Involving violent assaults on Filipino American farm workers by local white residents opposed to immigration, the riots highlighted the racial and socioeconomic tensions in California's agricultural communities.
[2] The Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924, which targeted non-whites of Asian descent, still allowed Filipinos to answer the growing demand for labor on the U.S. mainland.
From the 1920s on, "overwhelmingly young, single, and male"[3] Filipinos migrated to the Pacific Coast, [4]joining Mexicans in positions previously filled by Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Indians.
In California's Santa Clara and San Joaquin valleys, Filipinos were often assigned to the backbreaking work of cultivating and harvesting asparagus, celery, and lettuce.
As in Hawaii, farmers used the industry and perceived passivity of these "little brown brothers" to counter the so-called "laziness" of working-class whites and other ethnic groups.
[7] Due to gender bias in immigration policy and hiring practices, of the 30,000 Filipino laborers following the cycle of seasonal farm work, only 1 in 14 were women.
[9] Outside of field work, Filipino men were noted to dress stylishly and lived the bachelor lifestyle, which made them viable suitors to women outside their own race.
[13] Two months later, in the morning of December 2, 1929, in Watsonville, a coastal town 189 miles (304 km) away, police raided a boardinghouse and found two white girls, aged 16 and 11, sleeping in the same room with Perfecto Bandalan, a 25-year-old lettuce grower.
[4] Near midnight on January 18, 1930, 500 white men and youths gathered outside a Filipino taxi dance club in the Palm Beach section of Watsonville.
[17] Hunting parties were organized; the white mob was run like a "military" operation with leaders giving orders to attack or withdraw.
Fermin Tobera died at age 22 after being shot in the heart when he was hiding in a closet with 11 others, trying to avoid the rounds of bullets fired at a bunkhouse in Murphy Ranch in San Juan Road on January 23.