Cinco de Mayo… conservative nostalgia?

While in the US, today is widely celebrated as some sort of Mexican identity day… and we continunally have to educated the gringos that it is NOT Independence Day, nor even a holiday, there may be a reason it is the informal US “Mexico Day” that might be worth considering,

It was a big deal…. back during Porfirio Diaz’ regime. After all, he made his political career out of his fame as a hero of the war against the French, and was involved in the defense of Puebla. For his coterie, celebrating Mexico’s best known military victory, and Mexican militarism, was a meant to celebrate the Diaz regime itself.

The Revolution, not only ran Porfirio out of the country, but his most ardent supporters among the upper class and old elites as well… most of the latter emigrated to the United States, where — even if in reduced circumstances — would still be the elites within the Mexican diaspora.

While I’ve seen argued (and I lost the source, unfortunately) that the first US Cinco de Mayo celebration was in some Southern California town, simply because the local lemon farmers were mostly descended from those old elites, and it happened that the the 5th of May was during the lemon harvest season, and local agricultural festivals have always been a popular even in small towns. So… based on the Porfirian model of a parade and party… the Americanized Cinco de Mayo.

The modern US Cinco de Mayo is largely a creation of Mexican beer distributors… themselves “elites” in the Mexican American community, or the old conservative elites within Mexico… a faint echo of the Cinco de Mayos of the 1880s.

Another except from Nelly Bly’s 1886 “Six Months in Mexico”:

They flock to the city from mountain, valley, town, and city, clad in holiday attire. Then only one realizes their strength, as they march before the palace where the president is seated on the balcony. The finest looking men in the whole 40,000 are the rurales. They number 6000 and are larger men than Mexicans usually are. These rurales are a band of outlaws who came forward with their chief and aided Diaz during the war. When it was over Diaz recognized their power, and was so afraid of them that he offered them a place in the army, with their chief as general, and they are to-day not only the best paid, but— speaking of their fighting ability— the best men in Mexico. In the first place they are large and powerful and known over the entire country, mountain, town, and valley, as thoroughly as we know our A, B, C. They fear nothing on earth, or out of it, and will fight on the least provocation. They would rather fight than eat, and have a great aversion to exhibiting themselves, as they demonstrated on the 5th of May last, when only 800 could be persuaded to participate.