Cinco de Mayo – Celebrating Mexican Independence

Cinco de Mayo (May 5th) is not Mexican Independence day, but it might as well be where Americans and, specifically Chicanos are concerned. Pride in one’s nation, check. Beer being marketed at an unusually high level, check. Bar-b-que? Check. I did some checking up to try to figure out this holiday’s significance, because knowing why one drinks is a great way of explaining why one doesn’t show up to places the next day.

Cinco de Mayo is a pretty interesting holiday because it celebrates a minor victory which, militarily speaking, had little significance (according to my above source). This was General Zaragosa’s victory over an army of Napoleon III. One year later, the French came back and won, taking over Mexico City (the capital) and installing their own emperor.

Culturally, the fifth of May was huge. Apparently, the Mexicans had a bitch of a time after their independence from Spain which was something like fifty years earlier. So the fifth of May became something of a day of pride.

It would be like if we celebrated the Battle of the Bulge except, wait, that was a really significant to have held back the final, massive German offensive. So maybe it would be like if we celebrated some major victory in Vietnam, which didn’t end up mattering since we pulled out of that war. Except I don’t believe there was any national pride in our Vietnam involvement.

Boy, this is tough. I can’t find any holidays like Cinco de Mayo. We need to find something to celebrate which raised the people’s spirits but which was relatively insignificant in actual, long-term effect.

I suppose one could argue it’s similar to St. Patrick’s Day, but getting rid of snakes seems pretty significant to me. And it’s not like the snakes came back an installed a snake emperor who ruled over Ireland for four years.

Maybe it doesn’t matter the significance if what is significant is a sense of national pride and positive identity. Still, I’d like to see more reference to Zaragosa. Maybe Chicanos should team up with Dos-equis and try to get “The Most Interesting Man In the World” named Zaragosa. I’d definitely celebrate Most Interesting Man In the World Day.