The Rita M. Cacas Filipino American Community Archives collection
Collection
0371-MDHC
The Rita M. Cacas Filipino American Community Archives documents Filipino American communities and organizations in the Washington, D.C., metro area (including Maryland and Northern Virginia) and in the state of Maryland more broadly. The collection also documents significant historic events related to the transition of United States' occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946) to the country's independence, including Filipino military and government service under the United States in the two World Wars. The collection includes evidence and documentation of historic special events such as dances, celebrations and receptions, and social/professional clubs of the D.C. area Filipino community.
Family records include the Brazal, Cacas, Fuñe-Palangdao, Panaganiban-Chapman, Quidangen-Sarmiento, and Gaudiel-Toribio families among several others. Also included in the collection are newspaper clippings and press release photographs concerning Filipino and Filipino American dignitaries, officials and military personnel. There are photographs and documents related to Filipino American organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Ladies Auxiliary (Vicente Lim and General MacArthur Post 5471). Finally, the collection contains materials related to art, research, and publishing projects completed by Rita M. Cacas. Materials in the archive include photographs, correspondence, newspaper clippings, publications, ephemera, audiovisual materials, and electronic records. The Rita M. Cacas Foundation (RMCF) has partnered with the UMD Libraries to create this collection and supports the community archives in a variety of ways. Additional materials for the archives are welcome from members of the local community.
This collection is open to the public and must be used in the Special Collections reading room. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws before using this collection.
Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy.
Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder.
Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.
12.15 Linear Feet (3 letter size Hollingers, 1 small flat box, 5 photograph binder boxes, 3 oversize boxes)
English
The Filipino American Community Archives includes materials dated from 1921 to 2019, as well as undated materials, some of which could be from before 1921. The bulk of the materials date from 1930-1993. The collection consists of personal and published materials, including photographs, audiovisual materials, documents, newspaper clippings, digital photographs, ephemera, research notes, and publications. The collection is primarily an assortment of family photographs from first-generation immigrant families from the Philippines. Family records include the Brazal, Cacas, Fuñe-Palangdao, Panaganiban-Chapman, Quidangen-Sarmiento, and Gaudiel-Toribio families among several others. In addition, there are documents and photographs related to various Filipino American organizations from around the Washington, D.C. area.
The Rita M. Cacas Filipino American Community Archives documents Filipino American communities and organizations in the Washington, D.C., metro area (including Maryland and Northern Virginia) and in the state of Maryland more broadly. The collection currently documents significant historic events related to the transition of United States' occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946) to the country's independence, including Filipino military and government service. Unlike the west coast Filipino immigrants (primarily farmers, laborers, cannery workers) during the first half of the twentieth century, D.C. area Filipino immigrants worked for the U.S. government and the military serving in World Wars I and II, and for federal or local government and educational agencies. This collection is important in depicting the lives of first and second-generation Filipino-American immigrants and how their families developed. The collection demonstrates Washington, D.C., Filipino ties and fluidity of movement to the Philippines, to other areas of the country, and to the Washington, D.C. area. The individuals portrayed in this collection are the Filipinos who eventually created a community in the D.C metro area before the immigration reform of the 1960s and the completion of the Beltway in 1964.
Simultaneously, this active collection also is also beginning to document the succeeding generations of Filipino Americans. After World War II, and especially after immigration laws relaxed in 1965, the next large wave of Filipinos began arriving and settling in the D.C. area primarily in the Oxon Hill and Fort Washington communities in Maryland. Their stories are very different from the early Filipino immigrants in D.C. who were U.S. colonial and federal civilian government workers, taxi cab drivers, and WWII soldiers who fought under the American flag. The new Filipino immigrants were doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, and WWII U.S. veterans. The stories and details of the post-1965 D.C. Filipino immigrants remain relatively unknown outside of their own families. Focused on surviving as new immigrants during difficult times, they worked to blend in with American culture and communities. Fostered by public categorizations that didn't include "Filipino" as an option, many later generations lost their sense of how their community was unique, and where they had come from. By the 1980s and 1990s, members of the early pioneering generations were aging, downsizing, and eventually passing away, leaving third and fourth generation descendants and more recent immigrants little knowledge of the early Filipino communities or their shared history. Some descendants still have memories, stories, and historical materials to share and it is imperative to capture this history before it is lost. In sharing this history, community members and members of the public will better understand how over more than a century of Filipinos have shaped the American experience.
One area of life which is clearly shown in this collection is the participation of Filipinos in the Filipino and the United States governments. The government of the Philippines (the government in exile) was based in Washington, D.C., during World War II. Many prominent individuals participated in events held by Filipino Americans. Some influential figures depicted in the collection include Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady of the United States from 1963-1969; Diosdado Macapagal, ninth president of the Philippines from 1961-1965; and Manuel L. Quezon, president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines (1935-1944). Many members of the Filipino community served in the United States military and this collection contains photographs of these men from the mid-twentieth century onward, including documentation of Filipinos serving in the Navy and working at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
This collection also depicts both family life and social aspects of the Filipino American community in Maryland, Virginia, and the D.C. area. A majority of the photographs are from social events: dances, birthday parties, picnics, weddings, etc. These events include both Filipinos and members of other ethnic groups involved in the Filipino American community. Portrait-style photographs of individual Filipino Americans are also included. Additionally, the collection depicts interactions between the Filipino community and the greater community around them through photographs.
In 2023, the collection grew with addition of new materials documenting Filipino American organizations in the Washington, D.C. Area. These include the Miss Teenage Philippines Pageant, Inc., the Philippines Arts, Letters and Media Council (PALM), Philippines on the Potomac and others.
The collection is organized into five series with additional subseries in each series:
This collection contains born-digital materials. If you would like to access these materials, please contact us prior to your visit as items may require specialized software for access.
This collection also contains audiovisual materials. Items that cannot be used in the Special Collections reading room or are too fragile for researchers require that a digital copy be made prior to use. If you would like to access these materials, please contact us prior to your visit.
Rita M. Cacas collected materials from the Filipino American community in the Washington, D.C., area in 2015 and 2016 and continues to solicit materials for the collection. Cacas began collecting many of these materials in 1993 for a photograph exhibition named A Visit with My Elders: Portraits and Stories of Washington, D.C. Filipinos. She later collected materials in order to publish a book on Filipino Americans in Washington, D.C., Filipinos in Washington D.C., Arcadia Publishing, 2009. These materials come from many different families. For more detailed provenance information see the description for each individual series. The materials were donated between March 31, 2015 and October 19, 2015.
In 2015, three websites were crawled and archived using Archive-It following the strategic partnership between the Rita M. Cacas Foundation, Inc., and the Univesierty of Maryland Libraries to document the Filipino-Americans in Washington, D.C.
Additional materials were donated in January 2016. An oversized photograph was donated by Prima Lagoy on April 27, 2016. Digitized photographs and correspondence, as well as photocopies of newspaper clippings were donated April 30, 2016 by Anthony Sarmiento, Teresa Carandang and Erwin Tiongson, Elena Brazal, and Nila Straka. Additional materials were donated by Nita Mondoñedo Smith in August 2016, Rita M. Cacas in October 2016, and Ben Montano in October 2016.
In 2017, photographs and textual documents were donated Rosalinda Yangas, Amy Solis, and the Panganiban-Chapman family. Rita M. Cacas donated additional materials in 2019, 2022, and 2023.
Additional materials or assistance identifying the people in photographs are welcome from any interested member of the community. Contact the curator for more information.
Some photographs have been digitized and are available online through links in the finding aid.
The materials of the Filipino American Community Archives were originally organized into series primarily by family provenance. Two exceptions, existed, however. The first series was organized to represent various historical and cultural projects undertaken by Rita M. Cacas, while the sixteenth series encompassed press release photographs. These series were organized alphabetically after the first donation of materials and successive materials were added chronologically in the order in which individuals and families donated materials. This decision was made in order to maintain original order of new materials and allow for ease of adding new accessions to the finding aid.
After extensive review, it was decided in 2024 to reorganize the collection for improved searchability and accessibility of specific materials within the collection. Existing series were consolidated and new series were added to reflect the nature and content of this growing collection. The series arrangement was changed to create an overarching “Series 2: D.C. - Area Filipino American Families” series under which each Filipino family would be nested as a subseries. Additional new series, such as the new Series 3: D.C. - Area Filipino American Organization, were created to better reflect new materials being added to the collection. The name of what was originally Series 16: Press Release Photographs, was changed to Series 5: Photographs of Prominent Filipino Figures, to facilitate the inclusion of non-press release photographs.
The materials collected and displayed in Rita Cacas' 1993 exhibit, A Visit with My Elders: Portraits and Stories of Washington, D.C. Filipinos, (Series 1, Subseries 1) are boxed together as a part of the Rita M. Cacas Project Series. These materials were left in their original condition and include matted photographs and photographs mounted on foam core. The remaining physical materials in Series 1 were placed in acid-free folders. All staples and metal paper clips were removed and replaced with acid-free plastic paper clips. The audiovisual materials were moved to a new box with other audiovisual materials donated in 2022.
Two notebooks created by Rita Cacas for research on her book, Filipinos in Washington, D.C. included information pages about donors that were removed for reasons of privacy and confidentiality. Dividers were placed between series in the notebooks. Although Cacas collected these materials, they largely reflect the history of the families throughout the collection and so these materials are intellectually listed in the relevant family subseries.
Originally, the number of the notebook where a photograph could be found was noted at the end of its title in brackets. With the 2024 rearrangement of the collection, the two notebooks were divided into five 3-ring photograph binder boxes organized alphabetically by last name, and new accruals were incorporated into the boxes including materials from the Alcoy Family, Frigilana Family, Gaudiel-Torbio Family, Madelo Family, Mondoñedo Family, and the Taguding Family.
The original two notebooks included materials from the Buena Family, Cacas Family, Calabia Family, Paredes Family, Quidangen Family, Fuñe Family, Panganiban-Chapman Family, Puyot Family, and the Montano Family. Materials consist primarily of photographs, notes, and some documents. The materials have not been placed in acid-free sleeves. Future preservation needs may require a reassessment of these initial decisions. Additional preservation work and separation of materials may be required.
The materials in the Mondoñedo series were originally housed in a notebook but were placed (in their original order) into acid-free sleeves and stored in an acid-free photograph binder box. Photocopies of the outside of the original notebook are included in the photograph binder box.
Oversize photographs, which were not part of the research notebooks (these photographs were generally too large for the notebooks), were placed into acid-free folders by family provenance. Each photograph was placed in Mylar sleeves. Any plastic wrappings previously used were discarded. Paper notes are attached to many of these photographs either with plastic paper clips or with the Mylar.
A framed colorized photograph from President Quezon's Luncheon (1942) was wrapped in acid-free tissue paper and placed in Oversize Box 2. A spacer was used with extra tissue paper to secure the object in place.
All materials were placed in acid-free boxes, with some materials in acid-free folders and others in acid-free enclosures.
This collection includes a complex array of digital materials including digital materials from a USB stick, three CDs, some digital photographs of events, and digitized photographs and correspondence scanned at a community digitization event held on April 30, 2016. An inventory of all digital materials was created. Unique digital materials (ones for which there was not a good physical original copy or no physical original copy) were placed into a file and added to the appropriate series. The USB is in an acid-free folder with the Cacas Project Files. The CDs (scanned pages of a scrapbook) are in the sleeves and part of the Buena Family subseries. Back-up copies of the original USB and CD are stored on a UMD Libraries local drive.
Digital files are in a variety of formats including Adobe Photoshop (TIF file), JPEG, and Adobe Fireworks PNG File. Some of the digital files are available online and this is indicated in the item-level listings. Files with the notation "[Digital Only]" indicate that there are only copies of these materials available in the UMD Libraries Digital Collections. Many files in the collection were digitized at a community digitization event by the UMD Libraries and original copies of materials were retained by the donors. Items with the notation "[electronic records]" indicate that items were donated as digital files (and do not have physical copies in the collection). These files can be accessed by contacting the collection curator.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives