[1] Vera Cruz was born in Saoang, San Juan, Ilocos Sur, Philippines (then a territory of the United States) on December 25, 1904.

[2] In 1926, Vera Cruz moved to the United States, where he performed a wide variety of jobs, including working in an Alaskan cannery, a restaurant, and a box factory.

Huerta eventually quit the AWOC to join the National Farm Workers of America, which had a primarily Mexican American membership.

It was like an incendiary bomb, exploding out the strike message to the workers in the vineyards, telling them to have sit-ins in the labor camps, and set up picket lines at every grower's ranch...

[14] Things culminated that year, when Chavez traveled to the Philippines to meet with Ferdinand Marcos, whom Vera Cruz saw as a brutal dictator.

[15] Vera Cruz continued to live in the San Joaquin Valley of California after his resignation, and remained active in union and social justice issues for the rest of his life.

[13] Vera Cruz received the Ninoy M. Aquino Award in 1987, traveling to the Philippines for the first time in fifty years to accept it.