May 5 marks Cinco de Mayo, the day set aside to celebrate Mexican culture, food and drinks.
Despite the popular belief, Cinco de Mayo does not celebrate Mexican Independence Day. That’s in September and was started in 1810, about a half-century before Cinco de Mayo, according to Britannica.com.
Instead, it marks the anniversary of Mexico’s victory over France at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
The battle followed Mexico’s refusal to pay its foreign debts in 1861 and its challenge by the English, Spanish, and French. By the next year, England and Spain gave up the fight, but France did not, establishing a monarchy under Maximilian of Austria. France was supported by wealthy landowners and tried to block the power of the U.S. in North America, Britannica.com explained.
Mexico’s forces, numbering between 2,000 and 5,000, lacked sufficient equipment to fight a French army of about 6,000. But despite the odds stacked against them, the Mexican army won the battle, History.com said.
They may have won the battle, but it was not enough to keep France from controlling the country for about four years.
By the next year, Mexican Americans in California started celebrating the battle as “a political and cultural moment tied to resistance and democracy,” Sehila Mota Casper, executive director and co-founder of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, told History.com. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, parades, speakers and music marked the first anniversary in 1863.
The holiday evolved in the 1960s into a celebration of Mexican American identity, but unlike the parties that spring up all across the U.S., in Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is primarily celebrated in Puebla.
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