Remember Little Manila?
The Stockton community was once the home of the largest community of Filipino Americans in the nation. But like many other ethnic enclaves, it's being threatened by change. Now a preservation group is hoping to save the last three original buildings.
The lingering pain of a World War II bullet wound keeps the almost 80-year-old Alberto Alerre confined to the walls of his Steamboat Landing Apartments in Stockton, Calif. But the Filipino WWII veteran manages to escape every once in awhile through a tunnel in his memory and songs from his homeland.
Over the phone, he warbles a haunting refrain about Little Manila and laughs.
"My memory is hazy," said Alerre, who arrived in Stockton in April 1994 by driving through the city's Little Manila. Although the district is a shadow of its former self, he felt a sense of comfort.
"Be it ever so humble there's no place like home," said Alerre. "Anything that is something to do with the Philippines gives us a sense of nostalgia."
These days, the last physical reminders of the district's historic past as a Filipino hotspot for farm workers and zoot suit clad manong (literally "respected elder") are three dilapidated buildings: the Emerald Restaurant, the Rizal Social Club and the Hotel Mariposa on Lafayette Street. One local preservation group wants to save and transform the hotel into a museum and cultural center. Alerre hopes this dream comes true because his American heart beats for vestiges of his homeland.
The Little Manila Foundation is launching a campaign to raise $4 million for the adaptive reuse of the Mariposa, the home of many pioneering first generation Filipino men during the 1920s-30s and later the headquarters of the labor union movement. The hotel, which saw its last tenant in 2001, is currently in foreclosure proceedings. The foundation is hoping to raise money to buy the building and redevelop it for community use.
"There are no Filipino museums in America. Right now [all the artifacts] are in people's garages," said Dillon Delvo, Little Manila Foundation executive director. "What better place for one than in Little Manila?"
Saving their 'Alamo'
Throughout the nation, ethnic enclaves disappear and get replaced with chain retailers or urban lofts. But foundation members are determined not to let their history slip away. They are going all out to save the building and revitalize Little Manila.
In addition to the $4 million, the foundation has until Dec. 1 to pay back a predevelopment loan of $216,000, which was used to clean and prepare the Mariposa for construction.
"It's all we have," said Delvo about the Mariposa. "This is our Alamo."
They're studying the revitalization effort of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles as an example. For the past seven years, Dillon and other foundation members have worked tirelessly to stop building demolitions and raise awareness about the district's rich history. They've successfully rallied the city for historic designation and fended off redevelopment plans to turn the buildings into an Asian-themed strip mall. In May 2003, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Little Manila on its list of "America's Most Endangered Places."
Along the way, the preservation movement also helped shape the identities of Stockton young Filipino American community.
"I was really young when I heard about Little Manila," said Brian Batugo, 18, despite being born and raised in Stockton. One day, he saw a huge crowd celebrating the dedication of the district as a historic site and drank in the history in his backyard.
"Most of the people leading the movement are second generation," Batugo, now a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley.
Over the years, the foundation has been successful in education, but now they need to focus on fundraising.
"The bottom line is we need money," said Delvo.
A Community of their Own
Starting in the 1920s, Stockton's rich agricultural industry drew many Filipino Americans to its city limits to work in the fields. Those pioneering settlers helped build the city's economy, but were denied citizenship, land ownership and the right to live in most neighborhoods. So they simply created their own community: a six-block area in downtown around Lafayette and El Dorado Streets.
Little Manila was a slice of the homeland for Filipino immigrants who lived in residential hotel rooms like the Mariposa, worked under harsh conditions and socialized in the district's pool halls and dance halls like the Rizal Social Club, named after Jose Rizal, a national hero of the Philippines.
But the thriving community couldn't stand up to change. In the 1960s, state officials razed several blocks of Little Manila to build the Crosstown Freeway that cut right through the heart of the community.
"When they built that freeway ... it wiped out a lot of the history," said Delvo.
In 1999, the city bulldozed another block of Little Manila to make room for a McDonalds and a gas station. That was when the Little Manila Foundation and their young leaders decided it was time to reclaim their history.
An Entire Generation is an Island
In Stockton, many residents spend time plotting their escape from city limits and the word "community" takes on a more transient meaning. But for Delvo, leaving his native city helped him learn about its Filipino American history.
"There's a certain level of humility in the Filipino culture," he said about his father, Cipriano Delvo, who worked with the United Farm Workers labor movement in the 1960s. "His whole thing was I become nothing like him. He didn't want to see us in the fields, so he didn't teach us history or language."
The silence is also tied into feelings of class and shame. After the Tyding-McDuffie Act passed in 1934 Filipinos were prohibited from immigrating to the United States until the Immigration Act of 1965 opened the door to a wave of new professional Filipino immigrants.
"It was close to 30 years," said Delvo. "That generation was on an island. The post '65 generation had no relationship with Filipino farm workers who have been there for so long. There was a sense of, 'you've been here for so long and you're still field workers?' My father saw themselves as failures as well.
"We're trying to tell the field worker story. To us, it's the pillar of strength and the origin of our community. Some people don't see it that way," said Delvo. "Those building were neglected by the Filipino community."
In fact, opposition of the preservation effort even came from within the Filipino American community. Residents said the buildings represented a sordid part of history, especially the Rizal Social Club where bachelors paid money to dance with women. The building recently came alive with the music of the Black Eyed Peas, a hip hop group with Filipino American member Apl.de.Ap. Young Filipino Americans dressed in bright colored dress and fedoras brought history back to life by dancing to "Bebot," a Tagalog song with the triumphant chorus of "Filipino! Filipino!"
It's the youth who are continuing the fight to reclaim their history.
"Jose Rizal had this saying about how you must look behind you to see where you are going," said Batugo. In the last three remnants of Little Manila, he feels a sense of pride. "I feel this tie to come back to Stockton."
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