In the late 1960s, the grape gained national attention – and not in a good way.
Newly organized farm workers, led by Mexican-American civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, called on Americans to boycott popular fruit from California because of the derisory wages and poor working conditions that farm workers were forced to endure. Using nonviolent tactics like marches and hunger strikes, the grape pickers have made their plight part of the national conversation on civil rights.
It took time, but their efforts paid off: in 1970, after five years of the so-called Delano Grape Strike, farm workers were awarded a contract promising better wages and benefits. A few years later, their efforts led to the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which established collective bargaining power for agricultural workers statewide.
But while Chavez was honored with a national monument, postage stamp and three public holidays, he was not the only catalyst for change. Or even the main one. Rather, it was Larry Itliong, a Filipino-American organizer, who led a group of Filipino-American grape workers to the first strike in September 1965.
“The Filipinos were much more radical” than the Mexican-American farm workers, says Matt Garcia, professor of history at Dartmouth College and author of From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers’ Movement. “They were focused like a laser and decided they were going to force the problem.”
Who launched the Delano grape strike?
Farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley in central California largely belonged to two groups: Mexican-Americans and Filipino-Americans. But while doing the same jobs in the same fields, they had entered California’s agriculture industry through very different routes.
The first major wave of Filipino migration to the United States occurred between the two world wars. According to the book Little Manila is in the heart by Dawn Mabalon, over 31,000 Filipinos came to California between 1920 and 1929, many in search of agricultural work. Most came from rural areas of the Philippines, having sold farm animals, crops and small plots of land in order to finance the more than 7,000 mile journey across the Pacific.
As a group, they were over 90% male. And because anti-miscegenation laws banned interracial marriage in California, many Filipino men living in the United States remained single. These laws were eventually changed in 1948, but on the eve of the Delano Grape Strike, many of this wave of Filipino-American immigrants (often referred to as “Manongs”, which translates to “elder brothers”) did had failed to get married. They were in their fifties and sixties, still single and living together in communal farm barracks.
Roger Gadiano, a 72-year-old Filipino American who grew up in Delano in the 1960s, says he was one of the city’s only “purebred” Filipino children.
“There were less than a dozen,” Gadiano says. “I knew them all.
With so many single male workers geographically unattached to homes and families, Filipino migrant workers have been able to traverse a wide swath of land each year, moving from season to season from Alaskan salmon canneries to Washington apple orchards on the way. by the California grape crops.
Their constant movement, Garcia says, has given Filipinos the chance to see their work in different contexts and to testify more to the power of organized labor than their comparatively less mobile Mexican counterparts.
“They saw the opportunity to extricate themselves from oppression in the workplace,” Garcia says. “They saw different paths.” In contrast, Garcia said, the most entrenched Mexican-American farm workers were “beaten and struggling against the structures of oppression into which they were born.”
Julio Hernandez (left), Larry Itliong (center) and Ceasar Chavez (right) at the Huelga Day March in San Francisco, 1966.
Gerald L French / Corbis / Getty Images
And as the Filipino population got older, they were also less patient – they needed a raise, pension benefits and health care right away. “When there was a strike, the Manong willingly accepted,” Gadiano says. “When you’ve been living in a room for about 20 years and you don’t see much in the future, a little raise and some perks would help… The Manong mentality is: everything is better than what we have now. “
And they had a visionary leader in Larry Itliong. In the 1930s and 1940s he helped organize a canning workers union in Alaska, led lettuce strikes in Salinas, Calif., And organized asparagus strikes in Stockton.
In September 1965, he started the movement in the vineyards of Delano.
From the documentary Delano ManongsCesar Chavez was surprised by the strike of September 1965. Itliong asked Chavez – who led a group of Mexican-American farm workers – to direct his workers into the strike as well. Chavez hesitated, telling Itliong that it took him another two to three years to organize before his farm workers could go on strike. Itliong retaliated by telling Chavez that if Mexican-American farm workers break the strike organized by the Philippines, Filipino American farm workers will deliver the same to Mexican Americans later in retaliation.
Chavez conceded, the two groups joined forces and the strike began.
What led to the Delano grape strike?
According to Garcia, the Delano strike was inspired by the success of a similar strike by Filipino-American farm workers – in May 1965, in the Coachella Valley. There, a group of Filipino-American migrant workers led by Itliong demanded a raise of $ 0.15 / hour.
The strike lasted for a week. Producers have met the conditions of demand. “It was the first flush of success,” Garcia says.
Pickets gather at the edge of a grape field urging workers to join the strike. The word “Huelga” in Spanish means strike.
Bettmann Archives / Getty Images
Just three months later, many of the same Filipino American farm workers traveled to Delano, Calif., For the fall harvest. Encouraged by their success at Coachella, they hit it again. But according to Gadiano, once the Delano grape strike began, the situation in the camps turned grim. “It was a grim situation,” he says. “Some of the camps were closing. They [the growers] beat them very hard, turning off the water.
Both sides threatened violence. Gadiano says that when a cousin tried to cross the picket line and work in the fields, striking workers threw stones at him. “It was really ugly,” Gadiano says.
What did the workers gain from the strike and the boycott?
The Delano grape strike finally succeeded. After five long years, the growers signed a contract that made significant concessions to farm workers, including a pay rise, health care benefits, and pesticide safety protections. But many of the benefits have gone disproportionately to Mexican-American workers. Hiring rooms – created through collective bargaining – disproportionately favored permanent residents (i.e. Mexicans) over seasonal workers (i.e. Filipinos).
Fed up with the union leadership, Itliong resigned from the UFW in 1971.
“In the end, Larry probably should have been president” of the union, Garcia said.
“There is pain,” says Gadiano. “Caesar is revered. And the saddest thing is Larry Itliong and the role of the Manongs has been reduced to a footnote in the story. But we have started an incredibly positive movement. He helped farm workers not only in California but also in the United States. And people forget.
This article was originally published on May 6, 2019.
