Happy 'It's Not Mexican Independence' Day!
It is Tequila and Mini-Sombreros Day in America, hooray! It always seems like Cinco de Mayo should be Mexican Independence Day -- dressing to match a national flag and getting wasted on a holiday named after its date on the calendar is how independence days are done, right? But today is actually the day when much of the United States unwittingly celebrates a Mexican military victory in 1862 over the asshole French army of Napoleon III that was in the process of trying to swoop in for some colonial sloppy seconds and take over the country (which they did, briefly). How did this become an American holiday? New historical research from a UCLA professor provides an idea of the celebration's earliest appearance in the United States, and it is lovely.
From CNN:
[Professor David] Hayes-Bautista was culling Spanish-language newspapers in California and Oregon for vital statistics from the 1800s when he noticed how the Civil War and Cinco de Mayo battle were intertwined. He researches the epidemiology and demography of Latinos in California because he's director of UCLA's Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture.
"I'm seeing how in the minds of the Spanish-reading public in California that they were basically looking at one war with two fronts, one against the Confederacy in the east and the other against the French in the south," Hayes-Bautista said in an interview with CNN.
"In Mexico today, Cinco de Mayo means the Mexican army defeated the French army," he continued. "In California and Oregon, the news was interpreted as finally that the army of freedom and democracy won a big one against the army of slavery and elitism. And the fact that those two armies had to meet in Mexico was immaterial because they were fighting for the same issues -- defending freedom and democracy. Latinos were joining the Union army, Union cavalry, Union navy.
"The French goal was to eliminate democracy, and remember that Mexico had democracy only for 30 or 40 years at that point," he added. "Remember, Europe was ruled mostly by monarchs."
French emperor Napoleon III "was no friend of the Union and was definitely a friend of the Confederacy and flirted with the Confederacy constantly with the possible recognition of the Confederate government," Hayes-Bautista said. President Abraham Lincoln never referred to the Confederacy as a separate government: they were states in rebellion," the professor said.
We'll drink to that. [CNN]
I think French bashing goes back to the Hundred Years War (Dutch bashing dates to the Anglo-Dutch wars), and a rivalry that only ended in the 19th Century (it really PO'd the Kaiser that his cousin Bertie preferred the French and Paris to the Germans -Prussians- and Berlin). The Brits were able to export this to the New World because the rivalry was carried on in the Americas, and provided the backdrop to some savage warfare in the colonies. That said, once the American colonists rose in rebellion, they turned to the only power that could (or would) help. For the original issue, I myself find the claims of an English king to the throne of France to be absurd, but of course, the nation-state that we know did not yet exist in a form we would recognize. So the Brits and French fought an pointless, bloody war that weakened both and contributed to the rise of the Habsburgs. Uh .... how did I get off on this?
Thank you! You made my point better than I did.
To be serious on a Sunday morning, it is my personal theory the decline of the British nation had a great deal to do with (depending on how you count) a hundred years of constant war.
For generations the best and the brightest - and certainly the bravest - died around the globe to preserve the Empire. Then came the absolute horrors of WW I - more casualties (killed and wounded) in one day at the Somme than we lost in Viet Nam.
"A scrimmage in a Border Station-- "A canter down some dark defile-- "Two thousand pounds of education "Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--"
~ "Arithmetic on the Frontier," Kipling The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride, Shot like a rabbit in a ride!