Cinco De Mayo: A Quintessentially ‘American’ Holiday

*Here, another attempt to put Cinco de Mayo in perspective. This time NBC News turns the tables and talks about Cinco de Mayo from a Mexican-American perspective. There’s no way any one article will satisfy all expectations and opinions on the matter, someone will always find them lacking. But they’re a good starting point for a conversation. VL

By Juan Castillo, NBC News

AUSTIN, TX — Ah, Cinco de Mayo. For many Americans, a time to drink and make merry.

For others, it’s an annual rite of spring to blast the Mexican holiday’s commercialized boozy image in the U.S.

Drinko de Mayo, anyone?

That controversy aside, just what is Cinco de Mayo? For starters, it is not, as some revelers think, Mexico’s equivalent of our Fourth of July.

Actually, it commemorates the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when the smaller Mexican forces defended the town from thousands of French invaders attempting to march on to the nation’s capital. The French were acting in what essentially was a larger plot by some Mexicans and the French monarch, Napoleon III, to put a European prince, Maximilian, on a Mexican throne, says Frank de la Teja, a history professor at Texas State University in San Marcos and a former state historian of Texas.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo by Sophia Parafina/Flickr]