Cinco De Mayo: Why We Celebrate
Year in and year out, the Mexican American holiday, Cinco de Mayo, spurs countless discussions and commentaries from well-meaning folks who want to set the record straight on what the celebration is and is not about. I too have delved into this conversation in the past but stopped long-ago, because I grew tired of constantly repeating the same thing year after year. My approach to the topic had been one of trying to answer a specific underlying question about the celebration itself: Why do Mexican Americans celebrate this holiday in the United States more so than even Mexican nationals do?
I used to think that Mexican Americans celebrated the holiday in the US because General Ignacio Zaragoza was a native Tejano. Zaragoza was born in La Bahía del Espíritu Santo, Tejas back when it was still a part of Mexico — La Bahia is now known as Goliad. The way I saw it, since the hero of that victory had been one of our very own Tejanos, in my mind, it was logical to say that Zaragoza was the reason for the season (to borrow a phrase). After many years of promoting this idea, I now realize that the Zaragoza thesis is only part of the story of this holiday.
In the book, El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition (2012), David Hayes-Bautista sets out to precisely answer the question of why Mexican Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the United States. In the process, he reveals that the tradition can be traced to nineteenth-century ethnic Mexican organizations called “juntas patrioticas mejicanas” (Mexican patriotic assemblies). These assemblies started springing up throughout the former Mexican north (the Southwestern US) sometime after the US-Mexico War of 1846–48.
Hayes-Bautista focuses on California in the 1860s and finds that the state had at least 129 juntas patrioticas mejicanas by the end of the century. He also notes that assemblies were found in such unlikely places as far north as the State of Oregon and beyond.
It’s possible that these assemblies are some of the first Mexican American networks of a political nature. Their purpose was not just to celebrate the Battle of Puebla, but to reinforce the bicultural nature of the Spanish-speaking peoples of the United States while celebrating their newfound Americanness. They valued the democratic ideals of their country, despite bearing the brunt of Anglo violence, racism, aggression, and land dispossession. Out of this shared experience, the Californios, Mexican immigrants, and the other Central & South Americans from this emergent community felt a common bond and began to identify as “Hispano-Americanos.”
This new community rallied around the Mexican cause for freedom, because they worried that if it fell to the French, it could trigger a domino effect across the rest of the Americas. The American Civil War was also cause for worry to the Hispano-Americano community. Just as Mexico was in peril of becoming re-colonized by a European super-power — the French, so too was the United States in danger of being dismembered from within. As denizens of a free-state, Californios feared that the Confederate States of America (CSA) would come for them next. Mexico had abolished slavery when it became an independent nation in 1821, so the very idea of living in a slave society was anathema to their very core.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, the Battle of Puebla that occurred on May 5, 1862 was a highlight in what seemed a doomed struggle to keep that nation free and independent. Under Napoleon III, the French had invaded Mexico with the pretense of collecting a debt. The English, Spanish, and French had all loaned money to Mexican monarchist separatists who were opposed to Benito Juárez and his republican-liberal ideas of government. When Juárez successfully put down the rebellion, the separatists fled and took the leftover money from the loans with them. After Juárez announced a two-year delay in repayment, France came to collect, but it had ulterior motives. Spain and England, who were also owed money, refused to join Napoleon’s imperial machinations.
As Hayes-Bautista shows, the very first public Cinco de Mayo celebrations occurred, not in Mexico, but throughout California. The news had spread through Spanish language newspapers to the anxious Hispano-Americanos who were waiting to hear some good news from Mexico. On the home front, things were dispiriting and deeply concerning as the CSA gained the upper hand early in the Civil War, so the victory against the French was a cause for rejoice.
By May 27, just weeks after the battle, Spanish-speaking communities in California were already holding public celebrations to commemorate the victory over the French and Napoleon the III. These celebrations would continue throughout the remainder of the French occupation and beyond. For instance, in 1864 — as the Civil War raged on — Antonio Mancillas, editor of San Francisco’s La Voz de Mejico, “set out to convince his readers that Cinco de Mayo was worth remembering,” because of its historical significance. On that very same day, the local junta patriotica of the gold-mining town of Sonora in Tuolumne County gathered:
… to witness the raising of the Mexican flag amid enthusiastic cheers, after which Eugenio Cardenas made “an eloquent speech,” which he began by acknowledging his audience’s patriotism, the junta’s role in organizing the proceedings … That night, the junta sponsored a dance in the Greenwood Theater, which had been decorated with a portrait of the late General Ignacio Zaragoza, the hero of Puebla …[1]
The celebration carried on through the night with speakers delivering speeches and young women reciting poetry and singing the Mexican national anthem. These were solemn events reminiscent of those held throughout Mexico during the Fiestas Patrias, and not like the boisterous and festive fandangos that were ubiquitous at the time. The festivities not only celebrated the battle, they also honored the memory of General Zaragoza who had died months after the battle at Puebla from typhoid fever.
These patriotic organizations went to great lengths in commemorating Cinco de Mayo because it served as a beacon of hope against the imperialist forces that were intent in reinstating a European monarchy in the Americas. Looking at this holiday in the context of the American Civil War and Mexico’s internal conflict with monarchists, Hayes-Bautista’s broader point is that “this network functioned … to support the defense of freedom and democracy in both the United States and Mexico.” [2] So what does all this have anything to do with our current celebrations?
The U.S.-Mexico War was still a recent memory to the broader ethnic Mexican community, and many still resented the gringo aggression that had led to the major loss of land (about half of Mexico’s territory). Despite that, the simultaneous conflicts that were tearing both countries apart — the Confederacy in the U.S. and the French invasion of Mexico — led immigrants to notice a common cause of freedom against the forces of tyranny between the two countries. Additionally, by the 1860s, the first US born Hispano-Americanos were coming of age during both conflicts, and the same “crises of identity” that conflicted later generations of Chicana/os, Mexicana/os, and other brown folks were already present.
The juntas patrioticas mejicanas were inspired further by Benito Juárez who declared Cinco de Mayo a national holiday, and the celebrations continued until the close of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, the last of the juntas patrioticas had disappeared, but the memory of their celebrations lived on. With the continued influx of Mexican immigrants came new ideas and new celebrations, and Dieciseis de Septiembre slowly gained prominence in the barrios to celebrate “lo mexicano” (Mexicanness) and the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz. [3] In time, the Dieciseis celebration became the most prominent ethnic Mexican celebration in the Southwest.
This still does not fully explain why the 5th of May gained prominence, but it does show the way that communities change their values and traditions over time. The contemporary iteration of the Cinco de Mayo celebrations date to the Chicano Movement era of the late 1960s-70s, when political activism and a cultural renaissance of Mexican traditions sparked a revival of the dormant holiday. In an article entitled, “The Real Meaning of Cinco de Mayo” (2013), scholar Antonio Sanchez posits that:
… it was not until the late 1960s that Chicano civil rights activists on college campuses purposely identified and adopted the Battle of Puebla and May 5 as their day to celebrate this Mexican victory in the United States. It was celebrated predominantly in the Southwest United State[s] and California, and it was here where the activist community lifted this date out of the Chicano barrios and onto Main Street. College campuses for the first time heard the cries of, “Viva la raza — viva Cinco de Mayo!” That cry was a bold statement of historical and cultural self-determination, cultural allegiance with Mexico and in defiant recognition of the accomplishments of the capable Mestizo people of Aztlan, Mexico’s land lost in 1848. It was an affirmation of the cultural and social solidarity of the Mexican American community with Mexico’s past. [4]
Sanchez explains that Cinco de Mayo became significant for Chicana/o activists because they viewed their struggle in the same light as that of the poor an ill-equipped makeshift Mexican army that defeated what was then a global superpower. He posits that this idea of “triumph in the face of overwhelming odds and adversity” resonated with young Chicanas and Chicanos:
The Chicano activist movement in the 1960s and 70s used this date to inspire a community whose contribution and history had been marginalized, under-recognized, and deliberately overlooked. Together they found a new strength, and as an underdog community adopted this day to celebrate a truly uniting sense of shared identity. [5]
Not until the 1980s, after the Chicano movement had dissipated, did the holiday become corporatized and commercialized. The radical politics of the sixties and seventies gave way to moderate and accommodationist politics — the “Hispanic” age had arrived. Corporations that Chicana/os had previously boycotted saw the marketing potential and made inroads into the community through promises of philanthropy and grants. One such business sector was the alcohol industry, in particular the Coors Brewing Company. After many years of being boycotted, Coors wanted “to improve its image among Chicano activists” and become “the largest supporter of the Cinco de Mayo as a holiday event.” [6]
By the nineties, the holiday had been so commercialized and stripped of its original meaning, that people forgot the roots of its creation and the radical purpose for its Chicana/o revival. What was left was an Anglicized version of an event that was once a vehicle through which the ethnic Mexican community in the US could not only celebrate the triumphs of its cultural homeland, but also those of its adopted one.
In sum, the answer to the question of why Cinco de Mayo is (and should continue to be) celebrated in the US is because, as David Hayes-Bautista explains, the holiday is not simply an imported Mexican celebration — it truly is an American holiday. And, with that spirit in mind, I say — Viva Juárez, viva el General Zaragoza, y que viva el Cinco de Mayo!
Follow @tlakatekatl
[This article was the subject of Episode 7 of the Tales From Aztlantis podcast: Listen here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1720405/8454889-episode-7-happy-cinco-de-mayo]
[1] David E. Hayes-Bautista, El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 103.
[2] Hayes-Bautista, 101.
[3] According to Hayes-Bautista, ethnic Mexicans were using the Mexican Independence celebrations to commemorate the overthrow of the Porfirian regime.
[4] Antonio Sanchez, “The Real Meaning of Cinco de Mayo,” 2013, 3, https://www.cwu.edu/sites/default/files/Sanchez%20Cinco%20de%20Mayo%201.pdf.
[5] Sanchez, 3–4.
[6] Sanchez, 4.
