Hola, y bienvenidos a Kitchen Catastrope, a food blog that rarely brings up that it could be a bilingual disaster, if Jon felt like deeply embarrassing himself due to his imperfect memory of Spanish grammar. Today’s topic is a simple one, with a lot of tangled issues woven into it. Today is, of course, Cinco De Mayo (“The Fifth of May”), a holiday commemorating a Mexican military victory that is vastly more popular in the US than Mexico itself. Today, we’re going to try to take some time to answer ‘why’.

Why Me?

You might wonder what the hell this has to do with a food blog. Well, spoilers, but one of the primary reasons it’s more popular in America is due to food companies co-opting a civil rights movement to improve sales of imported Mexican beers and tequila. In 2013, more beer was sold on Cinco De Mayo than on the Super Bowl, OR St Paddy’s Day.

And no day is better for tequila sales. Like, you don’t even need to check the sales data on that.

Indeed, at least one Latino scholar has accused the day of being, functionally, a fake holiday invented by beer companies. Like how single guys say that Valentine’s Day is a commercial scam to sell more chocolate. And honestly? I think they’re both kind of right. BUT FIRST, let’s talk about what the day is exactly, and why it’s become what it is.

Break Out Your Accordions

So, what exactly is Cinco De Mayo? Because it’s not Mexican Independence Day, as many people believe. In fact, it represents a last hurrah of Mexican armed forces before being conquered. Specifically, we have to go back to the 1860’s. Mexico is not having a good time: America tends to not learn a lot about this, but the late 1700’s and early to mid 1800’s were, to put it succinctly, a SHIT SHOW for a lot of countries.

Y’all remember our good buddy IRISH POTATO FAMINE?
WAR OF 1812?
WATERLOO?
Also, fun fact I recently learned: Irish potato famine? Entirely avoidable. Like, if England had just allowed Ireland to keep more of the food they were exporting to England at the time, no one would have died. There was more than enough food in Ireland to survive, the British just refused to accept the lost value of allowing the Irish to eat it.

Everyone was in wars and skirmishes and establishing new empires that were collapsing…Most people forget that The French Revolution kicked off, and then immediately put France into war with like, 4 different countries, which gave their General Napoleon enough clout to become Consul and then Emperor Napoleon. He then invaded Spain and threw out the Spanish King, putting in a new puppet king. That’s why Mexico started its revolution: it literally went “hey, what if we just refused to acknowledge this new King?” An idea that sprouted several coups and counter-coups, until Mexico descended into a full-on war of Independence, and Mexico was then basically stuck in an constant flux of wars and rebellions for like, 60 years.

EVENTUALLY, after the Mexican American war in the 1840’s, what happened is Mexico was having a conflict/borderline civil war between its republican liberals who wanted to abolish the monarchy and become a more democratic nation like America, and its Conservatives, who wanted to hold onto nobility as well as their allegiance and connection to the Catholic Church. In the middle of all of that, Mexico said “Jesus, we have wasted a LOT of money on wars. We’re going to have to stop paying England, France, and Spain”. To which the three countries all laughed and said “the Fuck you are”, and sailed over some ships to kick the shit out of Mexico until it remembered to pay them. Which it did quite quickly, causing Spain and England to go home, but FRANCE to say “Hey, speaking of, What if I gave you guys a new Emperor? Wouldn’t that be nice?” And marched an army in to do so in early 1862 while America was busy with this whole “Civil War” business. Despite an unexpected spring victory by Mexican forces, the French seized about 2/3rds of the country, forcing the previous administration into a guerilla war against them in the North, and for a couple years Maximillian, a Hapsburg from Austria, was Emperor of Mexico. He tried some relatively civil reforms and popularized the accordion, polka, and brass instruments in Mexico, shaping the future of mariachi music forever.

These fuckers used to play HARPS. HARPS.

Unfortunately, he was himself a liberal, and wanted to create basically what England was moving to: a kind of figurehead monarch who yielded most of his power to a democratically elected Congress. This was no bueno for the Conservatives, who didn’t want elections, nor bueno for the liberals, who didn’t want Monarchs. Once the US finished its civil war and saw that for some fucking reason FRANCE had its military like, 50 miles from the border, and they’d installed an “Emperor” who was at war with the guy we’d been talking to as “President of Mexico” this whole time. Learning all of this, the US told France to get the hell out of Mexico. Which they did, abandoning Maximillian, who refused to abandon the Mexican people, since he believed he could still help them. This did not go so hot, as shown by the existence of the famous painting “The Execution of Emperor Maximillian”. Very weird and controversial guy. By all accounts, very loyal and supportive of his friends and desirous of helping the Mexican people. Just not the guy Mexico needed right then.

It’s not you, it’s us.

We’re shooting you.

That was a long and convoluted story, but it’s important to understand, because it highlights how little Mexico cares about Cinco de Mayo: that was the “unexpected spring victory” I referenced a paragraph and a half ago, with less fanfare than I gave trumpets. That’s what the day is about: When France first showed up to conquer them, Mexico popped them in the face for a second, before going on to lose a war, and have to run their country in exile from a guerilla footing for 5 years until America showed up and kicked France out.

An American Tale

So why did it catch on here? Simple: California. See, California had only become a state in 1850, and still had a huge population of Mexican people (since, you know, that land was part of Mexico until recently) who viewed the invasion of Mexico by France as sort of a mirror of the Revolutionary War: the scrappy New World colony fighting back against Old World Monarchies. When news of the victory reached California mining camps (we were in the tail end of the California Gold Rush), people set off fireworks and sang patriotic Mexican songs, they were so proud and happy. So, a year after the victory at Puebla, they held a party to commemorate that victory of the fifth of May. This happened mere weeks before the fall of Mexico City to the French, meaning it was both a celebration and a kind of hope that the war would go well for Mexico, which…mixed results in the short term, and mid term, decent results in the long. (The mid-term is because one of the generals who won the Cinco De Mayo battle would eventually go on to serve 7 terms as President of Mexico…where he ruled as a “de facto dictator”. Still, there was about 30 years of relative peace. Not great peace, but peace.) So for a long while, Cinco de Mayo was this thing that Mexican Americans in California celebrated year after year, and held up as like, the kindred birth of our two nations: fighting back against colonial powers for a brighter future and democracy.

Which is why, it became an important detail in the rise of the Chicano movement, which we touched on before: what better symbol of challenging the status quo, of fighting for workers, and seeking an identity as Chicanos, people of this land beyond the label “Mexican American”, than the holiday that celebrated Mexican resilience in the face of colonizing whiteness?

I found this Apple ad using the face of Cesar Chavez, famed leader of the labor side of the Chicano movement, and let me tell you, the “colonizing whiteness” jokes write themselves. Or at least would, if they didn’t use cheap labor to keep the price down.

The holiday, which had been quietly chugging along for decades, was picked up and supported by these groups in the 40’s through the 70’s, as a way for Chicano and Mexican American communities to celebrate shared histories and their roots in this land, spreading from California to other states, to remind Chicanos/Mexican Americans across the nation of these touchstones.

So of course, come the 1980’s, a company that imported Modelo and Corona started running Spanish ads suggesting Latinos celebrate the day with authentic Mexican beers. Within a decade, the ads were running in English, in Newspapers and on TV. Most of America didn’t know the full history, and honestly didn’t care. They just knew that it was some Mexican holiday, and they wanted an excuse to drink and eat tacos.

Pictured: the Average American’s sum knowledge of the holiday.

In my personal belief, I suspect this also has something to do with what I call the US’s “holiday deficit”. In a lot of other modern countries, people have VASTLY more mandated leave, while many in the US have to rely on informal “party days” for relief from work: You’re not getting the day off, but we can nationally give a kind of winking approval to the idea of having a few more drinks than usual. See also The Super Bowl, St Paddy’s Day, Mardi Gras to an extent…

And that’s it! That’s the explanation. There’s not really like, “traditional” foods for the day, other than tacos, because as noted, it went from not being super important to “a shared day of heritage” to “tequila and tacos” pretty quickly in the national zeitgeist. Technically the best dishes would be foods associated with Puebla: Mole poblano, Tacos Arabes (aka Tacos Al Pastor), Chiles en Nogada, etc. Or, if you wanted to get historically over-the-top, you should make some kind of fusion French-Mexican dish, where the Mexican portion dominates the French. Queso Fondue. Refried Cassoulet. Crepas con cajetas. Chiles en Nogada. Oh…yeah. I guess you could just crib notes from “the stuff they made after they shot Maximillian”.

One thing I do worry about, and I joked about it with the Cesar Chavez line, is that it kind of casts a worrying lens on the upcoming June holiday that celebrates the heritage and struggle of another racial group in the Americas: Is Juneteenth going to be the next Cinco de Mayo? Turned from retrospective day of service and celebration of freedom into a day for sales on strawberry lemonade and poinsettias? I have no doubt people will try to make it that. And sitting here, having learned the story of Cinco De Mayo…I hope they fail. Or that the rise of Juneteenth buoys with it Cinco De Mayo, and returns to it some of its sold-off dignity. But only time will tell.

NEXT WEEK: I’VE ALREADY FORGOTTEN WHAT I SUGGESTED, SO I’M GOING WITH POTATOES.