With all due respect to legendary activist Dolores Huerta, I would like to suggest an alternate candidate for renaming Calle Cesar Chavez — after Larry Itliong, a Filipino American.
For decades, Filipinos’ contribution to the creation of the famous United Farm Workers movement in Delano, CA, in 1965 has been either diminished or overlooked completely. This is ironic in light of the fact that it was the Filipino farmworkers there under the leadership of Larry Itliong who initiated and organized that historic strike that summer, later reluctantly joined by the Mexican farmworkers under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, not the other way around.
Acknowledging Itliong’s place in U.S. and California history by renaming Calle Cesar Chavez after him would be a step in the right direction in recognizing Filipinos’ long-overlooked legacy of contributions to our state and country, such as the following:
- The first Asians to create settlements in what is now the United States were Filipinos – in Louisiana, as early as 1803 (possibly as early as 1763, 13 years before 1776).
- One of the 11 founding fathers in 1781 of what is now Los Angeles (the largest city in California by population and size) was a Filipino: Antonio Miranda Rodriguez, who is buried right in downtown Santa Barbara.
- The first Asians to fight in a war for the United States were Filipinos — in the War of 1812 against England.
- The only non-White woman out of 11 women awarded the Silver Star for bravery by the U.S. Army was a Filipina: Magdalena Leones.
- Filipinos were among the college student organizers who shut down the campuses of San Francisco State and UC Berkeley for months in 1968-1969 in order to create a revolutionary new academic discipline: Ethnic Studies.
- The labor organizers who were responsible for the momentum that led to the all-too-forgotten Civil Rights Act of 1991 — benefitting all American workers of color — were Filipinos: Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes.
In terms of popular culture, here are some little-known factoids which today’s Filipino Americans — especially on the younger side — can take pride in: The first commercially successful American all-female hard rock band — whose fans included all four Beatles — was founded by Filipinas: Fanny, in 1969. The first and only Asian honored as Most Valuable Player in the NFL was a Filipino: Roman Gabriel, quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, in 1969. And one of the most indispensable contributors to the modern civilian Internet is a Filipino: Silicon Valley billionaire Diosdado Banatao.
Historically there are notable Filipinos connected to the County or City of Santa Barbara: Essential reading in every intro college-level course in Filipino-American history is America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan. He was of a cohort of Philippine natives who had American nationality imposed upon them from 1900 to 1934; children of this era were required to attend English-only schools, where they received an Americanized education including assimilation of American cultural norms. With unsparing detail, Bulosan’s book describes the harsh realities faced by the first major wave of Philippine migrants to the West Coast, 1924-1934. His biographer, PC Morantte, wrote that Bulosan was initially inspired to write his influential book after experiencing intense, violent anti-Filipino racism in 1931 in the City of Lompoc.
In a happier light, in Santa Barbara in 1928-1932, Philippine native Pedro Flores escaped the fate of the vast majority of his struggling compatriots. From his Granada Building business on State Street, he is credited with pioneering the yo-yo as a toy. He made it so profitable that his company was eventually bought by Duncan Toys, which in turn hired Flores to popularize the newly branded Duncan Yo-Yo throughout America.
On top of all this, it was the Philippines’ involuntary incorporation into U.S. polity — via the brutal, racist, and all-too-forgotten Philippine–American War (1899-1913) — that first made the United States a world-class power, on par with the all-powerful Western imperial nations of the time: England, France, and Holland.
As a student at Lompoc High School, the only mention of my Philippine ancestors in all four years was of anti-American villains; we learned of a so-called “Philippine Insurrection” in U.S. History when I was a junior in 1978. Ashamed, I didn’t want my classmates to know I am Filipino. I wouldn’t learn the truth about these brave democracy-loving patriots inspired by the ideals of the American Revolution until two decades later. That led to a passionate search to uncover other overlooked aspects of my Filipino heritage in U.S. history, such as Filipinos’ long-overlooked key role in the historic United Farm Workers movement.
I hope enough Santa Barbarans will agree with me that acknowledging Larry Itliong’s place in U.S. and California history by renaming Calle Cesar Chavez after him would be an appropriate choice.
