Migrants have long been used as a source of cheap labor for capitalist countries like America. In the early 1900s, we saw Filipinos migrating all the way to Alaska and the West Coast for low-paying work, and past the mid-1900s, the U.S. initiated the Bracero program to achieve similar results with Mexicans. For either case, immigrant people of color whose economies made survival a challenge were forced to work cheap factory and agricultural jobs where conditions were iffy at best. Initial efforts in the labor movement revolved around the American Federation of Labor and other Eurocentric, racist labor organizations, but the coalition-building between Mexican and Filipino workers proved to be a successful revolutionary practice.

More than three decades after the formation of the CWFLU, the national labor movement continued to gain traction as workers banded together in their collective struggle to draw attention to their cause. Strikes had often been used in labor movements to force employers and the government to create and enforce safety regulations and wage increases. What set the Delano Grape Strike apart was that its participants comprised of Filipino and Mexican workers, an interracial alliance which had been unseen before.

With the creation of the Bracero program, Mexican workers migrated into the States for seasonal and/or agricultural jobs to obtain a living. Like many cheap migrant workers, Mexican farmworkers were being kept like animals, overworked and vastly underpaid and under-protected. As migrants in the mid-20th century, many workers endured the abuse because they didn’t realize that even as “guests” in the country, they still deserved the right to a living wage and a safe work environment. As worker dissatisfaction continued though, the formation of unions allowed for discussions of reform to become possible for these workers.

The National Farm Workers Union was a primarily Latin American labor union led by Cesar Chavez, while the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee was led by Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz. The two groups had done much of their own work to mobilize workers and gain reform, but with upcoming action, Itliong and Vera Cruz sought out Chavez and his workers to join their strike.

Farm worker activists utilized a logic of labor organizing that emphasized class, coupled along with the disremembering process, in order to unite the racially split workforce. Moreover, some prominent actors within the movement such as Filipino organizer, Philip Vera Cruz, envisioned a future in which a multiracial farm working class would confront agribusiness in the fields of California…

Adrian Cruz 2014

When planning to strike against the Delano grape farms for wages equal to the federal minimum, Itliong reached out to Chavez to join their action. Together, the two groups formulated a strategy of nonviolence and solidarity to push Delano to pay them fairly. This included not only striking the work but also urging others to boycott Delano table-grapes. These tactics, along with the combined strike by both the Filipino and Latin workers effectively demonstrated the power of the union and interracial solidarity.

Until recently, Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz were practically erased from the Grape Strike, with Cesar Chavez’s efforts taking centerstage. The erasure of the interracial coalition built between Latin/Mexican workers and Filipino laborers reinforces the racial divide that is imposed on different racial groups to keep them from becoming accomplices to each other’s movement work. If we are kept ignorant of the power we have when working with, not against, each other, then it is easier for the capitalist powers to control us and keep us complicit. Acknowledging that revolutionaries of the past were able to draw these connections between culturally different struggles, there is the possibility that we can do the same in our own coalition and movement-building.