Anniversary of the assassination of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes

Anti-Marcos activists Gene Viernes, left, and Silme Domingo were assassinated.

Twenty-nine years ago, two Filipino American labor organizers were murdered by agents of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

On June 1, 1981, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, who were active ine anti-Marcos movement in the U.S., were working out of the ILWU offices in Seattle when two gunmen walked into the offices and shot and killed the two men. 

Viernes died instantly, but Domingo lived long enough to identify the murderers before he died 24 hours later. Police arrested two cannery workers, Pompeyo Benito Guloy Jr. and Jimmy Bulosan Ramil. They were found guilty of aggravated first degree murder on September 24, 1981, and sentenced to life in prison. A third suspect, Fortunato "Tony" Dictado, leader of the Filipino street gang "Tulisan," was convicted on May 12, 1982 of ordering the murders and he too was sentenced to life in prison.

Police also questioned Local 37 president Constantine "Tony" Baruso), who owned the gun used in the murders. He was not charged at the time, but in 1990 he too was convicted in the murder of Viernes (but acquitted of Domingo's killing) and sentenced to life in prison.

Terri Mast, Domingo's partner, fought back publicly, eventually leading to the murder convictions of Baruso and local gang members. Marcos, who declared martial law in the Philippines in 1972 in order to stay in power, also was found complicit in the conspiracy and a successful civil suit was brought against the dictator in the case. 

Domingo was born in Killeen, Texas, in 1952. His father was a Filipino immigrant who had served in the US Army during World War II. The family moved to Seattle in 1960, where Silme Domingo attended high school and college.

Viernes was born in Yakima, Washington, in 1951, also the son of immigrants from the Philippines. His father worked as a fruit picker and in local canneries. 

Gene Viernes grew up working in the fields with his father before going to school. At 14, he lied about his age and joined International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 37 and worked in the cannery. He spent many of his summers working as an "Alaskero," the nickname for Alaskan salmon cannery workers. At the time, Local 37 largely consisted of Alaskeros who lived in the Seattle area and traveled to Alaska for the summer work every year.

Domingo also began working in the Alaska canneries, and before long, Domingo and Viernes were close friends. They formed the Alaska Cannery Workers' Association. 

In Seattle, Domingo, in particular, was active in protesting the activities of the dictatorship of the Philippines dictator, and he helped organize among the earliest protests of the Marcos regime in Seattle, along with the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP). Domingo would help establish the KDP chapter in Seattle.

By 1981, Domingo was secretary-treasurer of Local 37, and Viernes was a dispatcher. Along with a slate of reformers, they had taken over all of the offices except for president. who wasTony Baruso. 

The reform slate were opponents of Baruso, who was a Marcos supporter with ties to local Seattle gangs. At the time, the Alaskan cannery industry was rife with racial discrimination, with white workers getting the best jobs as well as company-provided food and housing, while Filipino workers worked long, dangerous hours with meager food and squalid living conditions. The reformers not only ran for election as officers in the local, they engaged in class action lawsuits against the canneries.

While we will never know what heights Domingo and Viernes could've achieved in their pursuit of expanded rights for working people and Filipinos, Domingo's partner Teri Mast would go on to be elected president of Local 37, cleaning up the corruption in the local. In 1987, Local 37 merged with the Inlandboatmen's Union (IBU). Mast was later elected national secretary-treasurer of IBU.