Note:
This is the seventh year I
have run essentially the same post with a little tinkering on the margins. I
keep telling myself I’ll skip it this year.
Then I start to see all of the offensive advertising. This year the post is especially dedicated to
all of the Trumpistas, their beloved Wall, and trolling every mention of a
Hispanic name on social media with vile slurs and threats. A lot of them will be out partying till they
puke tonight.
Today is, as every hearty partier will tell you, is Cinco
de Mayo. In the U.S. in recent years it has become kind of second St. Patrick’s Day decked out in sombreros and serapes
instead of emerald green, toasted to
with Coronas with lime and shots of tequila instead of Guinness
and Jamison’s, and laid out with two-for-one taco deals instead of corn beef and cabbage plates.
It is celebrated without apparent irony
even by those who cheer Trump, pelt busloads of children with curses and
rocks, and who send semi-literate screeds to the newspapers railing against those damned lazy, criminal immigrants.
Americans celebrating Cinco de Mayo with perfect cultural reverence and respect. |
Mexican-American restaurant owners and importers of spirits and trinkets
appreciate the business. Grade
schools have the kids make paper
hats and sing Spanish songs for a one day lesson in Mexican culture. And immigrant
communities hold fiestas and parades, glad that for one day of the year the rest of the
country is paying attention to them in
sort of a good way. If you ask most of the revelers what they are celebrating, they will mumble something
vague about Mexican Independence
Day.
Of course they are wrong. Independence Day is Diez y Seis de Septiembre
(September 16th) celebrating the day in 1810 when Father
Miguel Hidalgo read the Gritto de Hidalgo beginning Mexico’s War
of Independence from Spain.
In Mexico Cinco de Mayo is a minor patriotic holiday observed mostly
in the State of Puebla. It celebrates the victory Mexican patriots over a large, modern and well
equipped French army in the Battle
of Puebla on May 5, 1862. It was not even the final victory of the war against the French, who did not evacuate the country until
1866.
In 1861 the President of Mexico,
Benito Juarez, had been forced to default
on Mexico’s heavy debt to European
powers. Britain, France and other powers all made threats to redeem their
debts by force if
necessary. They were warned by
the United States, which invoked
the Monroe Doctrine, not to intervene in Mexico. French Emperor
Napoleon III recognized the U.S. would be too preoccupied with its own Civil War to take action and
dispatched a large French Army to take
control of the country.
After initial success the occupying
French Army with its Mexican allies,
numbering 8,000 men was met by 4,000 Mexican
troops loyal to Juarez under the command of General Ignacio Zaragoza SeguĂn and soundly defeated. It was an enormous moral boost for the Mexicans,
but only delayed the French march on the capital of Mexico
City.
This
mural in Mexico City by Antonio González Oroaco depticts Juarez as the “Symbol
of the Republic” during the Battle of Puebla.
|
In 1864 a plebiscite conducted under
French guns invited the Austrian Hapsburg Prince Ferdinand Maximilian to
sit as Emperor of Mexico with his wife Carlota as Empress.
Maximilian did have support of some
Mexican conservatives, large land owners, and the Catholic
Church, but despite his liberal bent—he
continued many of Juarez’s land
reforms and even offered the former
President the post of Prime Minister—Mexican patriots refused to recognize his rule
or the French occupation that made it possible.
Juarez and his supporters engaged in
a grizzly war of attrition against
French forces. With his army slowly
being bled away and the costs of
occupation far outstripping any
profits to the empire, Napoleon III began to withdraw his support. When the American Civil War ended and
American intervention with a modern and battle hardened army became a distinct
possibility, the French Emperor finally withdrew his troops.
Maximilian, deluding himself that he was truly the popular Emperor of Mexico
stayed behind with his loyal generals to fight it out with the Juaristas. Carlota made a desperate trip to Europe in which she traveled from capital to capital
begging for assistance for her husband. When she failed, she suffered an emotional and mental breakdown. One by one Maximilian’s loyal armies were
defeated. He was captured by republican
troops after trying to make a break-out from the besieged city of Santiago
de Querétaro on May 15, 1867. The would-be Emperor was tried by court martial and executed by firing squad on June 19.
But if you ask any reveler at the bar tonight about any of
this, all you will probably get is a blank
stare and, if you’re lucky, a Margarita.
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