{"id":4919,"date":"2012-05-03T16:56:47","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T20:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/?p=4919"},"modified":"2012-05-03T17:06:29","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T21:06:29","slug":"cinco-de-mayo-an-american-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/cinco-de-mayo-an-american-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinco de Mayo: An American Holiday?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cinco<\/a>Two years ago, when we were living in Phoenix, Arizona, we celebrated Cinco de Mayo<\/em> the \u201ctraditional\u201d way \u2013 by drinking margaritas out of plastic glasses at a local student hangout. That\u2019s just to say, there are lots of Cinco de Mayo<\/em> parties in Phoenix, but most of the people attending them are not Mexican. We also noticed that middle-class Mexicans were curiously absent from the festivities. One of our friends, married to a middle class Mexican, told us: \u201cIt\u2019s not a Mexican holiday.\u201d Period.<\/p>\n

Indeed, in Mexico, only the state of Puebla celebrates Cinco de Mayo, <\/em>and it\u2019s a pretty minor celebration outside of the city of \u00a0<\/em>Puebla.\u00a0 The date commemorates the victory of the Mexican army over the French in a battle fought on the outskirts of the city of Puebla in 1862. The Mexican victory was highly symbolic: Mexico\u2019s army of mestizos <\/em>and Indians had defeated well-equipped European forces.<\/p>\n

But the victory was short-lived. The French were determined to get a hold on Mexico. In short, 19th<\/sup> century Mexico was one long struggle between between Criollos<\/em>, mestizos <\/em>and Indios <\/em>to fill the power vacuum after Spanish colonial rule. With the support of Mexico\u2019s upper classes and conservatives, the French aimed to set up a puppet regime in Mexico and put the country\u2019s ruling classes in charge. Although the Pueblans defeated them in 1862, the French struck back and won the next battle in 1863. Then they put an Austrian archduke on the throne, and he ruled Mexico as Maximilian I for 3 years. His descendants consider themselves claimants to the Mexican throne to this day…<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not why Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo <\/em>today.<\/p>\n

In the United States, Cinco de Mayo symbolized something completely different: the unity of Latino immigrants.<\/p>\n

This is how it started: Californians of Mexican origin began celebrating Cinco de Mayo <\/em>at the end of the 1860s. In the 1940s, picked it up, but it remained an obscure Mexican-American holiday for decades.\u00a0 In the 1970s, the Latin American community in San Francisco turned Cinco de Mayo<\/em> into a pan-ethnic U.S. celebration for Hispanic immigrants of all national origins.<\/p>\n

It was a savvy choice. Most Latin Americans, even Mexicans, had never heard of the holiday, so it didn\u2019t pit different nationalities against one another. <\/em>In the long run, Cinco de Mayo <\/em>was also helped by the fact that it had no religious associations, a handy feature since 15% of Hispanics in the U.S. today are evangelical Christians, not Catholics.<\/p>\n

Over the last decade, Cinco de Mayo <\/em>celebrations have gotten steadily more popular and more mainstream. Beer and alcohol companies have cashed in on this new American \u201ctradition,\u201d and made Cinco de Mayo <\/em>into a mainstay of American popular culture.<\/p>\n

Today, some 150 official Cinco de Mayo <\/em>celebrations take place throughout the country. In 2005 the two Chambers of the U.S. Congress issued a joint resolution calling for the President to make Cinco de Mayo <\/em>an official U.S. celebration, but it is not a federal holiday.<\/p>\n

However, since Latino political and commercial clout has also been increasing steadily over the last decades, who knows? Maybe Cinco de Mayo <\/em>will become an official U.S. holiday some day.<\/p>\n

\u00a1\u00a0Wishing you a happy Cinco de Mayo !<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, when we were living in Phoenix, Arizona, we celebrated Cinco de Mayo the \u201ctraditional\u201d way \u2013 by drinking margaritas out of plastic …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4919"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4932,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions\/4932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}