What American Cinco de Mayo looks like to Mexico historian

Every year on the fifth of May, the United States gets together … to celebrate a Mexican military victory against France.

Of course, you probably know the story already. Otherwise, why would you celebrate?

You see, on May 5, 1862 at the Battle of Puebla, a gifted young general named Ignacio Zaragoza led a smaller, less-equipped force to a victory against the forces of Napoleon III — who hoped to use unpaid debts as a pretext to conquer an already independent Mexico.

Cinco de Mayo, the day of Zaragoza’s inspirational but somewhat minor military triumph, is now feted in the United States with a near-biblical flood of margaritas, and enough lime to dissolve the marbles of the Parthenon.

To people from Mexico, this can look a little strange.

In the central state of Puebla in Mexico — the birthplace of most Mexican immigrants to Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York — Cinco de Mayo remains an important but mostly local holiday, commemorated with a daytime parade attended by thousands.

“My friends from Monterrey, Jalisco, Michoacán, Tijuana, Sonora, they didn’t know about Cinco de Mayo,” said Juan Fernando Otero, a chef from Puebla who now holds pop-ups on the West Coast devoted to Poblano cooking.

When he saw Americans celebrating Cinco de Mayo with shots of tequila, he was “shocked.”

And yet people of Mexican heritage in America have been celebrating Cinco de Mayo, in their own way, since 1863.

Cinco remained obscure in the U.S. until the 1960s, when Chicano activists championed Zaragoza’s victory as a blow against Imperialism, and a cause to celebrate Mexican American identity. Texan-Mexican beer importer Gambrinus later took note, and figured the holiday might be a good way to sell 12-packs of Corona.

They weren’t wrong. And so “Drinko de Mayo” was born, to the surprise and sometimes horror of the people of Puebla.

We asked food anthropologist, cultural historian and proud Poblana Rocio Carvajal — author of guides to Puebla, and host of podcast Pass the Chipotle — what Cinco de Mayo means to Puebla, and what America’s tequila-fueled festivities look like from her side of the border.

This conversation has been edited, re-arranged and condensed for clarity.

So how is Cinco de Mayo in Puebla different from the way we know it in the United States?

I can only speak from my experience — but for Poblanos as well. It means a very important and serious date. It is not a fiesta, per se. Celebration is not a word that I would use to describe Cinco de Mayo. It’s more a remembrance.

It is one of the most important, or perhaps the most important nonreligious ritual of identity for Poblanos. It’s something we can’t share with other Mexicans. It’s not a bank holiday for other states in Mexico: It’s something that is exclusively celebrated in Puebla.

Put it this way: You have a death in your family, someone very dear. And then every year you do this ritual where you get together with your family and think about this person that meant so much to you. You don’t expect anyone else to do anything. And to be honest, you wouldn’t care because this is a very intimate occasion. That’s kind of how it’s lived in Puebla.

Is there any holiday that you keep solemn in America?

Veterans Day might be comparable. Oh, there you go. It’s about the depth and the sacrifice of these people. Why would you get drunk?

So what does it look like to Poblanos when Americans party on Cinco de Mayo?

We see it and we’re kind of surprised. Like, why? Why do you have to appropriate everything? … It becomes this excuse to drink cheap tequila, eat fake Mexican food, and abuse all sorts of imagery that does not put Mexican culture in any good light.

But it’s the wrong start if we’re not willing to ask, “Why do Americans appropriate Cinco de Mayo the way they do?” …. And for Americans, there is not any effort or interest in asking themselves, “Why are we doing this? What does it mean to Puebla?”

If we ask the right questions… then the answers will lead us to a deeper understanding of our common history that goes back, you know, literally 160 years.

On your Pass the Chipotle podcast, you talk about the first Cinco de Mayo in California as a moment of solidarity between Mexico and Mexican Americans.

Your country and my country have a long shared history.

The historian David Hayes-Bautista, in his great book “Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition,” has a very empathetic way of putting us in the shoes of Mexicans who overnight became strangers in their own land (after the Mexican-American war), when this whole chunk of Mexico that was Nevada, Arizona, Utah… was given away to appease mutual political relations.

General Zaragoza was born in the state of Coahuila, now part of Texas. Chance took him to Puebla, where he was appointed as this leading key figure to defend the city. He fought bravely, he was very clever, he was very accomplished. He died very suddenly after the Battle of Puebla. He had bad tacos or something; he got a stomach bug and died very young. It was very tragic, but his death glorified him to infinity.

It gave these Mexican Americans the hero they needed. He was like them. He was at heart a Mexican, he was born a Mexican, even though the land was no longer part of Mexico.

He galvanized nationalistic sentiment, gave them a sense of community. They organized all these patriotic committees raising money … to support the defense of Mexico.

For them being so far away, (the Battle of Puebla) would have been perceived as a cause for celebration. That’s how they interpreted what was happening there.

Here, it was carnage. There, they were cheering us.

So in the United States in 1863, there was a Cinco de Mayo parade. In Mexico, there was still a war.

Yes, absolutely. It was a victory, but Puebla was still in tatters. The war kept happening. In 1864, Napoleon III came back with a much larger force.

But again, on the other side of the border, they’re like, “We’re still rooting for you!”

That’s interesting — so the holiday in the United States was already a bit of a party, long before the beer companies decided to capitalize on it?

Think of it as St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a big deal in Ireland, but the way it’s celebrated in America is like, “What is going on?”

It says a lot more about the configuration of the American identity, which prides itself on being this melting pot, yet makes no attempt and absolutely avoids engaging with the actual current cultures where they source this inspiration.

I don’t want to say Americans have no right to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Mexican Americans have every right to celebrate Cinco de Mayo based on this history…. I can see why Mexican Americans would make it be about celebrating their Mexican-ness. And why not? Why not, in a country that is not theirs, where they have this one time in a year to celebrate their heritage?

What about Americans with no Mexican heritage, who nonetheless grew up eating Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo?

If they want to abuse the old drink and have not-really-Mexican food, they’re not going to hell. I mean, nothing bad is going to happen.

But if you tie it into a celebration of Mexican-ness — and even more interestingly in recent decades, an opportunity to celebrate Latino (culture)? This is the magic of cultural resources, festivities like this. They will continuously keep being re-signified to stay relevant.

Maybe food becomes the entry point to start having those conversations. Maybe it starts with “It’s Cinco de Mayo, let’s go to a Mexican restaurant.” But let’s go to the most traditional one we can find, or the most classy one we can find. Start with the food. And let’s start having those conversations.

But, you know, put the tequila on the side.

Matthew Korfhage is a food and culture reporter for the USA TODAY Network’s Atlantic Region How We Live team. Email: mkorfhage@gannettnj.com | Twitter: @matthewkorfhage

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What American Cinco de Mayo looks like to Mexico historian

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