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| Marcos Muñoz about 1965 |
The Filipino workers, who had been organizing workers since the 1930’s on farms and in canneries from San Diego to Anchorage, are sometimes mentioned briefly and in passing, but more often erased completely. Maybe, maybe, you hear the name Larry Itliong, the veteran organizer who led the Filipino workers out of the Delano table grape vineyards in 1965 and who became assistant director of the United Farm Workers when the Mexican and Filipino workers merged their unions. Typically he is only referred to as a prelude to discussing Cesar.
Dolores Huerta is always present in the story, but rarely given much credit. The real Dolores Huerta was an elementary school teacher who dropped that work to become a formidable organizer and leader in her own right and who allied herself with Chavez. She is indomitable today, still an activist at 91. In the 2014 biopic about Cesar, though, her character was portrayed as not much more than a yes-woman.
And then there are those farm workers who were dispatched from the fields and picket lines of California and Colorado to the east to organize the grape and lettuce boycotts, the boycotts that eventually won the strikes. The documentaries tell us about those boycotts. Where are the names of those farmworkers, though? Marcos Muñoz arrived in Boston alone, knowing nobody and speaking little English. He shut down table grape sales throughout the northeast.
We knew him in New Jersey and New York, and later - through our friend Richard - in Chicago. He left us yesterday at the age of 80 and so we pour one out for him and his memory.
You can hear Marcos Muñoz share his own testimonio at https://libraries.ucsd.edu/farmworkermovement/50th-anniversary-documentation-project-1962-1993/marcos-munos-1965-2012/ and at https://www.enlacechicago.org/oralhistory
DEP, Marcos.
