The farm labor movement owes a lot to the Filipino farmworkers of Delano. The famous grape strike of 1965? It was actually started by Larry Itliong’s Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, a full week before Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association joined in. Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots, the history of Delano’s Filipino community.
The story of Filipinos in Central California goes way back, all the way to October 18, 1587. That’s when Filipino sailors on a Spanish galleon landed at Morro Bay. They were the first Asians to land in what is today California. That was 33 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
Now fast forward over 300 years. In the 1920s and 30s, Filipino men began coming to America to work in agricultural fields, canneries and plantations, including in Delano. These first-generation Filipino farmworkers were known as Manongs. These workers had been organizing for better pay and working conditions in places like Stockton and the Coachella Valley for years. So when Larry Itliong came to Delano in 1965, he knew conditions were ripe for change.
While it was the largely Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee that launched the grape strike, the contributions of people like Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz were largely overshadowed by Cesar Chavez. Itliong went on to continue to serve the Filipino Manong community, founding the Agbayani Village, a home for bachelor Manong farmworkers, who had no other place to live. To this day Delano’s population is roughly 13 percent Filipino.
