Philip Vera Cruz

A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement

Craig Scharlin,Lilia Villanueva

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780295802954
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi asiatico-americani

Filipino farmworkers sat down in the grape fields of Delano, California, in 1965 and began the strike that brought about a dramatic turn in the long history of farm labor struggles in California. Their efforts led to the creation of the United Farm Workers union under Cesar Chavez, with Philip Vera Cruz as its vice-president and highest-ranking Filipino officer. Philip Vera Cruz (1904–1994) embodied the experiences of the manong generation, an enormous wave of Filipino immigrants who came to the United States between 1910 and 1930. Instead of better opportunities, they found racial discrimination, deplorable living conditions, and oppressive labor practices. In his deeply reflective and thought-provoking oral memoir, Vera Cruz explores the toll these conditions took on both families and individuals. Craig Scharlin and Lilia V. Villanueva met Philip Vera Cruz in 1974 as volunteers in the construction of Agbayani Village, the United Farm Workers retirement complex in Delano, California. This oral history, first published in 1992, is the product of hundreds of hours of interviews. Elaine H. Kim teaches Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context.

“So close to the good life”

When I think of all my experiences in the U.S. since I landed in Washington in 1926, I can't help but think that all of my adult life I've been involved in labor issues. Like most of my compatriots who came on the same boat with me, and even those who came ten or twenty years before us, I've worked in all sorts of jobs that took me across the country.

I came to America on my own and not as a recruited worker as many Filipino men at the time. I came because I had heard good things about the country, especially from the American teachers I had in high school in the provinces. The idea of going to America actually came to me while I was a high school student in Lingayen. I had a German-American teacher who was from Montana—Ida Martner was her name—a very nice lady who talked a lot about the opportunities for young people in the U.S. When I told her I thought all Americans were rich, she told me that wasn't true; that there were many poor students in the U.S. who worked their way through school. But anyone who was willing to work hard could make it in America. That really sounded good to me. Of course she didn't talk about racism in America but then, maybe because she came from Montana, she wasn't as aware of the racial problem since Montana was a sparsely populated state then. I'd go home from her class pretty excited about the idea of going to America. When I told my mother about my idea she said, “But you don't know anybody there.” I told her that the Americans were good people and she replied, “Yes, but they don't know you.” In the Philippines, you see, when you moved you always moved to a place where you knew someone. So my mother couldn't understand that anyone would want to go to a place without friends or relatives living there. I didn't understand this myself back then, but this didn't stop me from dreaming about going to America anyway. Little did my mother or I know that I was to meet a lot of cousins and relatives when I reached the mainland U.S.

In the early 1920s, people back home were always talking about going to America, to Hawaii in particular. So there was this general excitement. I guess it's not so different for Filipinos in the Philippines today. Many still dream of coming to the U.S. But, back then, America was the “land of opportunity,” no doubt about it. We heard friends tell stories from letters they received from relatives in the U.S. telling them how much they were earning, and photographs of these people abroad were always passed around. When I was in grade school, my aunt Leona talked about the letters she got from her stepson, Fabian Romero, who was in California then. I remember one success story in particular because it was about a guy who had the same name as my future sister-in-law, Gorospe. He returned to the Philippines after living in America for several years. He returned with an American accent and got a job as a supervising teacher right away Later on I heard he was working in Manila and was getting paid four pesos a day. At that time a policeman got 12 pesos a month, which was considered a good wage. But this guy was making four pesos a day! Hell, I didn't even know what he was doing but I was impressed. Then we heard he even bought a big house for his family.

It was success stories like these, plus the impression made upon us by American teachers, that inspired many young Filipino men to go to America. All the stories we heard were only success stories. So my plan was to finish college in America, get a good job over there, save my money, and then return home and support my family. It was only after I finally got to America that I understood how different reality was for us Filipinos living here from the stories we heard back home. As it turned out, it wasn't as simple as I thought. I worked, went to school when I could, then dropped out of school completely before getting a college degree because I had to work full-time to make ends meet. And that's the way it continued for me ever since.

I planned to go to America with Pedro de la Cruz who was a second cousin of my father. He lived in Lapog and I was then living in Asingan, far to the south. It's funny because we never discussed when or where we would meet. He just said when he was ready to leave he'd come to Asingan and get me. So I dropped out of high school on my third year and just waited for Pedro. I knew if I stayed in high school any longer I wouldn't have enough money left to pay for the passage. Several weeks passed and I waited and wondered if Pedro would come or not. Then one night I heard my name being called outside the house. I looked out the window and saw Pedro. He finally arrived and the next day we visited some relatives in a nearby barrio where we were told there were two other young men who were also planning to go to America. We got acquainted with them and someone said, “If you're going and we re also going, why don't we all go together?” Just like that, four of us made our plans—Pedro and me, Gervacio Gorospe, the youngest among us, and Felipe Argel, the oldest. Many years later I heard that Gervacio had died in Tacoma, Washington. The story I heard was that he met and fell in love with a white girl. But it didn't work out between them and he killed himself.

A few days after the four of us got together for the first time, we met again in Asingan and from there we took the bus to Dagupan and then caught the train to Manila. In Asingan I said goodbye to my family. They knew I was leaving. My mother had been crying for over a week already. She really touched me, I loved her very much. But the pull to go away was much stronger. She was really crying that day when we left. My father, who never cried before, was crying too. That was the first and last time I saw him cry. I never could have imagined it then but that would also be the last time I was ever to see them all again. I don't cry much just like my father, but there are certain things that touch me, and that day I was also crying. It's something I don't think about often but that day, leaving my family, it's the only thing that still makes me cry. The whole family watched as we got on the bus as it stopped to pick us up on the road close to our house. It was hard because it was I who was leaving.

When we got to Manila we stayed in the apartment of Felipe's girlfriend, Rita. She lived there with her brother. This was the first time for all of us to be in Manila, our first big city so we were eager to look around. We walked and walked until we came to a very wide street. It was a two-way road and the traffic was very heavy. We wanted to cross but were afraid because of the cars. So we just kept walking against the traffic. We saw a policeman in the middle of the street directing traffic but we were so green we didn't know what he was doing. We decided to get close to him because we knew the drivers would not hit a policeman. But suddenly, all the cars stopped when the policeman made a motion with his arms and hands. We were all so relieved when the cars stopped and hurried across the street. We were just country folks in a big city for the first time.

In Rita's apartment we were given instructions on how to use a flush toilet. We had never seen one before, you see. They told us not to use anything that will plug up the toilet, but since they didn't have toilet paper, they just used newspapers, and the newspapers clogged-up the toilet anyway. Newspapers always seemed to be a source of problems. When I was quite young and living with my grandmother, our toilet was outside. Actually, there was no real toilet; we just went outside, and since we had no toilet paper, we just used newspaper. You should have seen how messy it was when the paper got blown around and across the field by the wind.

I was shocked to find how dirty Manila was, especially the marketplace. In the small towns I came from, although people were poor, their places were basically clean. People weren't so overcrowded and they took care to clean up around them.

We met a guy in Manila whom Pedro knew and who was going to help us get our passport and tickets for the ship. He was a young, good-looking fellow. I remember that he looked very decent and was soft-spoken. He took us to the places where we got our passports and physical examinations. It took several days before we finished signing all the papers needed for travelling and to complete the physical examination. Finally, we bought the passage for the ship and then this travel agent said to us, “Well, do you have some money to change into dollars so you'll have something to spend in America? You can't spend pesos over there, you know.” My companions said, “Yeah, we got some money.” But I said, “No, I got no money to change.” I really had a few pesos, but for some reason, I didn't want to change them into dollars yet. So the others gave their pesos to that guy to have him change them into dollars. He said he'd meet us at the pier where our ship was docked. Well, you know that damn guy never showed-up! I don't know to this day why I didn't give him my money.

It was an especially hot day when we left Rita's apartment to go to the pier. It was April 25, 1926. I remember we had to wait at the pier for several hours before we showed our passports and were allowed to board the ship. The pier was full of relatives saying goodbye to sons and nephews and husbands. None in our group had any relatives there. Rita and her brother were the only ones who came to see us off. When our ship, the Empress of Asia, started to move it was already in the afternoon. We went outside on the deck. It was very difficult for me emotionally. As the boat moved out, the Hawaiian farewell song was played over the loud speakers. They shouldn't have played that shit. It was hard enough just leaving everything and everyone you knew. The ship was pulling me away but my feelings were holding me back, telling me to stay. I felt I was being torn in two. I stood on the deck and watched the pier disappear. I stood there until I couldn't see anymore where I came from. But suddenly I recognized the shoreline of Ilocos Sur, my province. I saw the beach of Lapog and the memories flooded back. I remembered that when I was a kid standing on the beach I used to see steamships way out on the horizon going north, but I didn't know their destination. Now I was aboard the same kind of steamship and for the first time I knew the destination. It was hard for me to believe that I was actually on one of those ships and it was me passing by on that steamship. I stayed up on the deck longer than my companions. I wasn't afraid; just a little lonely. I looked forward to going to America to study. That was my plan for years. I kept reminding myself of my goal for going to America: to study, get a job, and save money, and return to help my family. I repeated this thought to myself as we sailed across the Pacific, packed in the tight quarters of the steerage section with a lot of other young men like me. How could I have known then that I would never again see my country, that I had already seen my family, my mother and father especially, for the last time?

I was so naive during that trip across the Pacific. Everything was new and I didn't understand everything that was happening or what I saw. I remember this Chinese who came down to the steerage section several times a day carrying food to sell which came from the ship's kitchen. He would carry the food basket on his head or on his shoulder. As he came by some Filipinos would get on the top bunk, pick food out of the basket without him noticing, and get their food for free. When the Chinese looked in his basket, it would almost be empty. He looked around but nobody moved, and everyone tried to look innocent. It wasn't right what those guys were doing, and being a Filipino, I felt a bit guilty about their behavior. It was years later when I remembered this incident, realizing that the Filipinos in the U.S. played the same role as that Chinese on the ship—one was taken advantage of and cheated by other people. Now how would a Filipino feel being in the same shoes as the Chinese on our ship? Well, pretty soon the Chinese learned their trick and became very careful. Too many Filipinos haven't learned their lessons of survival as well and as quickly as that Chinese.

The trip took almost one month, and since there was nothing much to do on the ship, many of my fellow Filipinos gambled like hell. Back home Filipinos like to gamble—cockfights, cards and dama (Filipino checkers)—and on the ship they learned a new Chinese game played with buttons called sikoy-sikoy. There was an incident where two Filipinos almost killed each other on that ship because of gambling. They had their knives ready but luckily the crowd separated them before anything happened.

I will never forget the sight of sailing into Hong Kong at night. It was so different from anything I had ever seen before. The electric lights were on and from out there at sea, the city looked beautiful. Seeing the mountains and all the houses that were built right on the sides of the mountains, I was very impressed. The next morning, we went ashore to look around. Right away I noticed the policemen. They were Hindus. They were much bigger than the Chinese, and they carried a big whip. We were just standing around this kiosk and there were lots of Chinese, and out of nowhere, came this goddamn policeman and that son-of-a-bitch just started lashing people with his whip. We just stayed there and watched, so scared we couldn't even move, and wondering if he was going to do the same thing to us. Well, he didn't whip us, just the Chinese, and he told them to get out. That's the first time I had ever seen people being whipped, and I thought to myself that they were treated just like dogs. Before we got back on the ship, I noticed a rickshaw and I said to Pedro, “Look, the one who is pulling is not an animal but a man!”

As our ship left Hong Kong, poor Chinese in sampans came up next to our ship and begged for us to throw them food or money. If the people on the boat threw food that fell in the water, the man on the sampan would just scoop it right out of the water and keep it. Some people on the boat were cruel and threw things that couldn't be eaten, some dirty things. The children on the sampan were tied so they wouldn't fall in the water. I had heard before we left the Philippines about the poor people in Hong Kong, but I didn't expect them to be so desperate and to be treated like dogs. At least poor Filipinos did not suffer like that. Back home, I knew some people who worked as servants in the big towns. They ate, not always the very best food, but at least they ate. Compared to the poor in Hong Kong, the poor in the Philippines seemed to be much better off. The sight of those poor Chinese was also a contrast to my image of the Chinese people because in the Philippines all the Chinese were the merchants and were fairly well-off if not very rich. It had never occurred to me that Chinese everywhere were anything but well-off. Seeing the poverty in China made a lasting impression on me. I couldn't help but ask myself, “Why were some people so poor and some so rich?” Back then I really had no understanding of these things. I thought the reason was simply because some were smart, used their heads, and made money, and others weren't so smart.

We stopped briefly in Shanghai and there I had an even more first hand run-in with poverty. In Shanghai the poor Chinese roamed around in gangs and really tried to take advantage of the innocent. We were just standing around the pier for a while and these rough Chinese guys, young and all of them husky, came toward us. We saw them go up to others and stick their hands right into their pockets, just like that. When we saw this we hurried back to the ship, but they ran after us and tried to grab us. This time I was happy to see a policeman nearby who saw what was happening and came and tore those guys loose from us. Of course then I had no understanding of how poverty and exploitation can affect a persons life, how it can make them rough and commit crimes, or meek, and act like dogs just to survive.

Although we stopped in Tokyo, it was only for a couple of hours so I really didn't get any impressions of that city then. Actually, all I remember is that when we were leaving Tokyo, I was giving some guy a haircut on the ship.

It wasn't until just before we reached Vancouver that I discovered that the ship had a first-class section and that there was dancing up there. At first when we wanted to investigate, we were only allowed to look through some windows. But then, later on, we were allowed to go up and look closer. It was so amazing, right there on the same boat, people dancing in a ballroom. And all the time we had been on that ship, living and sleeping in the steerage section, and even eating our three meals a day in the steerage dining room, we hadn't known that this dancing was going on right above us. It was so nice, the dancers, their nice clothes, in the first-class section, but of course there were only white people. I wondered if that was the way life was going to be like for me in America. I had no idea then how truthful that scene really was to be for me and what as a Filipino I could expect out of life in the U.S.—so close to the good life but always just watching and not being able to really participate.

It was springtime when our ship docked in Vancouver, Canada. We took a ferry to Seattle on May 17, 1926. When we saw Seattle from the ship, we were all very excited to see the tall buildings all around. It was more impressive than Vancouver and picturesque like Hong Kong. It wasn't until we were getting off that I learned there were about three hundred of us Filipinos on the same ship. When we finally got off the ship, we had to look for our own suitcases. After our passports and baggages were inspected, we finally stepped outside the terminal.

There were a lot of Filipinos there, waiting and meeting relatives and friends who were on our boat. But the four of us had nobody to meet us. We didn't know what to do next. Back on the ship others were always asking, “Where are you going?” Some would say, “I'm going to Detroit,” or “I'm going to Chicago,” or “I'm going down to California.” Some were on their way to New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. I asked myself, “Where the hell am I going?” I had never really thought about it. I just thought I was going to America. I was just so excited about going to America that I never stopped to think that America, like the Philippines, had lots of cities. I didn't even really have any idea just how big America was. I had seen maps of it but I had never compared its size to that of the Philippines. So I went down to look at my papers and discovered that I was going to Seattle, Washington. But of course that was just our port of entry. After Seattle I had no plans.

We listened to people talk about what they were doing and where they were going from there. We asked each other, “Where do we go now?” But we didn't know. Just then I saw a Pinoy (Filipino guy) walk over to the phone booth right next to me and I heard him ask about vacancies in such and such hotels. I didn't exactly understand what he was doing because that was the first time I heard about getting a room in a hotel. I had never been in that kind of a situation before, you see. So I went over and asked him, “What about us? Is there any place for us, too?” But he answered, “No, it's full but why don't you call this other place, the Diamond Hotel.” So I called up the Diamond Hotel and they said, “Yes, we got some vacancies.” That was the first time I ever used a telephone. There was one telephone in my home town in Asingan, but I never used it, and when you called over there, all the goddamn stations in towns the wires went through would also ring. In the Philippines only a few people knew how to use the telephone in those days.

We stopped a cab and told the driver we wanted to go to the Diamond Hotel. “There it is,” he said when we got there. We paid him, got out, and looked around for the place but couldn't find it because there was no obvious sign, so we just stood on the sidewalk clutching our suitcases and waited for someone to come by so we could ask where the hotel was. But nobody came. It was dark already and we just didn't notice the sign which was high above us from the street. Finally, Gervacio whispered, “Bayaw (friend), maybe we go up those stairs.” So Gervacio and I went inside and tiptoed up the stairs. But it was hard to see anything because the stairway changed direction, and you couldn't see the top from the bottom. We kept climbing the steps cautiously until we heard people talking. When we got to the top we saw an office and some people standing around. “Who are they?” I asked. “Go and find out,” said Gervacio, pushing me to go in.

A girl was behind the desk talking to some people. We went back downstairs to tell our other companions. “There are people up there,” I told them. So we all went upstairs carrying our rattan suitcases. We watched and listened carefully to what the other people were talking about with the girl. She was busy, anyway, so we just stood there and listened, looking like puppy dogs. We got closer to the conversation between the girl and a man and realized what was going on—they were talking about rooms. So when she asked us, I said right away, “We need rooms.” I was the spokesperson, you see. The girl, a Japanese-American, asked, “How many are you?” I said, “Four.” She said, “I cannot give you a room for four people but I can give you rooms for two. So who's going to stay together?” But I said, “No, we all stay together.” On the ship and even back in the Philippines we agreed we would never be separated. We all felt that way and especially once we were in America and so far away from home. We were sure we needed some protection. We were so naive. It was not a thought-out plan, more of an instinct. We were in a strange country, we didn't know anyone, so we felt we had to stick together. The girl explained that the rooms were on the same floor. After some discussion, I finally decided to room with Pedro, and Felipe with Gervacio. “How far apart are the rooms?” we asked, and the girl said, “Next door to each other. That one and the one next to it. You'll be pretty close.” So we took the rooms.

It was cold and I still felt a little seasick. We had not eaten all night and I felt dizzy when I got to the room and I just wanted to go to bed and sleep. Pedro opened his suitcase, took his blanket out, and covered himself. I took my blanket out, too, covered myself, and fell asleep.

In the morning, we discovered we didn't need the blankets because there were blankets already on the bed. I had never slept on a mattress bed before and I liked it although I didn't notice that it was different that first night because I was so tired. After we got up we went to the bathroom down the hall but we didn't bother putting our pants on and we didn't have bathrobes either. We went in with only our shorts on and there were other Pinoys there, too. One of them came up to me and said in a very friendly way, “Where are you from? When d...