Filipino American Agricultural Workers in History

This twelfth day of Filipino American History Month brings information on a rich part of Filipino American history—agricultural workers.

In addition to Hawaii and Alaska, Filipino laborers were also recruited to work in the continental United States of America in the early 1900s. They had short term contracts. Their work was tough, requiring long hours and demanding physical activity. Fieldwork was back-breaking stoop labor, but they were tougher.

Life outside the fields was also difficult. Whether foreign- or native-born, Filipino Americans have been defined as non-white in the United States, defined as “other” than the majority in a way that is generally pejorative and frequently racist. The Filipino American confrontation with racism has a direct, painful, and constricting history: called ‘monkeys’ and ‘dogeaters,’ relegated to menial labor despite their qualifications, denied housing they could afford, refused professional credentials for which they qualified, forbidden to speak their language among themselves at work, and kept from enrolling in schools whose admissions requirements they met. These concepts are captured in Carlos Bulosan’s classic, America is in the Heart, where he wrote, “I came to know afterward that in many ways it was a crime to be a Filipino in California. I came to know that the public streets were not free to my people."

Missing among these freedoms was the freedom to start traditional families. Agricultural life was near absent for women. Many worked as cooks on plantations. The sex ratio in 1930 had been 14.4. males to one female. Angeles Monrayo kept a diary of her life as a young girl growing up in a strike camp in Hawai'i and later moved to central California. Through her writing, we see how Filipino families moved about and were stitched together in labor camps and other settings. It has now been published as Tomorrow’s Memoirs: A Diary, 1924–1928, where on Monday, March 5, 1928, she wrote, “Ninang, Hon, and I were hired today…Ninang and I cut spinach, we cut off the roots…We are paid 20 cents a crate. Today I finish 10 crates only, so I made $2.00 exactly…I am glad that I am working by the hour and that I made $2.00 today.”

These low wages and unfair conditions moved workers to organize laborers. These labor leaders included Pablo Manlapit (1891-1969), Chris Mensalvas (1909-1978), Philip Vera Cruz (1910-1994), Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956), and Larry Itliong (1942-1976).

One the most famous of these is Philip V. Vera Cruz, who came to the United States in 1926. Like many young persons traveling from the Philippines, Vera Cruz, dreamt of receiving a good education in the USA and becoming a lawyer. Others hoped to study religion, history, and literature. While a few did, many others had to set aside their plans to find work. Vera Cruz’s first job was as a laborer in a Washington state box factory. He moved to Chicago and Cincinnati where he worked in restaurants. The draft and army brought him to California and its agricultural industry. In 1948, he was an organizer in a key strike by Filipino asparagus workers. He continued to organize farm workers and was instrumental in the start of the United Farm Workers, serving as the highest-ranking Filipino American officer from 1971 to 1977.