Reflections of Tagalogue: Remembering Lola Encar

By Nicole Maxali, guest contributor About one year ago, I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City in order to pursue my passion of acting, writing and producing.  In my first month of living in NYC, I had a stark realization: the Pilipino community on the East Coast is very spread out.  It’s not like in the Bay Area, where you can run into a Pilipino at every corner or every fifteen minutes.

So, it was refreshing to meet Leslie Espinosa - the creator of Tagalogue - through a mutual friend in October 2012.  She invited me to check out her show Tagalogue which was a collection of Fil-Am stories by Pilipino artists.  I came out to support and was instantly drawn in by the eclectic collection of voices, stories and artists.  I told Leslie that I would love to be part of Tagalogue the following year.

Fast forward to September 2013:  I received an email from UniPro that an open audition is happening for Tagalogue Volume 3.  This year’s theme was “Celebrating our Ancestors."  The stars not only aligned for me to audition, but it also allowed me to perform and share a piece that is very close to my heart.  The piece I performed was a snippet of my full length one woman show, “Forgetting the Details."

“Forgetting the Details” pays tribute to my lola, Encar.  During the mid 1950s, Lola Encar was part of a surge of Manangs finally able to come over and join their husbands in America. My lola was always the most stylish, as she always stood out from the rest. Growing up at Lola’s house, I remember her having seven closets full of clothes, shoes, jackets, purses, jewelry and accessories! I once found a closet full of shoes she had kept from the 70’s and 80’s. I still wear them to this day. Women are always commenting, “Oh, I love your shoes!” Lola Encar also taught me the importance of hard work, education, sticking by your family, how to be resourceful and to have faith in yourself and God. It’s because of her I am the strong woman I am today. I am so thankful for her influence and love.

“Forgetting the Details” also began as a way to cope with my lola's struggle with Alzheimer’s. Incorporating true-life stories, things she’s said over the years while raising me as a little Fil-Am kid in San Francisco, and giving my view on the situations while also adding some much comedic relief to a struggling time.  But as I continued to write, to take solo classes, and share twenty-minute snippets of the show with audiences, I soon realized that my art was beginning to be a form of healing not only for me but for those that were going through similar situations. All types of people began approaching me after my shows, sharing their stories of a mom, grandma or uncle with Alzheimer’s. Some would even share their own frustrations being a caretaker. Other young Fil-Ams were coming up to me, saying how inspiring it was to see a character that reminded them of their own family or grandmother.

So to be able to perform a snippet of my show with the Tagalogue cast/crew was such an honor and blessing.  I am so thankful for the opportunity to do what I do.  Here is a link of family pictures taken from my one woman show, “Forgetting the Details." -- Nicole Maxali is a New New Yorker. Native to San Francisco, she began performing at Bindlestiff Studio, the only Filipino-American Theater in the nation. In 2008, Nicole Maxali wrote and performed her very first solo show under the tutelage of W. Kamau Bell (FX’s Totally Biased). Under the direction of Paul Stein at Comedy Central Theater, Nicole developed her original twenty minute piece titled “I Heart Lola” into her full length show, "Forgetting the Details". Described by legendary comic Dave Chappelle as "funny, heartwarming and funny again", Nicole Maxali’s 75 minute solo performance piece explores the familial and cultural-related challenges a young adult faces when losing a loved one to Alzheimer’s. She has performed her solo show at the famous Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in New York City, The FIND Conference at Harvard University and the Minnesota Fringe Festival. You can also see Nicole on the big screen as a surgical nurse in the independent film, Fruitvale Station, produced by Forest Whitaker & directed by Ryan Coogler.

This Is How You Sing In Kapampangan: Pilipino Identity In American Context

Carrying itself over car horns and rowdy high schoolers was a voice singing an old Pilipino love song in the middle of 5th Ave. I slowed down my hurried steps to meet an elderly Pilipina woman with pink drawn on eyebrows, sitting on the side walk and holding a sign that said, “Homeless, anything helps. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

The song ended abruptly and I heard her call out, “Ai!! Pilipina!”

I’d been caught staring.

I smiled and walked over, eager to hear my kababayan’s story.

I learned that Pilipina, in her early sixties, was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly a decade ago, with no family in the States except for a friend who took care of her through the duration of her illness. The cancer not only forced her to stay in America - isolating her from her family in the Philippines - but it also depleted her bank accounts entirely.

Now homeless, she waits on the street corners with a coin cup and rosary in hand, hoping to collect enough money for international calling cards and motel stay fees. She refuses to stay at homeless shelters where she had previously been robbed while she slept.

She told me this all very casually. Despite what happened to her, she insisted that God’s blessings outweighed whatever setback she had and all she needed was the friendship she kept for over 30 years. There was no doubt in her strength or her realness.  And after we exchanged names and parted ways, I heard her sing my favorite Kundiman.

I felt blessed to have met this woman who dropped tea, truth and perspective on my busy mind.

We are animals of context – if we have no one to compare one context to another, we have no idea who we are. I didn’t realize the gravity of keeping out of one singular context (be it singular in setting, type of people, location, etc) until I met this woman and was confronted with the stark contrast between Pilipino and American perspectives.

It’s not uncommon to meet a Pilipino with such humble positivity. Whenever I go to the Philippines, I’m both touched and envious when I see my family and their friends together. The feeling and atmosphere is distinctive and their approach to life’s daily troubles is one that I wish that my fellow Americans and I could adapt. More often than not, I see my peers react with nervous breakdowns, endless sub-tweets, burned bridges and bad decision after bad decision.

For now, I’m not going to look at their specific difficulties and just look at the way my family in the Philippines handles everything. For one thing, they are constantly aware that an excellent life is happening whether they are present for it or not – and every time they choose to be involved in it, to actively participate in an excellent life. If they feel like singing, they call everyone in the neighborhood to come over and sing with them over San Miguels and Marlboros. If they want to learn how to dance, again, they call every single person they know to come over and watch Mariel Martin's YouTube channel for hours until they get her "Heartbeat" choreo down pat.

And part of this decision to participate is being fully aware of what their problems are. They don’t try to intellectualize or find an existential meaning behind daily stresses. They all have a “I know what I know and that’s all there is to know” attitude, a branch of the controversial “Bahala Na” mentality - and it seems to be working for my family.

Truth of the matter is, we’re surrounded by people going through the same problems we are. The difference between Americans and Pilipinos, though, is that Pilipinos (at least the ones that I've met - I know this can't be said for everyone) are open about it—a family is getting through these troubles as oppose to an isolated individual. Friends are turned into family, and aren’t used as distractions from problems but instead they help get through them.

So with that, I implore you all to take a lesson from our kababayan and stop worrying about what’s polite. Stop keeping your ambitions, talents and troubles to yourself. Stop treating your friends and family as excuses for your unhappiness, unproductiveness, and inability to attain your goals. Stop wasting your time creating distances that aren’t there. Because an excellent life is happening, and a family is there waiting for you.

Photo credit: Josh Cole

FAHM: The Delano Manong, Pete Velasco, and the Farm Workers’ Movement

Note from the Editor: In addition to being a staff writer, Kathryn Jan Estavillo, is also one of UniPro’s interns for the fall. As part of Fil-Am History Month, interns explored California’s new law to include history on Fil-Am farm workers and their efforts in the state’s education curriculum. Read on to see Kathryn's thoughts on labor leader, Pete Velasco.

Little to almost nothing can be found about his past. The names of his parents or any siblings he may have had remain unaddressed, unexcavated by both print and online sources. However, the amount of information that can be gleaned about his childhood, scant and insignificant, is a deceitful indicator of the great impact he left on the Fil-Am community. Peter G. Velasco, more commonly known as Pete Velasco, was born in 1910 in Asingan, Philippines. Having migrated to Los Angeles in 1931, Pete Velasco was a manong. Awarded to older male family members, manong is a term of endearment and respect familiar to many Pilipinos. Possibly an older brother, probably an older cousin, Velasco may have very well been given this title from birth. However, in between the 1930s and 1940s, the word adapted a new meaning, referring to the thousands of Pilipino immigrants, Velasco among them, driven by hopes of education and advancement to the United States.

While in the United States, Velasco worked in area restaurants for ten years, a challenging feat considering the American backlash directed towards immigrants, specifically Pilipinos. Despite America’s anti-immigrant mentality, Velasco stood as a representation of patriotism, fighting for the United States on European fronts during World War II and becoming an American citizen shortly after. Although his wartime service and citizenship are notable strides for Pilipino immigrants, it was his time as a farm worker that solidified his footprint in both Pilipino and American history. During the twenty years after the war, Pete Velasco worked on small farms in the Coachella Valley and Delano, California. There he, alongside thousands of Pilipino and Mexican migrant workers, faced horrendous treatment. They endured long hours of hard labor, unsuitable living conditions and meager earnings; these subhuman conditions continued even after their service expired. No longer needed and thus unemployed, former workers received no insurance. Their former employers for whom these immigrant workers toiled, exploited and maltreated, gave no help and showed no mercy. Velasco, along with fellow Pilipino farm workers Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, noticed this injustice and, together, they founded the Agricultural Farm Workers Association Committee (AFWOC) in order to address it.

The three leaders unified the Pilipino migrant workers under a common sense of rage and disempowerment and, on September 8, 1965 they initiated the Delano Grape Strike. This was a series of peaceful protests against California grape growers that lasted five years. Not long after the strike began, in 1966, the objectives of the Pilipino farm workers gained notoriety in the eyes of Hispanic civil rights leader Cesar Chavez as goals both the Pilipinos and Mexicans had in common. This led to the collaboration of Pilipino and Chicano farmworkers in the United Farm Workers of America. Aside from organizing the strike with Vera Cruz and Itliong, Velasco raised the money needed to launch the strike effort. By passing out pamphlets in front of supermarkets and other areas of congregation, he introduced the plight of migrant farm workers into public conversation. He was also more directly involved, arranging food caravans and establishing food banks for the strikers. He would later become a member of the union’s executive board and was elected as secretary-treasurer in 1980. Not only a supporter, Pete Velasco was familiar with the grit and grim, the suffering and sacrifice of the labor movement. As a member of this generation of Pilipino immigrant farm workers campaigning for justice, won his title as a Delano Manong.

There are many reasons why learning about Pete Velasco is important for Americans. Velasco was a piece of a larger puzzle, a representation of the effort to rectify the unforgivable conditions immigrant workers faced. By learning about Velasco, we acknowledge not only his role in the movement but we realize there may have been others whose efforts may have gone unnoticed. Additionally, Velasco is a canvas depicting American error. Velasco was one of many who traveled to the United States in pursuit of the American dream: education, opportunity, a better standard of living for himself, his family and the family he had yet to start. Velasco saw all these possibilities promised to him in the vibrant hues of the American flag. But what did he meet with? What did he and immigrants like him face when they set foot onto the shores of America? Unfortunately, this wave of immigrants, like many others, had  racial slurs and undesirable jobs to look forward to. America boasts itself to be the land of opportunity, a country who begs for “your tired, your hungry and your poor,” a nation whose diversity is its most valuable asset. Still, this gross injustice in our history shows us what mentalities to avoid in order to maintain the true meaning of the United States, a lesson that needs, desperately, to be relearned today.

Undoubtedly, Velasco is an important figure in American history but, more so, in Fil-Am history. The Agricultural Workers’ Movement, the momentous step towards improving American labor, is recognized primarily as a Mexican or Chicano movement. However, Pilipinos played an enormous role. They began the movement but because Cesar Chavez was appointed director and Larry Itliong assistant director. However, Pilipino migrant workers received less attention than those of Mexican descent. The Pilipino leader of this major civil rights labor movement accepted a secondary role and the union organizing efforts of the Pilipinos in the US have been virtually forgotten. When researching the United Farm Workers of America or the Delano Grape Strike, the majority of articles one finds highlights the Mexican-American struggle with only a slight mention, a small blurb about the Pilipino role. Pilipinos have left footprints on the sands of American history and they are often unacknowledged. As Fil-Ams, it is our responsibility to ourselves if not to the general public to point out these footprints.

Photo Credit: Walter P. Reuther Library Website

FAHM: Larry Itliong’s Impact on the Farm Labor Movement

Note from the Editor: Jedric Martin is one of UniPro’s interns for the fall. As part of Fil-Am History Month, interns explored California’s new law to include history on Fil-Am farm workers and their efforts in the state’s education curriculum. Read on to see Jedric's thoughts on labor leader, Larry Itliong. By Jedric Martin, guest contributor

Larry Itliong was a Fil-Am labor organizer. He is best known for leading the Delano Grape Strike, which started on September 8, 1965 and lasted for more than half a decade. Because of his efforts in this strike, he is often regarded as “one of the fathers of the West Coast labor movement.”

Itliong was born to Artemio and Francesca Itliong on October 25, 1913 in the Pangasinan Province of the Philippines. He was one of six children and only had a sixth grade education. Nonetheless, Itliong excelled as an activist, and by 1929, he had immigrated to the United States. One year later, at the age of seventeen, he was involved in his first activist movement: the lettuce strike at Monroe, Washington. Furthermore, Itliong was a very good card player and a regular cigar smoker. He was multilingual, being able to speak fluently in various Pilipino dialects, Spanish, Cantonese, and Japanese. He also taught himself about law, which aided him as both an activist and a leader.

As a farmworker, Itliong was well traveled on the West Coast, having worked in Alaska, Washington, and all around California. Additionally, he worked in Montana and South Dakota. While in Alaska, he helped found the Alaska Cannery Workers Union. Commonly referred to as "Seven Fingers," he received his nickname after losing three fingers in an accident while working in Alaska.

Itliong’s credentials demonstrate his value not only to the Pilipino community, but the American community as well. In the 1930s and ‘40s, Californian Pilipinos led the way in unionization efforts among farmworkers. After serving as a mess man on a U.S. Army transport ship during World War II, Itliong moved to Stockton, California where he participated in the first major agriculture strike to take place after the war. He also served as a first shop steward of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 37 in Seattle, being elected as its vice-president in 1953.

In 1965, Itliong became a leader of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a union that consisted mostly of Filipinos who immigrated to the U.S. during the 1930s. It was around this time that Itliong, along with Philip Vera Cruz, Benjamin Gines, and Pete Velasco, led a strike against growers of table grapes in California in an attempt to increase their revenue stream to minimum wage. This boycott, which would later be referred to as the Delano Grape Strike, was a very significant victory for Itliong and his fellow leaders, who eventually won higher wages. AWOC would soon merge with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by Cesar Chavez, to create the United Farm Workers (UFW).

Itliong was initially skeptical about the merge, fearing that Mexicans would dominate the union. Nonetheless, Itliong did not share these thoughts, and instead, worked harder to move up in the union. He was a member of the founding board for California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), which was a plan enacted through President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty policy. This plan was initiated in 1966 as a nonprofit legal services program. The CRLA seeks to provide California residents—especially those greatly affected by poverty—with free legal assistance, as well as access to many different education and outreach programs.

Itliong served as the Assistant Director of the UFW under Chavez until 1970; at this time, he was appointed to National Boycott Coordinator. In 1971, however, Itliong resigned from the UFW due to disagreements about how the union should be run. Moreover, Itliong also believed the union did not support aging Pilipinos. Despite his resignation, Itliong still supported the UFW’s cause. He helped organize a strike against the Safeway supermarkets in 1974 and worked towards building a retirement facility for UFW workers, which would later be known as “Agbayani Village.” On February 8, 1977, Itliong died of Lou Gehrig’s disease at the age of 63. Los Angeles County decided in 2011 to give public recognition to Itliong, making his birthday, October 25, an official holiday.

As Fil-Ams, it is our responsibility to acknowledge Itliong’s impact on the Farm Labor movement. The contributions he made may not have affected us directly, but they surely stand as a significant example of how anyone could fight for an important cause, despite having to deal with difficult circumstances. His commitment to UFW’s mission, despite a lack of agreement between him and the governing body of the union, demonstrates not only his strong leadership qualities, but also his good will. The decision of California Governor Jerry Brown to include the contributions of Fil-Ams, such as Itliong, in the academic curriculum of the state is monumental, and it will ensure that these courageous Pilipinos are remembered for their integral role in the Farm Labor movement.

Photo Credit: Reuther Library

Earthquake in the Visayas: How Fil-Ams can help out!

I was in my final hours of my latest visit to Japan when I received news of the earthquake that struck the Visayas. I started off that trip at the city of Sendai in Tohoku, the region that took the brunt of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As I watched the crowds clamoring for the latest game releases at the Tohoku Pokemon Center, I tried to picture what those kids must've experienced just a couple years earlier. Fast forward a couple days and the Tohoku quake came to mind again just as footage from Bohol and Cebu started trickling into CNN and NHK. But instead of imagining the victims I began to recall the heroes, the faces of those who - no matter how big or small their contributions were - answered in solidarity the calls of doing their part in the relief and rebuilding effort. As Filipino-American History Month draws to a close, let's end it strong by showing our own solidarity with our kababayan in Bohol and Cebu by helping them recover from the recent earthquake. Coming off the MNLF siege in Zamboanga that ended a couple weeks prior and Typhoon Santi which struck Luzon just days earlier, beleaguered relief groups need help more than ever and even the United Nations has made a call additional funds to help compliment existing efforts.

So how can I help out?

You have two options. First is attending a local fundraiser! I'm currently compiling a master list of events from small towns to big cities across the US and I'm hoping to eventually expand this through any shout-outs from fellow Fil-Ams! Check these out:

New York City

November 1

• Lani Misalucha will be having a benefit concert at Kalayaan Hall in the Philippine Consulate from 8PM. Tickets are $45.
• Pinoy Pride Sa America and GK USA will be hosting Pinoy Spooky Night at Payag Restaurant in Queens starting at 8:30PM.

November 3

• NYC Hiking and Outdoor Adventure Group and Pinoy Pride sa America will have Help the Philippines: Fundraiser for Earthquake Victims at EVR Restaurant near Times Square from 11AM to 7PM.

Los Angeles

November 3

• Catalyst Group, Blare Productions, Chryzwin Kreations, and Red Garage Productions will have Bayanihan III at Josephine's Bistro in Cerritos from 7 to 10PM.

Baltimore

November 5

• FASA of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County will be hosting a Earthquake Relief Bake Sale from 11AM to 2PM at Commons Main Street.

And for those that want to have a more personal event with friends and family, why not try what Armand Frasco had in mind by inviting friends for a night of karaoke at your home and chip in some change as you sing in Karaoke for a Cause!

But what if there's no fundraising event nearby and I'd rather not have to go through another one of my tita's renditions of Dancing Queen?

Thankfully several groups both big and small are taking donations online!

• Bangka Journey
• GK USA 
• National Alliance for Filipino Concerns
• Philippine Red Cross

We also have some Fil-Ams taking to crowdfunding sites! Here's a couple examples:

• Tagbilaran Association of Southern California's Helping Hands for Bohol
• Maricel Yunque's campaign to help residents in her parents' hometown

Unfortunately I missed out on some epic fundraisers by the time I compiled this list. However, I wish to share some of the spotlight to the likes of the Philippine Cultural Foundation of Tampa who hosted Operation Tulong at October 27, the Lomboc Association of California's GoFundMe campaign, and even a group up in the San Francisco Bay Area who hosted Zumba for a Cause! But hopefully there will be more to come! Who knows... maybe you might feel compelled to start one yourself!

Photos are courtesy of and used with permission from  Berniemack Arelláno of HabagatCentral, a sojourner based in Cebu who provided coverage of the earthquake's hard-hit areas. Check out his blog!