America is in the Heart

When the fishing season ends, Allos and the other workers return to Seattle. They are immediately told that they barely made any money after the shady accountants tallied up a bunch of bogus charges that they supposedly accrued. Later, Marcelo and Allos go to a dance hall where a fight erupts over one of the girls. There is a gunshot, and the club erupts in violence. Allos escapes and hides in a church down the street where he meets a man who offers him a job. They drive to a small town called Moxee City to work as apple pickers. The leader of their crew is a shifty man named Cornelio Páez.

There is a lot of tension among the Filipinos on the crew, but they share a common enemy: the white people of Yakima Valley who would love to drive them out. Allos becomes friends with an old-timer named Julio. One day Páez leaves to get the workers’ paychecks and never returns. Julio beats Páez’s bookkeeper, whom no one trusts, and tells him that he better retrieve their money. Seeing this level of violence in America is perversely comfortable to Allos. It is familiar.

One night during a party on their employer’s lawn, a group of armed white men attack the Filipino workers and their friends. One girl is shot. Allos jumps into the fight but Julio pulls him away. Allos tells Julio that he wants to go to California, but Julio says it is too hard to be Filipino there. They take a train to Sunnyside, and Julio leaves for what he insists will only be a moment. He never returns. Allos realizes that Julio did him a favor by trying to keep him away from California. He promises himself that he will never be unkind to another Filipino. 

As Allos rides on a train to Portland, a dozen men jump on with a girl in tow. Later, in the dark, he sees one of them assault her. When Allos gets up to help the girl, someone knocks him unconscious. Upon waking, Allos sees that the girl is alone. When the train reaches Portland, Allos and the girl board another train to California, and Allos falls asleep.

When he awakes, Allos sees a Black boy playing a harmonica. Allos stares because he has never seen a person with black skin. The boy tells him that they are near Reno, Nevada, far from California. Allos boards a new train for Stockton, California, where thousands of Filipinos live. In a gambling house in Stockton, a Chinese man shoots a Filipino man. As Allos flees down the street, he sees a building on fire. A man named Claro tells Allos it is the Filipino Federation building and that it is on fire because the town is controlled by Chinese gambling lords. Claro tells Allos to steer clear of the Chinese whenever he can.

Though afraid to be alone on the trains, Allos once again finds a strange and nostalgic comfort in the violent personalities he encounters while riding the rails. After a series of train rides across Northern and Central California, Allos arrives in San Luis Obispo. There, he meets a Filipino named Doro who takes him to the center of their community. Allos sees the familiar huts where sex workers operate. Doro asks him if he wants to ride with him to Lompoc. On the way, white detectives pull them over and search their car for white women. Doro says the police think every Filipino is a pimp. Allos realizes that American society hates Filipinos, and in turn, many Filipinos like Doro come to hate American society.

In Lompoc, Allos is strangely drawn to a man in a gambling house. When he follows the man into a house, someone hits Allos. Before the assailant can do too much damage, Allos recognizes his brother, Amado, as the man he followed. Amado asks him questions to prove he is who he says he is, then embraces him. He and his companion, Alfredo, are bootleggers. Their world is brutal and dreary to Allos, and he knows he will not stay long with them. Amado tells him that he never should have come to America. Allos is heartbroken at how small and unhappy his brother seems. He asks God to make sure that America never changes him the way it changed Amado. 

Allos arrives in Los Angeles. As he walks the streets, hungry and cold, he thinks he sees his brother Macario, but it isn’t him. Allos wonders if his entire life will simply be a perpetual flight from one fear to the next. At a Filipino poolroom, two detectives enter and shoot a Filipino boy in the back. Most of the people in the room go back to their game as if nothing happened. A man tells Allos that the detectives sometimes shoot Filipinos for fun.

Shortly thereafter, Allos sees Macario. When asked why the police killed the boy, Macario says Allos will understand one day. He and Macario walk the streets, and Allos is unsure how to express the love he feels for his brother. Over the next week, as Allos stays in a house with Macario and other Filipinos, the cynicism of his brother and his friends weighs him down.

Disappointment is at the heart of Allos’s earliest months in America. His romantic ideas about the United States fail to result in anything good for himself. He quickly realizes that his life will be exploited by unscrupulous men if he does not learn how to take care of himself. His experiences in Alaska, Seattle, and Stockton show that Filipinos in America are viewed both as commodities and vermin—creatures to be used, shunted aside, or eradicated with impunity.

There is a feeling of helplessness in all that he does. He cannot stop the girl on the train from being hurt. He cannot navigate the train system without accidentally heading to Reno. The simple act of drinking tea in a gambling house is interrupted by violence and gunshots. The fact that a homesick Allos finds comfort in this violence—an endemic part of his existence in the Philippines—reveals just how damaging cycles of violence can be on a young person’s psyche.

Allos’s new existence in America is tenuous, and he is forced to rely heavily on other Filipinos for support. As long as he continues to meet Filipinos who have his best interests at heart, he will have chances to grow, but it is obvious that there are no guarantees for his prosperity or safety. This reflects the extent to which racial oppression may either bind communities together or tear them apart. Throughout his career as an activist, Allos will work to fight anti-Filipino racism by consolidating the collective power of Filipino communities as well as the American working class at large.

Upon his arrival in Los Angeles, Allos struggles to find a sense of community with his own people in America. Though initially disgusted by Amado’s turn toward a life of crime, Allos slowly realizes how few other options there are for Filipinos to obtain dignified employment, thanks to pervasive institutional and personal racism. Thus, violence underlies so much of Allos’s experience as a Filipino American, and his life becomes a relentless series of aches and regrets. Tragically, the crime and violence toward which many Filipinos gravitate in the absence of other opportunities only reinforces racist Filipino stereotypes of criminality. In each Filipino community, Allos feels a small amount of solace, but he cannot afford to trust anyone but family.

Even though he commits suicide, the writer Estevan provides Allos a glimmer of hope that it is possible for Filipinos to succeed as artists and professionals in America. When he speaks of becoming a great writer, Allos recognizes his passion, because he feels it as well. However, while Estevan remained unpublished, Allos will not suffer the same fate. Years later, when he reads the story Estevan wrote, it will be a metric to gauge how much sharper his own intellect has become.