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Today I am sure many of you will enjoy your favorite Mexican food at your local Mexican restaurant, perhaps enjoying a nice chilled Mexican beer, perhaps a Margarita, or maybe even a shot of Tequila to get your work week going. El Cinco de Mayo though is a holiday that I don’t think many truly understand.

So if you can’t wow your waiter tonight with some rudimentary Spanish perhaps you can show them that you at least understand why you are enjoying your 1.50 Pacifico.

Sometimes El Cinco de Mayo is thought of as Mexico’s Independence day. Please don’t assume this it is vastly inaccurate. Mexico declared independence on September 16 in 1810. Some 50 years later on May 5th in 1862 is when the events that make El Cinco de Mayo historic take place. Mexico struggled in its early years and had recently been defeated by the United States in the war of 1846-48. A struggling economy led President Jurez to declare that Mexico would not pay any foreign debts for two years in an attempt to get themselves as a country together. The French, English, and Spanish all took exception to this and sent troops to Mexico to collect their debts. The English and Spanish were able to settle there debts relatively quickly and easily, but the French decided they wanted more. The Napoleon army was known as the best in the world at this time and they were on quite a high horse.

On May 5th in 1862 the battle of Puebla took place in which a group of Mexicans fought and defeated the Napoleon army which was was equipped and trained as the best in the world. It was an incredible showing of patriotism and courage by the Mexicans lead by General Zaragosa. They won the battle but the French troops returned later and this time with even more troops and were able to take over Mexico and implant Emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg of France as the new ruler over Mexico. He ruled until 1867 when former President Jurez’s troops surged and took back control of Mexico again.

So El Cinco de Mayo is not really a landmark day that declared independence or even one that won a war, but it is celebrated because it stands for the courage that man can show when faced with losing his/her freedom. The Mexicans had no business even being able to win the battle that they won being outnumbered, undertrained, and having less sophisticated weapons, but they found a way to do so anyway.

I’m sure i missed some facts here and there but i think that gives everyone the gist of the Holiday. Which by the way is much more popular here in the US then it is Mexico.

So enjoy your cervaza today and do so knowing what you are celebrating!

Tags: Cervaza, El Cinco De Mayo

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under General, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.