Philippine-American History. Biography of Philip Vera Cruz

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Philippine-American History
Introduction
Philip Vera Cruz and Carlos Bulosan are essential figures in Filipino American history and American history in general. Both of these individuals played a huge role in allowing Filipinos and other immigrant workers to become aware of their rights such as proper working conditions. The paper will focus on analyzing the biographies of Philip Vera Cruz and Carlos Bulosan and will highlight the issues they dealt with as they fought discrimination against Filipinos and other immigrants in the United States.
Analysis
Biography of Philip Vera Cruz
Born in the Philippines, Philip Vera Cruz immigrated to America in 1926 in pursuit of his dream of gaining proper employment and also upgrading his education level. Philip Vera Cruz had numerous financial challenges that prevented him from pursuing his educational aspirations. Despite his best efforts of helping his siblings and parents at home, he was unable to fund his siblings’ education (Bayani Art 1). Eventually, Phillip completed his education and was no longer a stranger to the difficult menial jobs that he had to pursue to sustain himself and also send money back home to his family in the Philippines.
Similar to Carlos Bulosan, Philip emphasized the idea that people are more important than the leaders of the movement. Philip opposed the irrational leadership and the suppression of criticism that did not allow union members to speak up their views and grievances. Philip continually advocated for democratic public institutions, including unions, which had to actualize the capacity to make a moral decision.
Through his various experiences in the struggles of the working labor force as an immigrant, he became a great labor leader. He was among the founders of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) which was a labor union enterprise that later merged with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to become what is currently known as the United Farm Workers (UFW) (Bayani Art 2). In the years he spent with AWOC, Philip and all the other leaders had the choice to begin their Delano Grape Strike which was one of the most famous strikes in the history of the struggles of farm workers in California and the entire United States. Philip retired from UFW in 1997 (Delloro 3).
Issues handled
Vera Cruz embodied the experiences of the minorities and also an enormous wave of Filipino immigrants that came to the United States between 1910 and 1930. These immigrants faced issues of racial discrimination, horrible living conditions and regular oppressive labor practices (Delloro 4-7). Vera Cruz was against all these issues and explored the consequences of these harsh conditions on families and individuals.
Vera Cruz is vital to the development of Filipino American history as he advocated for better rights and favorable working conditions for migrant employees. He had issues with the leader, Chavez inside the UFW; however, Vera Cruz focused mainly on the movement (Bayani Art 3). Due to a large number of Mexican farm workers in the union, Filipinos became a minority group which left most of them resentful in the union decision making. This led to the exodus of numerous Filipino laborers. Vera ...