Advertising like this promotes stereotypes of Mexican culture and promotes party-til-you-puke celebrations by Americans.
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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 with typical cultural sensitivity.
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Mexican-American restaurant owners and importers of spirits
and trinkets appreciate the business. Grade schools have the kids make
paper hats and sing Spanish language
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.
Mexican-Americans are for the opportunity to celebrate their culture in parades and festivals in many communities.
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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.
Outnumbered two to one, Mexican troops defeated an invading French Army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
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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 Seguín and was soundly defeated. It was an enormous moral boost for the Mexicans, but only delayed the French march on
the capital of Mexico City.
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 U.S. 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.
This 1901 Mexican poster depicts Benito Juarez and long time President Porfirio Díaz as the rising sun.
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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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