By Marissa Aroy

“This is the street where the police were ready to ram us with billy clubs,” said John Armington, son of Filipino farmworker Bob Armington. John was giving us a bus tour of the historic sites during last weekend’s Bold Step: A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike. The events honor Filipino farmworkers, the Manongs (elders), the first large wave of Filipinos who came to this country in the 20s and 30s.

I flew in from New York, where I now live, to screen the film I directed, The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the United Farm Workers (www.delanomanongs.com), for the home crowd in Delano, California. The Delano Manongs is about the history Filipino farmworkers who lived and worked in Delano, their important role in the formation of the UFW and the forgotten role that Filipino leader Larry Itliong played.

Delano is the site of the historic grape strike of 1965 when farmworkers (Filipinos, Mexicans and other ethnic workers) went on strike and came together to form the United Farm Workers union. Many people know of the UFW leader Cesar Chavez and consider it a Mexican American labor movement, but Filipino Americans played a very important role in the formation of the union, particularly the charismatic Itliong.

I grew up nearby in Bakersfield, California, but Delano was where my great aunt and uncle Felix and Felisa Aroy lived. I called them Grandma and Grandpa and they were the only grandparents I knew. Delano is where I’d be during weekends, playing with the other Filipino kids, fighting with my cousin Cynthia, practicing dances for the annual Filipino Weekend, or decorating floats in their backyard.

Even though I grew up in this area, none of this history of the Filipino farmworkers was really known to me growing up. It wasn’t in any history books or classes until college. When I became a filmmaker I sought out the history, searching the archival libraries, having people give me their own personal recordings of Filipino leaders and tearing out photos from people’s picture frames so I could add them to the documentary.

I made the documentary for a younger version of myself, an artifact that I didn’t have growing up at the epicenter of the farmworker struggle. I want our community to have an understanding of one of the historic moments in Filipino American history, and I want them to be hungry to learn more.

Making films about this history has helped me shape my own personal identity, how to integrate the Filipino values and culture into my very American life. Now I hold sacred the stories that I hear from my community, people both young and old, about the past and the ever-challenging present.

Almost all the Manongs (and the Manangs) who came during the 20s and 30s are gone. The people organizing the event’s last weekend were either children or teenagers during the grape strike, and it changed their lives. Their personal anecdotes were incredibly moving and important, and many cried in remembrance of these mostly bachelor men, who treated them like the sons and daughters they never had.

Many of us travelled from all over the United States to join in the commemoration of the manongs. Activists, organizers, educators, politicians, policymakers and more wanted to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike, take a tour of the historic Filipino hall, see Itliong’s grave and peek inside the historic Agbayani Village, the UFW retirement home built for the manongs.

I’m still absorbing all the wonderful moments and yet it’s also heartbreaking to me. Grandma Felisa passed away in early 2013 two months before the premiere of The Delano Manongs. She was so supportive of my husband and I when we’d come into town to film. My last few times in Delano, I’ve felt unmoored not having her there. How I wish her and Grandpa could’ve been there in the Robert F. Kennedy High School to watch the documentary with everyone.

The bus tour on Sunday passed the cemetery where they are buried, it’s around the corner from Itliong’s gravesite.

“That’s where my grandma and grandpa are,” I pointed out to the people near me on the bus. And I held my hand up to wave goodbye to their grave markers.

DVDs of the Delano Manongs are available at www.delanomanongs.com