Cinco de Mayo honors a not particularly significant victory of the Mexican army over the French in 1862. Which makes the holiday an important celebration of Mexican heritage because…that’s how people celebrate it. Sometimes it’s more important to celebrate than to have a really good reason.
What do you celebrate, even though it may be odd, obscure or unimportant?
I cannot believe this posting. How to dis an entire nation.
“not particularly significant”? Are you serious?
A well-trained and equipped invading army being defeated by untrained and ill-equipped people who refused to allow further pillaging of our country may be unimportant to you but certainly not for us. Such arrogance is why I don’t attend UU churches often, even though I identify as a UU and was instrumental in the founding of a bilingual UU congregation near the border.
I hope you will retract your statement.
You speak for me too, Sr. Cardenas. I love and respect your country and admire its’ struggle against the French.
Viva Juarez!
Gracias Jim. I appreciate your support. As you know, we lost more than half of our territory to another powerful invading army a few years before this battle took place so, the fact that Mexican citizens had the courage to face another empire against all odds and win it was, in my opinion, quite significant.
They had the determination not to allow another country to take away what we were left with.
I celebrate Cinco de Mayo–brave people died to resist a foreign invader.
“For thus be it ever when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,”
Viva Jaurez!
I borrowed an idea from a cartoon strip about 20 years ago and I privately celebrate the lives of obscure relationships every October 4th. That is Broderick Crawford Day (according to the cartoon) — 10-4. I guess you’d have to know a lot about television in the 1950s to get the joke.
I apologize for offense given by this posting. While I meant that the battle was not of particular military significance, it clearly was of emotional/symbolic significance. Again, my apologies. –Lynn Ungar, Daily Compass author.
It is true that Cinco de Mayo is a bigger deal in the US than it is in México, because it is assumed that that day is the anniversary of México’s independence from Spain, which, of course, is not true.