Cinco de Mayo is America's Mexican Holiday

 

Note:  This is at least the 14th year I have run essentially the same post with a little tinkering on the margins. I keep running it because the same shit happens again every year and my Mexican and Chicano friends keep asking me to bring it back.

Today is, as every hearty partyer will tell you, is Cinco de Mayo.  In the U.S. it has become kind of second St. Patrick’s Day decked out in sombreros and serapes instead of emerald green, toasted 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.  It is celebrated without apparent irony even by those who adore Trump’s ardor for rounding up, abusing, jailing, and deporting brown skin immigrants even if some of them turn out to be citizens. 

 

Cinco de Mayo has become as much as an American celebration as Mexican holiday and has become the occasion for public displays of Mexican cultural pride.  This year the signature Chicago Cinco de Mayo Parade was canceled for the second year in a row amid wide-spread concern that the event and the movement of people around it could become targets of opportunity for none-to-careful immigration enforcement sweeps.  Other communities have done the same.  Stark fear stalks even long-time and well established Mexican-American communities.

 

 Part of the problem--commercialized party-til-you puke.

Still, in many places Mexican-American restaurant owners and importers of spirits and trinkets appreciate the business.  Grade schools kids make paper hats and sing Spanish songs for a one day lesson in Mexican culture.  And immigrant communities try to hold the fiestas and parades, glad for one day of the year when 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.  

 

At its best in Mexican-American communities across the US popular Cinco de Mayo celebrations are a rare opportunity to share Mexican culture and traditions with parades and festivals.  Promotion by those communities have elevated the celebration in the US much higher than its modest and regional observations south of the border. 

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.  

 

 This mural in Mexico City by Antonio González Oroaco depicts Juarez as the “Symbol of the Republic” during the Battle of Puebla.

In 1861 the Mexican President 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.  

 

A panoramic painting of the Battle of Puebla, a moral boosting but not final victory of the Mexican Republic under Benito Juarez against the invading French. 

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 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 landowners, 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 bleeding 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 new, modern, and battle-hardened army became a distinct possibility, the French Emperor finally withdrew his troops.  

 

Emperor Maximilian badly miscalculated his popularity and paid for it with his life.

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 capitol to capitol begging for aid 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.

 

Diez y Seis de Septiembre—The One and Only Mexican Independence Day Under a Pall in the US

 

Revolution and religion mix in this homage to Padre Miguel Hidalgo with the banner of the Virgen de Guadalupe and an angel bending to kiss his brow. 

Note:  Across the U.S. and especially in Chicago and Northwest Illinois Usually vibrant celebrations on and around Diez y Seis de Septiembre, Mexican Independence Day are under a cloud of fear.  Several parades and festivals have been canceled or postponed.  Attendance at events that go on is sharply off as community members live in fear of being kidnapped and disappeared by ICE.  Over 300 Federal agents from a baker’s dozen of agencies supported by heavy equipment are pressing Donald Trump’s scourge of the city and defiant officials.  Allies are encouraged to support the Mexican/Chicano/Latinx communities by showing up in solidarity and being prepared to bare witness to any depredations.

Quick, what’s Mexican Independence Day?  If you answered Cinco de Mayo, you’d be wrong.  That is a minor provincial holiday in Mexico that has become a celebration of Mexican pride in the United States.  It celebrates the victory of the Mexican Army over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, during the French invasion of Mexico.  The correct answer is Diez y Seis de Septiembre—September 16—which commemorates El Grito de Delores, the rallying cry which set off a Mexican revolution against Spanish colonial rule and the caste of native born Spaniards who ran roughshod over the people in 1810. 

Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was a respected priest and champion of the Mestizos—mixed Spanish and Indian blood—and the Indios.  Both classes were held in virtual serfdom by a system in which native born Spaniards—Gachupines—held ruthless sway.  Hidalgo had for some time been part of a plot by Criollos to stage a coup d’état by Mexican born Spaniards who were the middling level officers and administers of the system. 

The Criollo plot was to take advantage of resentment of the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne by Napoleon to declare Mexican independence within a Spanish Empire under Ferdinand VII who was considered by the Spanish people to be the legitimate heir to the throne. But Ferdinand was held in France by the Emperor, so if it had succeeded the plot would have created a de-facto republic.  The Gachupines, who had accepted Bonaparte, would be driven out of Mexico. 

Plotters decided on a date in December to stage their coup.  In the meantime, they were quietly trying to line up the support of Criollo officers and by extension the Army.  But the plot was betrayed, and orders were sent out to arrest the leaders, including Hidalgo.

The wife of Miguel Domínguez, Corregidor of Queretaro (chief administrative official of the city of Queretaro) and a leader of the plot, learned of the pending arrests and sent a warning to Hidalgo in the village of Delores near the city of Guanajuato, about 230 miles northwest of the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, Mexico City. The late in the evening of September 15, Hidalgo asked Ignacio Allende, the Criollo officer who had brought the warning, to arrest all the Gachupines in the city.

It was apparent to Hidalgo and Allende that the Criollos had not had time to solidify their support in the army, and indeed that many Criollo officers refused to join.  The revolution would inevitably be crushed.  Sometime in the early morning hours of September 16, Hidalgo made a fateful decision—he would call on the mestizo and Indio masses to rise up.  

 

Indios, Meztizos, and Criollos on the march in this mural by Juan O'Gorman. 

At about 6 A.M.  Hidalgo assembled the people of the pueblo by tolling the church bell.  When they were together he made this hastily drafted appeal:

My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen by three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the Gachupines!

This is the famous Grito de Delores which sparked the revolt.  Runners went out to nearby towns carrying the message.  The long oppressed people flocked to the cause armed with knives, machetes, homemade spears, farm implements, and what few firearms that they could take from the Gachupines. 

With Hidalgo and Allende at their head, the peons began the march to Mexico City.  Along the way they acquired an icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe—Mary depicted as a dark skinned Indian—which became the banner of the revolt.

Along the way a regular Army regiment under the command of Criollos joined the march, but the swelling ranks of peasants—soon to number up to 50,000, was out of control by any authority.  

 

The siege of the fortified granary during the Battle of Guanajuato.  

The first major battle of the war began at Guanajuato, a substantial provincial town, on September 28.  Local officials rounded up the Gachupines and loyal Criollos and their families and made a stand in the town’s fortified granary.  Hundreds of peasants were killed in wild frontal assaults on the position until rocks thrown from above caused the collapse of the granary roof, injuring many.  When a civil official ran up a white flag of surrender, the garrison commander countermanded the order and opened fire on the native forces coming forward to accept it.  Scores were killed.  After that there was no quarter.  With the exception of a few women and children, the 400 occupants of the granary were massacred.  Then the town was pillaged and looted, with Criollo homes faring no better than the native Spaniards.

Of course, Hidalgo had unleashed an unmanageable and ferocious anger among the people.  Along the march any Gachupines unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the rebels were brutally killed, as were any Criollos who sided with them—or were simply assumed to be European born.  The revolt was not just a national one—it was a virtual slave revolt with all the attendant horror that implied.

Word of the fate of Guanajuato mobilized forces in Mexico City and caused most wealthy Criollos to side with the government or try to remain neutral.

Hidalgo and his closest supporters later abandoned the army and returned to Delores.  He was frightened and disillusioned by what he had brought about.  A year later he was captured by Gachupine forces and hanged.

 

Hidalgo, Allende, and almost the entire revolutionary officer corps were trapped and arrested in March 1811 

It took 11 years of war to finally oust the Spaniards. A triumphant revolutionary army finally entered Mexico City on September 28, 1821, issued an official Declaration of the Independence of Mexican Empire, and established a government of imperial regency under Agustín de Iturbide.

But Mexicans mark the beginning of the struggle—the Grito de Delores—as the true anniversary of independence.

 

This year for the first time  , the first woman and the first Jewish president of Mexico, Will read El Grito de Dolores from the Presidential Palace balcony in Mexico City.   Sheinbaum has been noted for boldy standing up to Donald Trump on immigration, trade, and tariffs.  Symbolically El Grito is also a declaration of independence from U.S. imperialism and Neo-colonialism.

Eventually the church bell from Delores was brought to the capital.  Each year on the night of September 15, the President of Mexico rings the bell at the National Palace and repeats a Grito Mexicano based upon the Grito de Dolores from the balcony of the palace to the hundreds of thousands assembled in the Plaza de la Constitución.  At dawn on September 16 a military parade starts in the Plaza passes the Hidalgo Memorial and proceeds down the Paseo de la Reforma, the city’s main boulevard.  Similar celebrations are held in cities and towns across Mexico.

 

America’s Mexican Holiday Cinco de Mayo is Celebrating Under a Cloud

Note:  This is at least the 13th year I have run essentially the same post with a little tinkering on the margins. I keep running it because the same shit happens again every year and my Mexican and Chicano friends keeps asking me to bring it back.

Today is, as every hearty partyer will tell you, is Cinco de Mayo.  In the U.S. it has become kind of second St. Patrick’s Day decked out in sombreros and serapes instead of emerald green, toasted 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.  It is celebrated without apparent irony even by those who adore Trump’s ardor for rounding up, abusing, jailing, and deporting brown skin immigrants even if some of them turn out to be citizens. 

 

Cinco de Mayo has become as much as an American celebration as Mexican holiday and has become the occasion for public displays of Mexican cultural pride.  This year the signature Chicago Cinco de Mayo Parade was canceled amid wide spread concern that the event and the movement of people around it could become targets of opportunity for none-to-careful immigration enforcement sweeps.  Other communities have done the same.  Stark fear stalks even long time and well established Mexican-American communities.

 

 Part of the problem--commercialized party-til-you puke.

Still, in many places Mexican-American restaurant owners and importers of spirits and trinkets appreciate the business.  Grade schools kids make paper hats and sing Spanish songs for a one day lesson in Mexican culture.  And immigrant communities try to hold the fiestas and parades, glad for one day of the year when 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.  

 

At its best in Mexican-American communities across the US  popular Cinco de Mayo celebrations are a rare opportunity to share Mexican culture and traditions with parades and festivals.  Promotion by those communities have elevated the celebration in the US much higher than its modest and regional observations south of the border. 

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.  

 

 This mural in Mexico City by Antonio González Oroaco depicts Juarez as the “Symbol of the Republic” during the Battle of Puebla.

In 1861 the Mexican President 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.  

 

A panoramic painting of the Battle of Puebla, a moral boosting but not final victory of the Mexican Republic under Benito Juarez against the invading French. 

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 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 landowners, 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 bleeding 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 new, modern, and battle hardened army became a distinct possibility, the French Emperor finally withdrew his troops.  

 

Emperor Maximilian badly miscalculated his popularity and paid for it with his life.

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 capitol to capitol begging for aid 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.