How a Watsonville project is preserving the stories of Filipino farmworkers for a new generation

As stories of past generations fade, sharing their legacies becomes a way of honoring those who came before us. Their stories live in photographs, memories, faces of loved ones. For Roy Recio, preserving those stories is a way of uplifting a generation of Filipino immigrants who labored as farmworkers in the Pajaro Valley.

Recio started the Tobera Project, a grassroots organization dedicated to collecting oral histories and family artifacts. Partnered with UC Santa Cruz’s Watsonville is in the Heart initiative, they’ve created an extensive digital archive of the Manong generation, rich with photos and memories.

The Tobera Project’s mission will take center stage Saturday, Oct. 3, at downtown’s Romo Park for the fifth annual Watsonville Filipino American History Month festival. Recio invites the community to celebrate Filipino culture while paying tribute to the farmworkers who shaped Watsonville. 

Bay Area R&B band Relative Key will perform, followed by hip-hop dancers, ballroom dancers and a cappella singers from UCSC’s Bayanihan Filipino Student Association.

While Recio joked that most people come for the food — vendors will offer lumpia, taho, leche flan, boba and more — he said the festival is about more than entertainment. 

“You can really see the joy people have in seeing each other and reminiscing. The stories never end,” Recio said. “It’s always good to share stories, share bread, share laughter, share sorrow — all the emotions that one does with their community.”

Recio started the Tobera Project in 2019 after his mother passed away as a way to give back to Watsonville’s Filipino American community.

“My parents came from a generation that was being lost or faded away,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that they were properly honored and dignified in their history.”

Recio, a third-generation Filipino American, grew up in Watsonville. His father came to the United States in 1928, working in the Pajaro Valley as part of the Manong generation who arrived primarily to the West Coast and Hawaii in the 1920s and ’30s. 

“Missionaries told them, ‘You can come to America, earn a great wage, achieve the ‘American dream’ and have opportunity,’ but they didn’t tell them how difficult and arduous the work would be,” Recio said. “It was 11, 12 hours a day of backbreaking work, planting, harvesting and propagating fruits and vegetables for our growing nation.”

Filipino farmworkers became crucial members of the agriculture industry in the Pajaro Valley. They also faced systemic racism and violence. 

In 1930, tensions erupted into a five-day anti-Filipino race riot in Watsonville. Filipino laborers were attacked and driven from labor camps. At the time, many Filipino workers were young men who had come to the U.S. alone, without their families.

One of the men killed was Fermin Tobera. His legacy became a defining part of the community’s history and inspired the name of Recio’s organization. Recio said these histories became “kitchen table” conversations, but were never shared publicly. 

“My parents never talked about these things. No one wants to tell their son, ‘I was attacked.’ It was hard for them to overcome that,” Recio said. “They were always considered to be second-class citizens. We were never really part of the American fabric.” 

Recio started the Tobera Project to “acknowledge and honor their legacy.” What started with calendars filled with local families’ photos turned into a larger effort with Watsonville is in the Heart to collect and preserve oral histories.

Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez, who co-founded Watsonville is in the Heart, is one of the grand marshals for this year’s festival. In addition to archiving oral histories and creating curriculum for Watsonville is in the Heart, Gutierrez works as an associate professor of history at UC Santa Cruz.

“Filipino Americans have been here for a very long time,” Gutierrez said. “The FAHM festival is a way for members of the local Watsonville Filipino American community to come together and stake a claim and have a celebration here in the environment of the Pajaro Valley.”

Gutierrez said each year has seen more people come out to celebrate.

“People come down from the Bay Area, San Jose, to really support the Watsonville FAHM festival,” she said. “Every year has had an increasing number of vendors. As a mom, I really enjoy seeing the people who sell children’s books.”

Caitlin Bayaca, who designs murals and graphics for the Tobera Project, said working with the project is her way of “saying thank you and giving back.”

“I’m able to contribute to the Filipino community in my own way, which is through art,” said Bayaca, who studies elementary education at San Diego State Universiry. “I’ve been able to see how the idea of Bayanihan was in my own life this whole time, but never explicitly taught to me.”

Bayanihan, the central theme of this year’s festival, is a Tagalog word referring to “everyone working together to uplift the community,” Recio said. He said forming these intergenerational connections is one of the project’s most important accomplishments.

“We’ve been telling our stories, and people are listening,” Recio said. “We’ve done a lot of great things, honoring and dignifying our parents. It’s just overflowing with love, respect and the sharing of Bayanihan.”

For Recio, that spirit is what the festival is ultimately about: bringing people together, sharing stories and histories, and welcoming everyone.

“I always say, for that day, everyone’s Filipino, so you fit right in,” Recio said. “No matter who you are or what you look like, everyone’s always welcome.”

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