Philip Vera Cruz was born in 1904 in Ilocos Sur, the Philippines, and migrated to the U.S. in 1926. Like most of the one hundred thousand Filipinos that left their country in the early twenty century to look for work in the U.S., he would find it either in the California and Pacific Northwest’s farms, in Alaska’s canneries, or, for those living in the cities across the country, as busboy and bellhop in restaurants and hotels. Vera Cruz worked in farms, canneries, restaurants, and in a box factory in several states, including Minnesota, Washington state, North Dakota, Illinois, and California.

In his twenties, he briefly attended Gonzaga University and was regularly sending money to his family in the Philippines. In 1942, Vera Cruz entered the U.S. army and was stationed at San Luis Obispo, California. After being discharged, he settled in the San Joaquin Valley, California, and joined the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in 1965.

The AWOC, a farmworkers union mostly composed of Filipino farm workers, initiated the Delano Grape Strike in 1965 and convinced César Chavez’s National Farm Workers’ Association (NFWA) to join the historical strike. The Filipino farm labor movement in the U.S. was prominent since the early 1920s, when Pablo Manlapit led successful strikes in the Hawaiian fields. Other Filipino union organizers such as Chris Mensalvas (labor leader active in the 1940s and 1950s), Ernesto Mangaoang (the 1930s and 1940s), and Larry Iltiong (farmworkers’ organizer since the 1930s, and by 1965 leader of the AWOC) also played an important role organizing Filipino farmworkers.

Growing disagreement with Chávez led to his resignation from the UFW in 1977 (one of the disagreements being Chavez’s visit to the President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, a dictator). Vera Cruz continued to support the UFW’s activities and stayed active in the Asian American civil rights movement.