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.

 

The Americanization of St. Patrick's Day—Not a Quiet Catholic Feast Day Any More

This vintage St. Patrick's Day greeting card is emblematic of the adoption and popularization of the holiday in the U.S.  In reality the acceptance by Yankee Uncle Sam--presumably Protestant--of Catholic "bog trotters" was far from smooth or cordial.  

Note:  For those of you unaware, this is my natal anniversary. I Turn 77 today.  Bet you wondered how I got the name.  Anyway, I am rerunning a version of an oft run classic. Meanwhile to the Irish and wan-a-be-Irish, enjoy the day.  Have fun but try not to live down to some unfortunate stereotypes.   And for Christ’s sake don’t drink the damn green beer, an abomination and insult to the soul!  Have a dram of Jameson’s with a Guinness back for me!

Today is the Feast of St. Patrick, originally a low-key religious celebration in the Auld Sod.  In the U.S. it’s St. Patrick’s Day, which is, as they say, a whole other kettle of fish.  For better or worse this quasi-holiday is an Irish American phenomenon.  Let’s trace the metamorphosis from religiosity to ethnic muscle flexing, to Irish nationalism, to partisan political display, to equal opportunity public drinking festival. 

"Everybody's Irish!"  is the new equal opportunity slogan of American St. Patrick's Day promoted by breweries, bars, and bottle peddlers of all sorts.  The message seems to be working.

It all began on March 17, 1762 with the very first St. Patrick’s Day parade anywhere in the world.  Irish soldiers in a British regiment headquartered in New York City marched behind their musicians and drew cheers from the small local Irish minority, both Catholic and Protestant—mostly Protestant in those days.  It became if not an annual event, one which was observed most years.  When the Redcoats left the city at the end of the American Revolution various local Irish mutual aid societies like the Hibernians and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick held often competing events which, if they happened to intersect, sometimes devolved into brawls. 

After the United Irishman Uprising of 1798 was crushed, the British imposed a harsh repression including the banning of the wearing o’ the Green, a new wave of Irish refugees flooded New York, Boston, and other Eastern cities.  They inoculated the annual St. Patrick’s Day observances with a new political significance and wearing green (instead of the traditional Irish colors of blue and gold) became a protest against British rule in the motherland and a call to action to overthrow that rule. 

The Potato Famine unleashed yet another wave of immigration bringing throngs of displaced peasants to the already growing slums of the city. Competing Irish aid societies finally decided to unite behind a single, massive demonstration in New York in 1848.  The theme of independence for Ireland was mixed with an act of aggressive defiance by the now largely Catholic masses against the nativists from Tammany Hall who controlled the city government, the Know Nothings, and street gangs who harassed and bullied them.

In trying to market to Irish Americans, not everyone got it right.  This tonedeaf greeting card featured the pug-nosed Irish stereotypes featured in Know Nothing and anti-immigrant publications.  The figure on the left has a sash identifying him as a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.  The one on the right supposedly is from a competing organization that had frequently brawled with the AOH for supremacy on St. Patrick's Day.

In 1858 the Fenian Brotherhood was organized in the United States in support the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret oath society agitating for the establishment of a “democratic Irish republic.”  The St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York and other cities became powerful recruiting tools for the Fenians. Social events around the day annually raised thousands of dollars, much of it to support fantastic plots and buy arms.  On more than one occasion Fenian plots to attack Canada brought the U.S. and Britain perilously close to war, which, of course was the objective. 

By the second half of the 19th Century New York's St. Patrick's Day parades had become elaborate celebrations of Irish nationalism and a display of raw political power in the city.

The failure of the Easter Rebellion in 1916 in which labor leader James Connolly, fresh from several years in America as an IWW organizer, and an Irish-American unit of Hibernian Rifles were both involved, led to a fresh round of frenzied support for independence back home.  The campaign of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the Irish Civil War between the Free State government and republican rebels were both largely financed by Irish Americans.  Even after the establishment of the Republic in 1937, Irish-Americans continued to fund rebel groups aimed at uniting Ulster to the rest of the island, including support for Sein Fein and the Provisional IRA in their armed struggle through The Troubles.  All of this was reflected in the parades and other celebrations of the day which had become dominated by Rebel songs.

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations also were important displays of Irish culture.  Traditional Irish music and dance was so suppressed at home that both nearly disappeared.  Irish-Americans like Chicago’s Police Chief Francis O’Neill collected and preserved the songs and began schools to teach them and traditional Irish step dancing.  Both were re-introduced into Irish culture because of these efforts and put on display in St. Patrick’s Day parades, banquets, and concerts.

Hizzonor da Mayor, Richard J. Daley steps off with his blackthorn stick and green fedora at the head of the 1963 Chicago St. Patrick's Day joined by officials of the sponsoring Plumbers union, the Irish Consul General, Cardinal Albert Meyer (second from left} and actor Pat O'Brien to the Mayor's left and a bevy of politicians in the second row jockeying for position.  Then Republican Cook County States Attorney James P. Thompson can be spotted just over Daley's shoulder.

The Irish also excelled at political organization in this country.  Unlike other ethnic groups with large concentrations like the Germans, they were able to create viable political organizations with alliances with other ethnic groups that allowed them to control many city governments for decades.  In Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley brought the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, previously a South Side neighborhood event, to the heart of the Loop and dyed the Chicago River green every year in a display of political power.  Politicians of all ethnicities jockeyed to be as close as possible to Hizonor in the front ranks of the parade. 

By the late 20th Century St. Patrick’s Day spread well beyond its ethnic roots.  “Everyone is Irish on St. Paddy’s Day” became a byword pushed by breweries, bars, and distilleries making the day one of the biggest party days of the year.  Green beer and vomiting teenagers have become new symbols of the holiday. 

The semi-legendary Saint whose feast day is the occasion of all of the hoopla.  He wasn't Irish and did not drive the snakes out of the island--they never lived there to begin with.

And what about St. Patrick?  Well, what about him!

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.

 

The Americanized St. Patrick’s Day—Not a Quiet Catholic Feast Day Any More

This vintage St. Patrick's Day greeting card is emblematic of the adoption and popularization of the holiday in the U.S.  In reality the acceptance by Yankee Uncle Sam--presumably Protestant--of Catholic "bog trotters" was far from smooth or cordial.

Note: For those of you unaware, this is my natal anniversary. I turn 76 today. Bet you wondered how I got the name. Anyway, I am rerunning a classic post. Meanwhile to the Irish and wan-a-be-Irish, enjoy the day. Have fun but try not to live down to some unfortunate stereotypes. And for Christ’s sake don’t drink the damn green beer, an abomination and insult to the soul! Have a dram of Jameson’s with a Guinness back for me! 

 

 

 

 

Up until the mid '60s St. Patrick's Day remained a religious festival in Ireland and the annual parade in Dublin, seen here in 1905, was mostly a religious procession, often led by the St. John's Total Abstinence and Benefit Society.  Now the parade is an American style extravaganza awash in Kelly Green, dancing leprechauns, shamrocks, and scantily clad girls.  General rowdiness is the rule of the day, largely due to the large annual pilgrimages to the Auld Sod by Irish Americans, now generations removed from the island.
 

Acknowledging the elephant in the room—today is the Feast of St. Patrick, originally a low-key religious celebration in the Auld Sod. In the U.S. it’s St. Patrick’s Day, which is, as they say, a whole other kettle of fish. For better or worse this quasi-holiday is an Irish American phenomenon. Let’s trace the metamorphosis from religiosity to ethnic muscle flexing, to Irish nationalism, to partisan political display, to equal opportunity public drinking festival. 

 

It all began on March 17, 1762 with the very first St. Patrick’s Day parade anywhere in the world. Irish soldiers in a British regiment headquartered in New York City marched behind their musicians and drew cheers from the small local Irish minority, both Catholic and Protestant—mostly Protestant in those days. It became if not an annual event, one which was observed most years. When the Redcoats left the city at the end of the American Revolution various local Irish mutual aid societies like the Hibernians and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick held often competing events which, if they happened to intersect, sometimes devolved into brawls. 

 

After the United Irishmen uprising of 1798 was crushed by the British imposing a harsh repression including the banning of the wearing o’ the Green, a new wave of Irish refugees flooded New York, Boston, and other eastern cities. They inoculated the annual St. Patrick’s Day observances with a new political significance and wearing green (instead of the traditional Irish colors of blue and gold) became a protest against British rule in the homeland and a call to action to overthrow that rule. 

 

In trying to market to Irish Americans, not everyone got it right.  This tone deaf greeting card featured the pug-nosed Irish stereotypes featured in Know Nothing and anti-immigrant publications.  The figure on the left has a sash identifying him as a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.  The one on the right supposedly is from a competing organization that had frequently brawled with the AOH for supremacy on St. Patrick's Day.
 

The Potato Famine unleashed yet another wave of immigration bringing throngs of displaced peasants to the already growing slums of the city. Competing Irish aid societies finally decided to unite behind a single, massive demonstration in New York in 1848. The theme of independence for Ireland was mixed with an act of aggressive defiance by the now largely Catholic masses against the nativists from Tammany Hall who controlled the city government, the Know Nothings, and street gangs who harassed and bullied them. In 1858 the Fenian Brotherhood was organized in the United States in support the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret oath society agitating for the establishment of a “democratic Irish republic.” The St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York and other cities became powerful recruiting tools for the Fenians. Social events around the day annually raised thousands of dollars, much of it to support fantastic plots and buy arms. On more than one occasion Fenian plots to attack Canada brought the U.S. and Britain perilously close to war, which, of course was the objective.

 

 

By the second half of the 19th Century New York's St. Patrick's Day parades had become elaborate celebrations of Irish nationalism and a display of raw political power in the city.

The failure of the Easter Rebellion in 1916 in which labor leader James Connolly, fresh from several years in America as an IWW organizer, and an Irish-American unit of Hibernian Rifles were both involved, led to a fresh round of frenzied support for independence back home. The campaign of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the Irish Civil War between the Free State government and republican rebels were both largely financed by Irish Americans. Even after the establishment of the Republic in 1937, Irish-Americans continued to fund rebel groups aimed at uniting Ulster to the rest of the island, including support for Sein Fein and the Provisional IRA in their armed struggle through The Troubles. All of this was reflected in the parades and other celebrations of the day which had become dominated by Rebel songs. 

 

Traditional Irish music and step dancing were nearly eradicated by Britain's policy of cultural genocide but were preserved and nurtured by American clubs and societies like this mid-20th Century step dancing group.  Dancing academies are now staples of St. Patrick's day parades and Knights of Columbus corned beef and cabbage dinners.
 

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations also were important displays of Irish culture. Traditional Irish music and dance were so suppressed at home that both nearly disappeared. Irish-Americans like Chicago’s Police Chief Francis O’Neill collected and preserved the songs and began schools to teach them and traditional Irish step dancing. Both were re-introduced into Irish culture as a result of these efforts and put on display in St. Patrick’s Day parades, banquets, and concerts. 

 

Hizzonor da Mayor, Richard J. Daley steps off with his blackthorn stick and green fedora at the head of the 1963 Chicago St. Patrick's Day joined by officials of the sponsoring Plumbers union, the Irish Consul General, Cardinal Alber Meyer (second from left} and actor Pat O'Brien to the Mayor's left and a bevy of politicians in the second row jockeying for position.  Then Republican Cook County States Attorney James P. Thompson can be spotted just over Daley's shoulder
 

The Irish also excelled at political organization in this country. Unlike other ethnic groups with large concentrations like the Germans, they were able to create viable political organizations with alliances with other ethnic groups that allowed them to control many city governments for decades. In Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley brought the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, previously a South Side neighborhood event, to the heart of the Loop and dyed the Chicago River green every year in a display of political power. Politicians of all ethnicities jockeyed to be as close as possible to Hizonor in the front ranks of the parade. 

 

By the late 20th Century St. Patrick’s Day had spread well beyond its ethnic roots. Everyone is Irish on St. Paddy’s Day became a byword pushed by breweries, bars, and distilleries making it one of the biggest party days of the year. Green beer and vomiting teenagers have become new symbols of the holiday. 

 

The semi-legendary Saint whose feast day is the occasion of all of the hoopla.  He wasn't Irish and did not drive the snakes out of the island--they never lived there to begin with. 

 

And what about St. Patrick? Well, what about him!