The Real Cinco de Mayo

On April 12, 1861, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, beginning the American Civil War.  Three months earlier, Benito Juarez had been elected President of Mexico.  Like Lincoln, Juarez inherited a country with serious, perhaps fatal, problems.  In Juarez’s case, however, the problems were primarily external.

In 1861, Mexico was a country in financial ruin.  It owed money to all of the major European powers and, smelling blood in the water, they were circling the drowning nation.  When Juarez defaulted on the loans France, Britain and Spain all sent their ships into the harbor of Veracruz to wrest something, anything, of value from the destitute government.  Britain and Spain were satisfied with negotiated settlements but France’s Napoleon III saw a chance to claim some semblance of imperial grandeur by annexing Mexico.   

Napoleon III (nephew of the great Bonaparte) was certain he could assure a quick win (and therefore hasten the exploitation of a land still assumed to be rich in gold and silver) by sending his fleet into the harbor of Veracruz.   The French took the city and forced Benito Juarez and his government to retreat.  The commander, Gen. Charles Latrille de Lorencez, then began a ground offensive with 6000 professional, disciplined and well-schooled troops.  Gen. Lorencez chose to attack Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. 

From exile, Juarez called up a force of some 2000 men, Mexicans by birth, many of mixed Mexican and Indian ancestry (like Juarez himself), and sent them to Puebla.  They were led by a Texas born General, Ignacio Zaragoza.  Vastly outnumbered, poorly supplied, short on everything except determination, the Mexican’s fortified the town and waited for history to take its course.  Surely, the lessons of the Battle of the Alamo, fought in 1836 and already a legend of continental proportions, were not lost on these men.  At daybreak the French forces, supported by heavy artillery, led an assault from the north.  They fought through the day and in the early evening the French finally retreated.  They had lost 500 men to the 100 Mexicans lost in the battle. 

This was a thin victory but it was symbolic and energizing.  If the Mexican’s could hold, if the resistance could continue, maybe, just maybe, David could best Goliath.  Six years later Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who had been installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon in 1864, was captured and executed.  The United States, now done with the Civil War and not happy to contemplate the French in control of our Southern border, added their weight to the argument and the French withdrew.

In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is a low key holiday, primarily celebrated in the state of Pueblo where the battle took place.  Here in the United States the day is so poorly understood that many people think it is the Mexican Independence Day (that would be September 16).  What it really represents is something much greater than the sum of its parts.  Cinco de Mayo is a cautionary tale about the hubris that comes from great size; the ferocity that comes from having nothing left to lose; the hope created by strong leadership; the withering effects of time and the persistence of justice. 

         I hate to see good history end up being swirled away in the bottom of a margarita glass.  There is so much more to the fifth of May than a chance to party on history’s dime.  The nobility of man is not sharpened, but lost in the fog of intoxication, so at least have that first drink in honor of the heroes who do what is right, as they see the right.  
        Drink, think and act responsibly and keep the faith.