Bulletin on Substack. It is a very revealing interview of how the organizing and building of the UFW by Filipino workers was overshadowed by the cult of César Chavez and his National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The Filipinos were the first to organize into the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) under the leadership of Larry Itliong, Phillip Vera Cruz, Pete Velasco, and Al Rojas. AWOC was affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The Filipinos and AWOC were the first to go on strike in the grape vineyards in 1965 in Delano, California. LTI thanks the México Solidarity Project for making this interview and photographs availablle to us for sharing with our readers. Mabuhay Pinoy!
In solidarity,
Joseph F. Hancock, Editor (Member of the National Writers Union)
Abdel Honorio García, Assistant Editor & Treasurer
Dr. Frank Goldsmith, Associate Editor & International Editor
_________________________
INTRODUCTION
Cesar Chavez, the longtime leader of the United Farm Workers union, was good at having photos taken of himself that blurred the background. Now that his image is tarnished, unionists in the background are finally in the foreground, and the entire picture of the UFW is coming into focus.
Few know that Filipino farm workers organized into a labor union before the Mexicans. In 1962, Chavez was in the early stages of organizing a Mexican community organization. It was Larry Itliong, a Filipino labor organizer, who first proposed to Chavez and Dolores Huerta that they merge their nascent organization with the Filipino workers into one united union—a union able to strike the Delano grape vineyards with full force.
It was Itliong’s command of union strategy and tactics, based in the Philippines’ long history of radical unionism, that allowed them to strike where the producers were weakest. The strike woke the nation up finally to the terrible working conditions of the migrant laborers who were putting food on our tables.
Aqui Soriano, a long-time Filipina organizer, and Johnny, Larry Itliong’s son, are calling attention now to the long-neglected story of the critical role that Filipinos played in the UFW’s historic grape strike and boycott. For the Filipina community, knowing this history instills pride and commitment to continue in Itliong’s footsteps.
Their goal is not to replace Chavez’s image with Itliong as an alternate powerful leader image but to understand that there are no single heroes or saviors. When marginalized workers of color from different nationalities unite, they force white industrial unions to accept them into the labor family and force even the biggest companies to reckon with their power. When the background is unblurred, we see what made the UFW so glorious.
INTERVIEW WITH Aqui Soriano
When did people from the Philippines start coming to the US? Did they work alongside Mexicans?
During the Spanish colonial era long before the US was founded, Spain conscripted Filipinos as slaves to be sold in Latin America. It transported them along the Manila-Acapulco trade route, with some slaves escaping off the boats and settling in the US South. The next wave occurred in the 1800s after the US had acquired the Philippines. Filipinos were recruited to work on US farms, and many voluntarily took that “opportunity.” My grandfather was one of those.Mexicans were indigenous to the west coast and also continued to work on US farms. But while Mexicans and Filipinos often worked on the same farms, the owners purposely kept them separated. They lived in different camps and were put on different work shifts, and the work itself was often segregated—one nationality picked while another packed.
Mexicans had families, but the Filipinos were single men, and due to laws that made intermarriage between races a crime, their communities were very tight-knit; all the men had was each other. This was a plus when it came to labor organizing.
Filipino and Mexican farmworkers first organized separately. What was Filipino organizer Larry Itliong’s story?
Larry arrived in the US while still a teenager, and he went to work in the Alaskan salmon canneries. He saw the unequal conditions of the white and the Filipino workers—the whites got steak! So he organized the Filipinos to demand equal treatment. The bosses offered Larry steak if he’d stop organizing. His answer was NO!
After the war, he traveled down to the California fields and became a recruiter of Filipino farmworkers. Recruiters like Larry, unlike Mexican farm labor recruiters today, didn’t exploit the people they recruited or side with the bosses. They did the opposite. Because the same workers traveled up and down the coast following seasonal crops from grapes to peaches to apples, the men often knew each other. The recruiters spoke up for the workers and helped push up working standards. But that wasn’t enough for Larry. He and Philip Vera Cruz and Pete Velasco started organizing strikes in order to get access to water and bathrooms, protection from heat and especially for better pay. From a recruiter, Larry became a straight-up union organizer. From strikes came unionization; the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, or AWOC, was born.
Beginning in 1903, back in the Philippines, a strong union movement had emerged and grown. So Filipinos understood how to organize, run unions democratically, and develop detailed strategies to confront the bosses. When AWOC began their grape strike, they planned it for peak season. They cut the ripe grapes—and left them on the ground as they walked off the job. They knew that if the farms didn’t settle, they stood to lose a season of profit.
How did the two organizations merge into one United Farm Workers union?
Larry wanted to bring all farmworkers together. He reached out to Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to join the launch of their grape strike in Delano. But the Mexicans were not ready. They said, “Maybe in two years.” The Mexican UFW was in the early stages of formation—a community organization, not a union. But when 800 Filipino workers walked out and were attacked by goons, the Mexican farmworkers took notice—and voted to join AWOC’s strike, leading to the historic merger between AWOC and the UFW and becoming the United Farm Workers union.
Larry and Cesar had complementary skills. The Filipinos knew how to run a union and maintain support; for example, they knew how important it was to feed families while their breadwinners were on strike. It was 1962, and Cesar knew how to link the farmworker struggle to the Civil Rights movement and gain broad support from the US public.
Larry Itliong and the Filipinos have been largely erased from UFW history; why?
Cesar Chavez, as has now come to light, turned the UFW into a cult of personality where he ruled with intimidation and misogyny, isolating and pushing out any who opposed him. It wasn’t just the Filipinos; he also didn’t allow other Mexican leaders to be recognized. For example, Al Rojas was an original UFW organizer. His daughter Desiree told me how his whole family sacrificed for the cause. During the grape boycott, his wife and daughters were sent to Chicago with $15 in their pocket to build support. They did it. But we know nothing about them. In the UFW, the first executive committee was composed of four Filipinos and three Mexicans, but Cesar was the president. He was good at media, and over time, the UFW became equated with Cesar Chavez; if you criticized Cesar, you were criticizing the UFW.
Cesar began to cut Larry Itliong out of his decision-making circle, so he quit the UFW. When Cesar accepted an award from the Filipino dictator Fernando Marcos, that did it for Philip Veracruz! He quit too. Unions in the Philippines had always fought not just for worker rights, but against colonialism and imperialism and for democracy.
Did the unity between Filipino and Mexican workers fall apart?
Filipinos and Mexicans share a Spanish colonial culture, including Catholic traditions, family structures and more; this made it easy for them to relate to each other. The older Filipinos had to learn Spanish in school.But the Filipino farmworkers active in AWOC and the UFW, or manongs were single men, and they got old and died. Fewer Filipino migrants came to work on farms. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act gave preference to those with professional skills, which led to an influx of nurses and accountants. New Filipino communities were no longer rural, and there were fewer opportunities for the two communities to meet.
Are there new opportunities to build solidarity between the Filipino and Mexican communities?
Here in California, there is a domestic workers’ coalition with the majority being either Filipino or Latinx—mostly Mexican. Today, that’s the sector where we can organize together and where the history of joint action continues.
For both peoples, we need to learn the stories of leaders like Larry Itliong and Al Rojas. More and more, I think that the true telling of history is so important, especially of the UFW. For my community, it’s knowing the true legacy of Filipino farmworkers—not just the amazing victories, but the brilliance of how they did it. They had practical skills in uniting workers from different backgrounds, figuring out how to exert the most leverage on the growers, building women’s leadership and winning supporters across the US.
Filipinos and Mexicans today have so much rich history to inspire us and make us proud of who we are!
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