DALY CITY, California – If there was even a smidgen of doubt that this city has the highest concentration of Filipinos in the continental United States, the Oct. 4 fiesta at Gellert Park burnished the point.

Talk about “Pinoy Pride” soaring over the hills that rare cloudless day when folks who identify as and with Filipinos thronged on the football field to check out the food and trinkets, listen to the sounds – music, laughter and multilingual patter reflecting the various regions of the archipelago nation whence the revelers came, mixed with the unique dialects common in diverse enclaves herein today.

Entertainers Gabe Bondoc, Jeremy Passion, Melvinsings, Maddie B, and Sabrina Shauna headlined the program at the 11th “Kasayahan sa Daly City,” a free and open to the public extravaganza.  Thousands gathered where Filipinos are the largest community of color (by most estimates more than 33 percent to the 2020 U.S. Census count of 104, 000 total population) to begin festivities in October – Filipino American History Month, also dubbed FAHM – perfect reason to trumpet and connect with one’s tribe in a massive celebration.  

FANHS LAUNCHES FAHM

We owe it to Filipino American National Historical Society founders Dr. Fred and Dorothy Cordova, who in 1992 introduced a resolution recognizing the 10th month of the year as Filipino American History Month to the FANHS board of trustees.  That pioneering act eventually gifted Filipino Americans an American occasion to cherish alongside June 12, the official Philippine Independence Day.

The Seattle educators sowed the seed that grew into nationwide chapters of their organization and kindled a movement to honor the country’s second largest Asian American population.  The U.S. Congress enshrined the designation in 1992.  In 2015 President Obama crowned the movement with the first FAHM celebration in the White House.  (See https://www.fanhs-national.org/october-is-filipino-history-month)

October too is the birth month of Larry D. Itliong, the union leader who stoked solidarity between Filipino farm workers with their Mexican counterparts to go on a five-year strike that triggered an international grape boycott and resulted in unionization.  Born Oct. 25, 1913 in the Philippines, Itliong was 15 when he came to this country to become a labor icon.  His legacy is yet to be appropriately acknowledged by mainstream accounts outside California.  Here, however, the firebrand activist is revered and memorialized in murals, a resource center and an eponymous elementary school.

This month ushering the final quarter of the year is huge month in history and social justice indeed, and especially the moment in time that inspired the Cordovas to launch FAHM: the first recorded landing of Filipinos on what is now Morro Bay, Monterey County, California.

The date: Oct. 18, 1587.  

“Luzones Indios,” they were called, workers  forced to work aboard Spanish galleons plying the Manila-Acapulco route with treasures from the Pacific. 

Captain Pedro de Unanumo is named as the first known recorder of said Filipino presence, according to history journals.  

Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza (Our Lady of Good Hope) was the “three-masted ship of some 40 tons” that sailed from Manila on July 12, 1587 and made shore Oct. 18, feast of San Lucas, prodding Unanumo to name the spot Puerto San Lucas, according to UCLA librarian and FANHS trustee Eloisa Gomez Borah.  

In 1995 Gomez Borah gave a presentation recounting the Filipino landing at the second Filipino American National Historic Site Landmark installation  at Coleman Park, Morro Bay. The text of her presentation was published in 1996 in the FANHS journal.

She wrote: 

“The landing party proceeds inland in the following formation: First, as many as eight Filipinos with swords and arm shields, then a priest carrying a cross, then the twelve armed Spanish soldiers, and the captain. The Filipinos in the landing party always walked ahead as scouts.”

GRAND START

They were eight and now we are 4.6 million, per the U.S. Census.

Our presence will be noted in Filipino communities on and beyond the mainland, with Daly City among the first to herald the occasion.

Then again Daly City has its “Ninang,” or “godmother” in the Philippine national language.

That would be Perla Ibarrientos, in her 91st year, outworking everyone in her orbit.  There she was rocking a tangerine terno, but of course, stunning like that famous sunset on Manila Bay as she welcomed special guests into the Gellert Clubhouse for a grand Filipino buffet lunch. “Special” means getting a nod from the brawny sentinel checking for the orange VIP wristlets.

“Tita Perla” to beneficiaries of her lifelong volunteership in her home city, the Personnel Commissioner works closely with Pilipino Bayanihan Resource Center, the renowned organization she co-founded nearly 40 years ago to address Filipino issues in the area.  PBRC collaborated with the Office of the City Manager and the Recreation Services Dept., in mounting the grand FAHM event.

Big whoop to Rec Services Director Denise Bown and her diverse team with its deep pool of FilAms providing resources and activities to keep residents of all ages on the move, engaged and connected: Rec Services manager Romeo Benson, supervisors Ray Reyes and Angelo Ignacio, specialist Dustin Ramirez and coordinator Jeff Parangan among them.  With that distinct “bayanihan” (community) spirit.  

 (Cherie Querol Moreno is Executive Editor of Philippine News Today.)