The PBS series Asian Americans highlights an unusual marriage in the mid-20th century: A Filipino man and Mexican woman who met in the fields as farmworkers tied the knot. More than a decade later, in 1965, along with their entire family, they joined the Delano Grape Strike.
Lorraine Agtang, daughter of the two, tells the story of her parents and family in Episode 4, Generation Rising, of Asian Americans:
I’m half Filipino, and half Mexican. My father met my mother working in the fields, and he didn’t speak Spanish and she didn’t speak English, and so my father learned how to speak Spanish so that he could get to know her.
…
I was born in a labor camp a mile and a half from Delano. It was a two-bedroom barrack bunkhouse. We all slept together. There were seven of us, and then my mom and dad.
The bathroom was out back, which we shared with two other families, so, uh, you get to know your neighbors well.
Such a pairing was exceptional at the time among the community of Filipino men who served as farmworkers, as explained in the series:
Narrator: Very few Filipino women were able to immigrate to the US, and Filipino men were barred from marrying white women. As a result, an entire generation is forced to live out their lives as bachelors deprived of family.
But not Lorraine’s father.
Along with her parents and family, Lorraine also took part in the strike, which she recalls in the series:
Lorraine: I remember we were working, when my father says, “Come on, we’re leaving”.
I says, “We’re leaving? It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”
So we left.
…
And I remember leaving the field, and driving through the, seeing the strikers, the Filipinos.
A page about a collection of materials that Lorraine Agtang has left to the University of California – Davis offers more information about her and her parents:
Lorraine Agtang was born in a labor camp near Delano, California on 1952. Agtang is of Mexican and Filipino descent. Her mother, Lorenza Agtang, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. Her father, Platon Agtang, was a migrant worker from Cavite Province in the Philippines, who worked at the sugar fields in Hawaii, canneries in Alaska, and the farmworker circuits throughout Central California. Agtang’s exposure to farm labor activism occurred at an early age, as Agtang and her family left the fields of Chamorro Farms in support of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee during the 1965 Delano Grape Strike.
You can view a clip from the PBS series where Lorraine talks about leaving the fields with her family for the strike:
And, if you’re in the US, you can view the entire episode of Generation Rising from Asian Americans on the PBS site (available for free streaming until June 9, 2020):
Note: Featured photo, with a farmworker, is a screenshot from Generation Rising from Asian Americans on the PBS site.