I rushed upon the improvised stage and grabbed José, whose wooden leg had become entangled in some ropes and wires.
“This is it!”
“Yeah!”
“Follow me!”
“Right!”
I jumped off the stage, José following me. Then there was the sudden patter of many feet outside, and shooting. I found a pile of dry horse manure in a corner of the barn. I told José to lie down; then I covered him with it, exposing only his nose. I lay beside him and covered myself with it, too. When I tried to talk, the manure went into my mouth and choked me. I lay still, waiting for the noise outside to subside.
A man with a flashlight came inside and stabbed the darkness with the steely light, cutting swiftly from corner to corner. He came near the pile of manure, spat on it, and searched the ceiling. A piece of manure tickled my throat, and I held my breath, bringing tears to my eyes. The man went outside, joined his companions, and drove off to town.
I pushed the dung away and jumped to my feet.
“Did you see his face?”
“No!”
“I saw it. He is a white man, all right.”
“Let’s run. There is still time.”
I crept to the wall and crouched in the darkness. I wanted to be sure that every man had gone. The way was clear. José followed me outside. Then we were running across a beet field, our feet slapping against the broad leaves that got in our way. The moon came up and shone brightly in the night. As I ran, I looked up to see it sailing across the sky.
Then my fear was gone. I stopped running and sat down among the tall beets. José sat beside me. There were no words to describe the feeling in our minds and hearts. There was only our closeness and the dark years ahead. There was only the dark future.
* * *
—
We walked across the beet fields to Camarillo, five miles south. The town was quiet and dark. It was surrounded by orange groves. We went into the local school building and slept on the floor. A teacher found us there in the morning. She threatened to call the police, and we rushed outside. We walked in the morning sun, smelling the orange blossoms and the clean air. I looked at the tall mountains on our right and stopped, remembering the mountains in my village.
“You like the landscape?” José asked.
“It’s like my village,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, it is hard to describe it to you. But the farther I go from it, the more vivid it becomes to me. Perhaps I am sentimental. But my village is not like any other village. There are mountains on one side, and there is the wide river on the other. A tongue of land extends into the river and on this land are hills that are covered with guava trees. Now is the time for the guavas to bloom. I used to go there when I was a child and the smell of the blossoms followed me down into the valley. Between the mountains and the river, in the center of the valley, is a papaya grove. Papayas are in bloom now. Did you ever smell papaya blossoms? There is nothing like it. Someday I will go back and climb these guavas again. Someday I will make a crown of papaya blossoms. Do you think I am sentimental?”
“No,” José said. “I know what you mean. We will go back someday. I will climb those guavas with you. We will swim in the river. The papayas are in bloom now, you say?”
The journey to Ventura was shortened. We were following the state highway when a police patrol stopped us and took us to the city jail and held us on charges of vagrancy. When we were released, three days afterward, we took a bus to Lompoc.
But another strike was in progress there. The lettuce workers had walked out three days before. I was informed that some of the men did not approve of the strike, but a white woman from Fresno had agitated them. Gazamen told me that she was staying at a local hotel. I asked José to go with me.
It was already one in the afternoon, but the hotel was very quiet. I knocked on the door. A short, stocky, ordinary-looking woman with dark hair stood before me.
“My name is Helen,” she said, coming out with her overnight bag. “How is the strike this morning?”
“My name is José,” José said. “We came to you to talk about it. I hope you don’t mind our bothering you.”
“José!” Helen was beaming. “You are the person I’ve been looking for in Lompoc. Mr. Magna in San Francisco recommended you—”
José’s doubts vanished immediately. He knew Magna intimately. I walked eagerly with them to the office. But why did Helen talk as though this strike were a business? I was filled with doubts and premonitions.
CHAPTER XXVII
Helen, realizing the importance of time, suggested that we proceed with the strike. Fired with a new impetus, José worked night and day. The strike spread to Solvang and Las Cruces, where the Lompoc farmers controlled the agricultural products. The strikers organized reconnaissance squads and guarded the highway and other exits from the valley.
It was exactly what Helen wanted. The trucks that carried the lettuce were driven by Japanese and white men to Las Cruces, where they were inspected by government officials before proceeding to Los Angeles. Helen wanted the hauling stopped. It was a dangerous move, because the job of taking out the crates from the fields was done by Japanese and Mexican workers under the surveillance of highway patrolmen.
I tried to argue with Helen against the use of firearms and violence in general, but gave up when some of the strikers became hysterical. The leaders of the squads wanted to install me as the new secretary of the local. I accepted it, not because I wanted it, but because the strike called for quick decision. Besides, I was beginning to understand the organized conspiracy against the agricultural workers in California.
The strike taught me that I was definitely a part of the labor movement. On the third day, the reconnaissance squads rushed to the main highway where the loaded trucks would pass. The men spread out and waited on both sides of the road, becoming tense when the trucks appeared in the distance. But the drivers were guarded by motorcycle patrolmen, three on either side, releasing their sirens whenever they approached the strikers.
When the first truck appeared in the bend of the road, the strikers came out and signaled to the driver to stop. The patrolmen rushed forward, clubbing the men who tried to climb into the trucks. About a dozen men turned over a truck, fighting their way out when the patrolmen turned around to beat them. The drivers leaped out and stayed away from the fight.
In a few minutes, finding resistance impossible, the strikers rushed to their cars and drove madly to the office. Three strikers were arrested on the spot, brought to town, and thrown in jail. In the afternoon a newspaper reporter from Santa Barbara came to our headquarters and reported that the strike was inspired by Communists. The next day, believing the newspaper story, some of the townspeople joined the Mexican and Japanese laborers in the fields.
The strike was completely broken. Great damage was done to organized Filipino labor. I was reluctant to believe that Helen had betrayed us, but when she disappeared at the termination of the strike, I suspected that she might be a professional strikebreaker.
Helen had shown me a subtle way of winning the rank and file. But she had also shown me a way of winning the leaders. In fact, she had shown me another way of abusing the trust and confidence of honest working men.
When the strike was broken in Lompoc, José followed Helen to Salinas, where she had gone to spread calamity. I knew that they were living together as husband and wife, in the Mexican section, and I intimated to José my suspicion. But he ignored my warning. Because he was the ablest organizer among Filipinos in California, Helen got her man. She was paid to curtail the trend of agricultural workers toward the labor movement.
Then I heard that the Salinas strike had been defeated, or betrayed, and again Helen disappeared. A ranch house was burned by unidentified persons, and the blame was put on the strikers. It was the same old tactic,
but still workable. José was arrested; but Helen, who was also arrested, was released immediately. It was evident that she was paid to create disunity among the strikers and to turn public opinion against them. When José was released by the International Labor Defense, which handled such cases, he went to San Francisco where he attended a workers’ conference.
I went to Los Angeles hoping to persuade my brother Macario to go to Santa Maria with me, where the two of us could work together, because he was proficient in languages and was a forceful speaker. But he already had a job. He was more interested in the theoretical approach. I discovered with disappointment that his desire to go to college was fading. He was, however, reading extensively and acquiring books about world politics.
I wanted Macario to complete his education because, at that time, I still believed that it was the only course for him. I remembered how our family had sacrificed everything for him, and when I saw him losing interest, I thought of the years when I had been with my father on the farm in Mangusmana. I recalled that my most wonderful days were those centered around Macario—when he was away from Binalonan, when he was studying in Lingayen, and when he came back one vacation time to cut my hair.
I wrote to my brother Amado, in Phoenix, but when he received my letter he was already in San Francisco. He was living at the St. Francis Hotel with the man for whom he was working—a big-time racketeer lawyer from Los Angeles. I went to San Diego, where the Filipino pea pickers were on strike. When I returned to Los Angeles a letter from Amado was waiting for me. He was in Hollywood.
I went to see him immediately. He was staying in a luxurious room. But it was actually rented by the lawyer; they always lived together when they were traveling.
“In fact,” Amado said proudly, “we sometimes sleep with the same woman.”
I did not believe him. How was it that a successful lawyer would share a room with his servant? But Amado disappointed me: he was in a position to help Macario go to college but would not. It was the beginning of a long estrangement between Amado and me.
“I’m going into a new world, Carlos,” Amado said. “Away from our people. I’m sorry it’s this way.”
I knew that he had deserted us—even his speech was rapidly becoming Americanized.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said.
“Good-bye.”
I walked out of his room and his life forever.
* * *
—
I lived with Macario in his little room on Flower Street, hoping to read some of his books and magazines. I went to the public library, fumbling for knowledge in the enormous building. One day Macario took a civil service examination, although he knew that he could not get the job.
“Why?” I asked.
“California doesn’t employ Filipinos in civil service jobs,” he said.
“Is there a law about it?”
“None. But it is a matter of personal interpretation of our status in the United States.”
“Citizenship, then, is the basis of all this misunderstanding?”
“You can put it that way.”
I was discovering things. Where should I begin? It was then that Helen came to Los Angeles. She saw me at a meeting of the Labor Relations Board and the workers’ representatives at the post office. She grabbed me, pretending excitement and joy. I played my part, wanting to know what she was doing.
We went outside and walked in the autumn shower: the sky was dark and there was a cold wind. I took Helen with me to my brother’s room; there was no other place for us to go. Because my brother was beginning to integrate his beliefs, I warned him against Helen. But it was useless. She had found her next victim, but her method was more subtle. She was dealing with an intellectual, and used a different strategy.
She succeeded, living with Macario and despising me. I was dejected and lost. I could not believe it: the gods of yesterday were falling to pieces. They were made of clay. I had to make my own gods, create my own symbols, and worship in my own fashion. Yes, this is what I would do, now that all of yesterday was dying.
I was about to leave Los Angeles when José arrived. He had heard that Helen was in town. He wanted to stop her doing any more damage to the Filipinos. She was not only involved with powerful agricultural groups, but was also connected with certain self-styled patriotic organizations that considered it their duty to terrify the lives of minorities in the state.
Helen’s suspicion that Macario was what she called a “professional agitator” revealed her stupidity. There was nothing in my brother’s activities that would indicate his political connections; he was simply a man who had been awakened by a dynamic social idea. How to realize it was beyond him. Although he wanted a course of action, he was incapable of working it out to the end. He was by inclination an intellectual, a visionary, a dreamer. The turmoil in the agricultural areas of California were but reverberations of a greater social catastrophe.
When José, infuriated by Helen’s lack of integrity, accused her of being an agent of anti-union interests, she retorted savagely:
“I hate the Filipinos as deeply as I hate unions! You are all savages and you have no right to stay in this country!”
I struck her in the face with a telephone receiver. Something fell from her mouth. Now let her speak arrogantly about the Filipinos! When José saw that I was going to hit her again, he charged suddenly and knocked me down. When I scrambled to my feet Helen was already running down the alley toward the street.
It was the end of Helen among Filipinos. But she had done enough damage. I had often wondered what became of her. I later heard unconfirmed reports that she had been beaten to death in Visalia.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The disappearance of Helen marked the end of the Filipino Workers’ Association. Terrorism was loosed upon the agricultural workers and special committees were formed to lobby in the state legislature and in Congress to bring about the regimentation of migratory workers. The big farmers had gone so far as to curtail all civil liberties for farm laborers. They also designed to wreck unionism by instigating lurid campaigns among the urban population to teach them to fight union activities.
In this open conspiracy to undermine a democratic government, the farmers had miscalculated the reaction of the workers who led an urban life; for they succeeded only in epitomizing the fact that both urban and rural workers depend on each other’s labor in the struggle for security and the right to organize and bargain collectively.
But not realizing that we were facing a powerful enemy, José and I and other labor leaders met in the house of a newspaper reporter, Millar, in San Francisco, and mapped out a plan to start a unified statewide union campaign. When we adjourned Ganzo, who was working with Pascual’s wife on a new newspaper in San Francisco, went to Santa Maria where he was familiar with the workers. José and I wanted to work together in Central California, embracing, of course, all the agricultural towns in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.
Felix Razon, toughened by the years, enthusiastically went to Imperial Valley, where the fascist elements worked more openly than in other parts of the state. Nick went to Los Angeles, where he could work with my brother Macario among the city laborers, but the orange counties and San Diego were also his territories. Millar remained in San Francisco, to work closely with a Filipino Communist in Sacramento, who went to Stockton afterward to help me organize a political steering committee.
Conrado Torres, who had worked with me in the fish canneries in Alaska several years before, went to Seattle and from there proceeded to Yakima Valley, leaving Mauro Perez to consolidate what he had started to organize. Gazamen went to Portland, where they were joined by Mariano—and the three started an aggressive, militant, and progressive committee. Jim Luna and I were the only members of our group who had had no college education. But Jim had served in the navy for many years and had gained experience.
When we
parted we were conscious of the tremendous task before us, that if we failed in ourselves we would also fail in its realization. From this day onward my life became one long conspiracy, working in the daytime and meeting other conspirators at night. I was so intensely fired by this dream of a better America that I had completely forgotten myself; but when I discovered myself again, I found that I was still a young man though broken in health. I was suffering from a disease that changed the whole course of my life, that halted my pursuit of the dream in a corner of the terrible years.
* * *
—
In Santa Maria, where I was working with José, I received a disturbing communication from Millar. Trouble was brewing in San Jose, forty miles south of San Francisco. José and I took the first bus, stopping a few hours in San Luis Obispo to see how Ganzo was progressing. In the early morning, after a lengthy deliberation with Ganzo in his cabin, we rushed to the station and slept in the bus until Salinas.
I still do not know why José and I never discussed unionism and politics when we were alone. It was only when we were with others, when we were in action, that we spoke aloud and acted according to our judgment. But I knew that I was coming to a way of thinking that would govern my life in the coming years. I surmised that the same evolution was taking place in José. But there was still no term for it. I believed then that agitating the agricultural workers was enough, but the next five years showed me that a definite political program was also needed.
Millar was not at our rendezvous in San Jose. I went to the lettuce fields and talked to the workers. The companies had drastically cut the wage scale: the year before it had been thirty cents an hour, but now it had been reduced to twenty cents. The Filipino workers struck, but the companies imported Mexican laborers.
America Is in the Heart Page 23
