Manong Filipino

[Manuela]

ManongMah-noh-ng) is an Ilokano term principally given to the first-born male in a Filipino nuclear family. However, it can also be used to title an older brother, older male cousin, or older male relative in an extended family. The feminine "manang" is a term given to an older sister. It is a term of respect, similar but secondary to Dad or Mom, but not comparable to Mister or Ma'am, which expresses no elevated affection. A hierarchical marker, it is used to refer to any male who is older than the speaker within his or her family but it could also be used for men outside the family to convey respect.

Additionally, the male partner of an older sibling may be referred to as a manong irrespective of the speaker's age relative to the partner (i.e., a male younger than the speaker may be called manong by virtue of status and not by age difference) although this is not always necessary.

Manong/manang is arguably the derivative of the Spanish word for brother/sister - "hermano" and "hermana". The addition of "ng" and loss of "her" could have been for a variety of reasons such as regional slang.

Manong can also refer to the Ilocano manongs, laborers who migrated to the United States to work in plantations in the 1930s. Stories of the manong, Filipino migrants displaced from their homeland and faced with the racism and challenges of a foreign land, is a common theme in many Filipino-American writers' works. These include most prominently, Carlos Bulosan (America Is in the Heart), a Filipino migrant himself, and several stories by Bienvenido Santos "Scent of Apples" and "The Day the Dancers Came").

The manong generation were the first generation of Filipino immigrants to arrive en masse to the United States.[1][2][3] They formed some of the first Little Manila communities in the United States, and they played a pivotal role in the farmworker movement.[4] The term manong comes from the Ilocano word for "elder brother,"[5] while manang means "elder sister"; these are derived from Spanish hermano/hermana.[1]

In 1898, the United States entered a roughly fifty year period of colonial control in the Philippines.[6] The Spanish American War (April-August 1898) ended Spanish colonial rule in the region, and the Philippines were ceded to the US in the Treaty of Paris.[7] This was followed by the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), in which Filipino independence fighters, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, fought against American forces. The war was brutal, and total of 200,000 Filipino civilians died.[8] Meanwhile, the US government, under William Howard Taft, launched a pacification campaign to win over support from Filipino elites, in 1900. This ultimately helped contribute to the defeat of the Filipino independence forces, and the war officially ended in 1902.[8]

Following the U.S. annexation of the Philippines, Filipinos began to emigrate to the United States.[9] In 1903, the first documented group of Filipinos emigrated to the United States.[10] The majority of Filipino immigrants were young, single males, who came to work in agricultural jobs in California and Hawaii.[9][1] Many of the immigrants worked in farms and tanneries during the growing season.[11] Some also worked in factories.[12] The agricultural and factory work tended to be extremely physically demanding, with harsh conditions and low pay.[12] During the agricultural off season, the manong often worked in cities and towns, such as San Francisco, in primarily service industry and domestic roles, such as cooks, waiters, hotel bellhops, hotel "elevator boys," cleaners, chauffeurs, and house servants.[11]

Due to anti-miscegenation laws and immigration restrictions, such as the Immigration Act of 1924, it was difficult for many of the manong generation to find partners and start families. For this reason, many chose to create communities, such as Manilatown, San Francisco, where they lived in the same neighborhood and patronized Filipino restaurants, pool halls, and community spaces.[13][11] They also formed Filipino community organizations, such as Gran Oriente Filipino Masonic and Caballeros de Dimas-Alang.[14] It was common for the manong generation to live in low-cost, single room occupancy hotels, such as the International Hotel, when they were in cities.[15] Many of the manong lived their entire lives as single men.[12]

The manong generation participated in the labor and farmworker rights movement. For example, Filipino workers took part in the Delano grape strike in Delano, California, and some of the earliest meetings of the strike took place at the Filipino Hall.[16]

In 1965, Filipino immigration to the United States rose again, due to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which removed national origin quotas.[9] This marked the end of the manong generation, as a new generation of Filipino emigrants were able to move to the United States and form families, without the previous legal restrictions.[1]

Some manongs sent their pay back to the Philippines, and others tried to save up enough to return home to marry or retire, or to attend college in the U.S. Few ever realized these dreams. Fred was one of the few who was able to find a female companion. Because she was a white woman, they kept their relationship hidden from the public for years to avoid legal persecution or, worse, violent retribution.

With the onset of the Great Depression, Filipinos and other immigrants were convenient scapegoats for the troublesome economic times and subject to racist attacks. In 1930, a mob in Watsonville, California, dragged dozens of Filipino men from their homes and beat them. One was shot and killed. Deaths also resulted from the bombings of Filipino labor camps, often with the complicity of local law enforcement. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, organizing efforts among farm workers were often met with violence, persecution and imprisonment, with agribusiness interests abetted by local, state and national policies all but ensuring the mostly immigrant workforce effectively remained second-class citizens.

Despite the charged racial and economic environment, the manongs never abandoned their dreams for a better life and dignity in America. Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s they organized successful strikes and work stoppages, formed unions and began winning significant improvements to wages and work conditions. By the 1960s, with the prominence of the Civil Rights movement and a spirit of social change in the air, these workers consolidated under the leadership of manongs Philip Vera Cruz, Larry Itliong and others as the mostly Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC).

In September 8, 1965, the AWOC decided to strike against Delano grape growers, demanding pay equal to the federal minimum wage. It was a bold move. Few strikes of this scale had been attempted, and growers had refined their own strategies for combating such efforts. They included fear tactics, hiring thugs to break up union activities and keeping the workforce effectively divided by pitting workers of different races against each other.

This set the stage for the last major wave of immigrant farm labor from Asia: Filipinos. Because the Philippines was a U.S. territory, Filipinos were exempt from immigration restrictions, and in the 1920s and 30s over 100,000 men would come to the U.S. seeking employment and economic opportunities.

With changes in immigration policy and the availability of new economic opportunities, the participation of Filipino Americans in farm labor declined rapidly. By the 1980s and 90s only a handful of manongs, now in retirement, survived. Today, a few remaining monuments help keep their story alive for future generations.

In 2013, the National Park Service identified two sites in Delano, California, for potential inclusion in the National Park System for their relevance to the Filipino farmworker story. They include The 40 Acres, former headquarters of the UFW and the site of Agbayani Village, built by volunteers in 1974 to house aging Filipino farmworkers. The second facility, Filipino Community Hall, was the site of critical meetings and organizing efforts leading up to and after the start of the 1965 Delano grape strike.

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And language was never an issue for them, as they loved joking around with the white college kids. Unlike many other early Asian immigrants to the US, most manongs learned English at a young age in school, since the Philippines was a US territory from 1900 to 1946. Not only were they fluent in English, but were often fans of American music, cinema, and sports. My father mentioned being a big fan of American Western "serials" like Hopalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid, which he saw in Philippine movie theaters when he was a kid.

I soon found myself drawn to the manongs stories. Instead of hanging out with the younger crew, I would spend a lot of time with the manongs, taking in every word they said. Manong Larry walked with a limp from his bouts with gout, and most would just see him as an ordinary old Filipino man. But during World War II he was with a special unit in the US Army, was secretly dropped off the coast of the Philippines by a submarine, and teamed with Philippine guerrillas to help drive the Japanese Imperial Army out of Northern Luzon.

They told me the story of Victor Velasco, an Alaskero who published the Filipino Forum. In the late evenings after work he would type away at his prized typewriter creating his newsletters, which informed Pinoys all along the West coast of Pinoy-related news. My dad had roomed with him when they worked at the cannery at Waterfall, which is now a fancy sports fishing resort. In the mid 1960s, a fire engulfed the Filipino bunkhouse, and five Alaskeros perished in the blaze. Victor was initially safe, but ran back into the burning bunkhouse to retrieve his prized typewriter, and never made it back out.

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