Traditional Dance In the Hands of Fil-Am College Clubs

“Culture and the arts are potent forces in national development. With its colors and contrasts, our cultural heritage unifies our race, and gives it a national identity that lends pride and dignity to every Filipino” – Corazon Aquino, 1991

1, 2, 3! 1, 2, 3! The clicking sound of bamboo sticks slapping against each other for tinikling is an all too familiar rhythm. That dance is, after all, the quintessential introduction to Pilipino culture taught to kids in community youth groups, adapted for high school international nights, and ubiquitous in cultural productions by university Pilipino clubs.

The first time I learned the dance, I was 13. I eagerly joined a group performing tinikling at my church as an earnest attempt to connect with my heritage. Naturally, we used PVC pipes in lieu of bamboo, wore white tees and denim shorts instead of native garb, and choreographed our traditional dance to none other than Destiny’s Child’s “Lose My Breath” and Ne-Yo’s “Stay With Me.” Body rolls were involved. At the time, it felt like a worthy homage.

Fortunately, I’ve since discovered the rich offering of folk dances beyond tinikling: the graceful balancing act pandanggo sa ilaw, the flirtatious hat duet subli, the masculine coconut dance maglalatik, the stoic, haunting janggay, the regal singkil, and countless others.

Every year, I see Pilipino clubs at universities put on innumerable showcases of our native culture in dance competitions, pageants, and Philippine cultural nights (PCNs, or “barrios” as some call them.) A hodgepodge of interpretations of “traditional” dance appear on stage, from meticulously rehearsed, authentic displays to barely recognizable, loosely-interpreted traditional dance: pandanggo sa ilaw performed with flashlights, maglalatik fused with step dancing, and tinikling liberally peppered with breakdancing.

For every crew I see striving to do traditional dance justice, there is another itching to reinvent, break out, ditch, even, the antiquated choreography. A “cultural” portion is often pegged as a requirement for qualification, and you can’t help but see traditional dance turn more into an obligation than a genuine homage. I've seen some clubs give all of thirty seconds of their seven minute set to a hastily put together folk dance.

Why do we even bother to “be cultural” and learn traditional dance? What is the value of portraying them accurately or not? In The Day the Dancers Stayed: Performing in the Filipino/American Diaspora, Theodore S. Gonzalves explains that second generation Fil-Ams use traditional dance to reconcile the conflict of in-betweenness. After growing up Americanized, PCNs are an alluring effort for identity-seeking young adults to reclaim ethnicity.

Dance, after all, is a universal language and educator. Even if a Fil-Am doesn’t know Tagalog, which is a common case for many young Fil-Ams today, repeating the steps of our ancestors offers that connection to heritage that students who join Pilipino organizations seek. However, the experience can seem second-hand and diluted after learning from YouTube clips that learned from YouTube clips that learned from dance troupe’s YouTube clips.

The Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company that started in the 1950s is one of those authorities–their singkil video alone has 300,000 views and counting. The company, which tours internationally and even inspired its own national day in the Philippines (May 27), popularized folk dance as we know it. To a fresh eye, the elaborate presentation, trained facial expressions, and detailed costumes look as traditional as it gets. What we don’t realize, however, is that even Bayanihan’s presentation of traditional dance is skewed. Barbara S. Gaerlan, author of “In the Court of the Sultan,” claims that Bayanihan’s singkil dance in fact shows an orientalist portrayal of Muslims featuring over sensualized females, costumes borrowing from Arabia, and bare-chested males in a way typically offensive in Muslim culture.

Still, the dramatization of the dances are undoubtedly entertaining. Perhaps this is what it boils down to. When we are showcasing our culture to an audience of outsiders, who wouldn’t want to amp up theatricality?

I brought up this dichotomy of accurate traditional dance versus reintepretation to Dr. Kevin Nadal recently, and he challenged me with a thought: Isn’t dance about art?

Art is meant to change, be open to interpretation, and molded in personal experience. If that means tapping your cultural side by infusing tinikling with the latest hit on Z100...by all means, bump that track and bring out the bamboo sticks.

Photo credit: Don Gutierrez

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

Adventures in Interracial Dating: Visiting Granny for Christmas

My grandma is the best person in the world.  Let me gush about her for a little bit before I tell you about how I sometimes make fun of her.  It will soothe my conscience.  She is hands down the most loving and forgiving person on this earth.  I crashed my mom's car when I was a license-less fifteen-year-old, and though she shamed me to no end, she still stuck up for me when I'm compared with my “no-good, lazy cousins.”  When I went to Korea earlier this year to teach English, she was so proud of me but then promptly dropped that act when everything went down with the DPRK. She cried for a week straight so I would come home (not going to lie though, kinda glad I can blame my grandma for that one.)  My grandma is seriously THE BEST.

That said, she has a little bit of a Pilipino accent.  It has become customary for me to poke fun at this accent occasionally when the mood strikes. A couple of months ago, I inadvertently shared this accent with my boyfriend, Michael. He had not really spent much time with my grandma yet, and assumed I was over-exaggerating. He realized differently when we went over for a family dinner, and my grandma took to spilling all our family secrets.  You know, gossip about the aunties and who’s pregnant... normal stuff. Michael couldn’t really understand her, as she kept code-switching between Ilocano, Tagalog and English. But, as a granddaughter introducing my new boyfriend I was really excited about this. This excitement translated to me speaking like my Grandma the entire way home. We conversed like this for a good thirty minutes before Michael switched over to answering me in his own grandmother’s accent. I should add, Michael’s grandma is from the United States’s South - she's spent her life largely in Mississippi, Florida, and South Carolina. I haven’t met her yet, but apparently she is very similar to my grandma, except she is white, and goes by the name Granny. This is when it dawned on me: getting my grandma to like my boyfriend was the easy part.  Now, I have to get Granny to like me.

This Christmas, I’m going to South Carolina to spend the holidays with Michael’s family. I’m most nervous to meet Granny, mainly because I don’t know how she will react to her grandson dating a non-white girl. Michael is my first white boyfriend. This isn’t really an issue, or even a source of uniqueness in our home in San Diego, California. However, it was not very far in the past where interracial marriage was illegal in South Carolina, and frowned upon in the upper-class white suburb in which he grew up.

Coming from a family that already crossed the interracial dating bridge a generation before, it never really occurred to me the cultural implications involved with dating a white guy. Aside from the pressure of coming across as nice, accommodating, self-sufficient, pretty, intelligent, and strong when I am invited into their home, I am anxious to prove myself as far more than simply the model minority. This brings me to the article that Ryann Tanap, fellow UniPro writer and editor, wrote recently regarding interracial dating and familial/cultural expectations.  I never considered being labeled as an “other,” but now that my boyfriend is white, the apprehension is different.

Now let me note, Michael and his family have been nothing but welcoming, supportive, and inclusive towards me. But the fear of rejection is still there.  And in my eyes, rejection from the matriarch of the family is something that is pretty hard to overcome. Ryann's article addressed that race relations are changing for current generations, but past generations still impact our current dating practices and attitudes.

I thought about how this is especially applicable to my experience, and how histories of hurt, discrimination, abuse, imperialism, and racism melt into today’s attitudes and fears, no matter how far removed. I mean... interracial marriages were legalized almost 50 years ago. Shouldn’t these concerns be completely irrelevant by now?

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