On May 5th, people gather outside to celebrate Mexican culture with sombreros, margaritas, and mariachis, unintelligibly chanting songs in Spanish. Surprisingly, however, this happens annually in the United States, not in Mexico. This day is Cinco de Mayo, denoted by NPR journalists as the day when ‘Americans celebrate Mexico, and Mexicans grumble that Americans have no idea what they're celebrating.’ According to an NPR poll, only 22% of Americans know what Cinco de Mayo is actually about or what it is meant to commemorate. To debunk many myths and misconceptions regarding the holiday, let’s briefly study what Cinco de Mayo is and how it came to be misconceived as a Mexican national celebration.

Cinco de Mayo is an annual celebration held on May 5 to commemorate the Mexican Army’s unlikely victory over the French under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The battle was during the Second French Intervention period in Mexico (1861-1867) when the French Emperor Napoleon III invaded Mexico to expand his empire in Latin America, in competition with other European powers like the United Kingdom and Spain. The French attempted to penetrate the heart of Mexico, taking advantage of the political instabilities plaguing Mexico after its independence in 1821 and an array of wars, including the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the Reform War (1858). Thus, their victory in the Battle of Puebla was significant and symbolic since they outnumbered Mexicans defeated the French? who had the largest and most powerful armies in the world? all while the power of vacuum forbade Mexico from becoming a stronghold, unified, and institutionalized nation.

Roos, David. A Photograph of Cinco de Mayo Celebration, https://www.today.com/popculture/cinco-de-mayo-what-it-how-celebrate-t153321.

However, despite marking a notably historic victorious day, Cinco de Mayo is not a national landmark holiday but just a regular day in Mexico. Festivities for the day only occur in the town of Puebla, where the historic victory occurred. In the vibrant and buzzing streets of the capital and the remaining states, life carries on as normal.

Therefore, how did the Americans get to celebrate the Battle of Puebla in the first place? It was not until the 1960s Chicano Movement, which emphasized Mexican American empowerment, that Cinco de Mayo gained momentum as a holiday of ethnic pride. The movement demonstrated an especially strong presence in California and Southwestern United States, where the majority of Latinos resided as they had been a part of the Mexican territory. Chicano culture embodied the nature of cultural hybridity that incorporated the promotion of a unified Mexican-descent identity as a whole, hence indirectly contributing to Cinco de Mayo often being wrongly recognized and perceived as a generalized Mexican culture.
By the 1980s, alcohol companies capitalized on such influence as an opportunity to market Mexican beer, which is how non-Mexican Americans got the tradition of wearing typical sombreros and drinking tequila and margaritas.

Thus, instead of stereotypically characterizing Cinco de Mayo as a national holiday, let’s conceptualize its historic significance and celebrate the day as an important symbolism of the Chicano movement and the hybridity of Mexican-American identity.

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