Cinco de Mayo

...on seis de Mayo.

For those of you out their questioning this idea of Cinco de Mayo and it's legitimacy as a holiday I would like to add a little fuel to your fire. I'm recognizing that most of my readers are not from Texas, and if they are they are transplants.

I myself am a transplant, but I was firmly enough indoctrinated that all of the tar on my heels has succumbed to the Texas turpentine. Not all of you were so lucky to take two years of Texas history in grade school.

So I will enlighten.

Cinco de Mayo is "the first date that the Mexicans kicked the French out of Mexico" or rather," it is the day that they won a battle against France on Mexican soil." It took place in 1862. It really only delayed the invasion by a few months, in 1863 the French took Mexico City but in 1867 the French had been kicked out for good and the Mexicans were free to rule themselves by their own dictators and politically corrupt parties. It is not Independence Day, that is September 16th.

Mexicans don't really celebrate Cinco de Mayo in Mexico. They do, in Puebla (the site of the battle), but not really anywhere else... oh, except in the United States. It is a symbol for "the
victory of the underdog" and "overcoming great odds..."

About those French. Apparently they at one time had a sizable force worthy of contention. They took over part of East Texas once, (I think over there by Vider, home of the KKK) again for a brief period before some ladies with shotguns ran them back to Louisiana. Sounds kinda like the aftermath of Katrina in a way, doesn't it? Anyway, that was short lived too and it explains the most obscure of the "six flags over Texas." Can you name the other five?

And while we are at it, what was the name of the other Texas massacre of 1836?