By Emil Guillermo
The Record - April 22, 2005
Exactly what part of the Jolly Green Giant was an asparagus tip? Just wondering.
It’s Asparagus Festival weekend. We all have asparagus on the brain. Have fun out there on the waterfront, and celebrate the long green ones.
But take time to remember the people who brought you those deep-fried spears — the farm workers lured by asparagus for their livelihoods. They were transpees from way back. (You’ll recall “transpee,” coined by this column last week, as one who transplants to Stockton for work, cheap housing or merely the chance to reinvent oneself).
When you stroll the festival grounds near the library that’s named for the great United Farm Worker leader Cesar Chavez, think about a few other names: Larry Itliong. Pete Velasco. Philip Vera Cruz. You won’t see as much as a festival canopy named for them. Or an asparagus dish.
Chavez? He’s always been remembered. But Filipino-Americans, who fathered the Valley’s farm-worker labor movement, remain forgotten.
Chavez and the UFW gained notoriety because of a major march from Delano to Sacramento in 1966. But that was all because of the table grape strike in Delano started Sept. 8, 1965 — when 4,000 Filipino workers led by Itliong walked off the fields.
In the 50th anniversary year of that strike, Andy Imutan, a former UFW organizer and the right-hand of Chavez, is on a one-man crusade to make sure people know the truth of the movement.
“They think the United Farm Workers were an entirely Mexican movement. But we started it and invited them to help us,” said Imutan, 79.
Imutan worked with Itliong, Velasco and Vera Cruz, who started the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in 1959 under the AFL-CIO.
When they noticed Mexican workers crossing the picket line, Imutan said they approached Chavez. “He told us at that time, ?I’m sorry, we’re not structured as a labor union, we are a credit union,’ ” Imutan said.
Three days later, Chavez joined AWOC.
In time, AWOC and the UFW would merge. Chavez was made the director, with Itliong, Imutan and Vera Cruz in leadership positions as well.
Then the Filipino workers — mostly holdovers from immigration in the 1930s and ’40s — were aging and replaced. Mexican laborers. Simultaneously, resentment grew toward Itliong, who retained a salary from the AFL-CIO. Most of the leaders from Chavez on down were making just $5 per week, Imutan said.
In 1971, Imutan was sent from Delano to Stockton to organize the great Stockton asparagus strike. “We were almost ready and had given notice we were going to strike,” Imutan recalled. “Then Cesar called me. Hold up the strike. ‘Come back to Delano,’ he said. Larry had resigned.”
The strike never happened. Instead, the UFW put their attention on the lettuce in Salinas.
As Itliong’s star faded, so did those of Vera Cruz and Velasco. Local UFW leaders acknowledge the Filipinos.
But Andy Imutan wants everyone, especially subsequent generations of Filipino-Americans, to recognize the role the group played in California’s labor movement. “Without the Filipino, would there have been Chavez?” Imutan asked.
So clip this column and read it as you wait in the long food lines to spend more than what the average asparagus worker made before the UFW was around.
Then lift a spear to those who inspired Cesar Chavez: Filipino Americans Larry Itliong, Pete Velasco, Philip Vera Cruz. Andy Imutan. Transpees all. Unsung heroes of the Valley’s labor movement.
Green giants.
