Back in the late sixties-early seventies people in the Chicano Moratorium, Brown Berets, etc. in Los Angeles wanted a day to focus Mexican-American community-building, with history lessons and celebrations in the schools and on the street. Since at that time most California schools started in the week of or after Labor Day, that left two weeks or less to prepare for the September 16th Independence Day. But Cinco de Mayo had always been right there as a kind of second-tier patriotic holiday, and it was quite close to the end of the school year and allowed people to build up a nice fat curriculum about it and to produce a well-rehearsed celebration.

It became a drinking holiday later. It happened so gradually I couldn't tell you when.

That is to say, it's an occasion for drinking beer -- today, Dos Equis, Carta Blanca, and especially Corona.

We had a US attorney general who was a Bonaparte (grandnephew of the first emperor). Reportedly he founded the FBI. There are interesting possibilities here in alternate history.

Drinking much beer -- Check.

None of that drinkin' soon to be howlin' youthful demographic appear to have a bit of Mexican heritage.

Constance

But then, neither do any of the people who own the restaurants, or cook in them. The busboys though, they're pretty much Mexican.

As for el Cinco de Mayo, as long as we remember what the actual event was that is being celebrated, I figure it's ok to have fun on it. Perhaps it's also a more easily marketable name ( el Dieceseis de Septiembre doesn't roll off my tongue as easily, but then my high school Spanish is thirty years rusty).

An excuse for drunk-Americans to drink?

I hate Cinco-de-Mayo, almost as much as I hate St. Patricks's day, or even worse (shudder) New Year's Eve. Then, I worked in a bar for a long time. We eventually gave up on the Amateur Nights -- we'd make money, but it wasn't worth the hell we'd go through.

And I bet you care even less about National Gall Bladder Week.

Then so is St Patrick's Day and Columbus Day (that group of illegals is still causing problems!) and Oktoberfest. It is not about the glorification of immigration law violations (unless you vote with the party of Voldemort). [/something or other]

Cinco de Mayo is a big deal in the US because a) everyone can remember when it is; b) people want an excuse to drink Margaritas; c) everyone can remember when it is; d) people like eating nachos and so on also; and e) everyone can remember when it is.

A wide variety of pretty good salsas were submitted.

We have a pretty good number of recently arrived Indian employees. I wonder what they made of it all.

Where I spent most of my childhood, the people most likely to celebrate Cinco de Mayo were folks with Spanish surnames, American citizenship, and families that had been in America for more generations than a lot of their Anglo neighbors.

#20 Stefan: at my workplace, which is very small, the Indian employee fretted about what to bring to the potluck because she doesn't know how to cook Mexican food, so I took advantage and asked her to bring Indian vegetables and rice because I personally love it.

The universal farewell on Friday night was "Be careful drinking on Cinco de Mayo."

What's a xenophobe doing visiting a site dealing with sf&f, writing and publishing? Looking for a free exchange of ideas?

On a lighter note . . . when we lived in Peoria, weekend tv news was run by recent U of I/ISU grads. One Saturday, we saw the young anchor tell us, "Well, Cinco de Mayo fell on May 5th this year, and Peoria's Hispanic community is out in force to celebrate."

The Immigration Reform March was earlier in the week. It was attended by members of the same groups as those who celebrated today--and by others. Anyone who thinks that immigration reform is the concern of only one ethnic heritage (or that immigrants, legal or otherwise, come to this country from only one part of the world) simply isn't paying attention.

Seriously, there was fine snow on Hood today, and I spent four and a half hours skiing at Timberline with the husband. Then we stopped at a nice little Mexican restaurant on our way home and ate wild boar tacos. Was followed into Sandy by a lovely, highly polished, low rider white pickup with a Mexican flag on the hood. Driven by a Latino. Saw several Latino households with outdoor parties going.

And I only fell down once, late in the ski day, when the snow was getting slushy and sloppy. Somehow managed to fall over backward and land on my back, riding my skis downhill. Managed to turn my tips and come to a stop. Thought I'd seriously managed to mess up my knees but no problem.

There were a few Mexicans skiing at Timberline. There were a lot more Indians wandering around trying to make sense of the crazy ski bums skiing in May....

And now I'm sipping a nice little tequila. Over on Daily Kos, I understand that some folks are imbibing in tequila juleps rather than the traditional mint bourbon juleps for Derby Day. Shudder. Why wreck a good tequila with mint?

Earl Conley #23: It is possible, by the way, to wish that immigration laws were properly enforced and still possess a soul.

Only if the immigration laws were themselves not brutal, exploitative, irrational, punitive, and counter-productive.

I'm confused because Earl's first and second comments here don't quite fit together. (Well, maybe they do for some weird value of fit. Although I think that value may belong in one of the other threads. Possibly it's a complex number.)

But I am getting more nauseous daily as I hear Let's Blame The Illegal Immigrants speeches from the those who refuse to look at the other seven-eighths of that particular economic iceberg.

We've seen this ploy before.

As the late Molly Ivins used to say, "Look at who's doing the screwing, and at who's getting screwed." Two and three generations ago, it was my family.

Find the center of gravity of that iceberg, hidden deep, and tell me "Cui bono?" The same forces destroying unions in this country are those with the most to gain from super-cheap unprotected labor.

If you want to blame someone, go to the roots

"If you want to blame someone, go to the roots"

Yeah, those goddamn Plymouth Rock-Jumping Puritans.

In NAFTA, on the other hand, the workers are trapped, and the US corporate culture can exploit workers in Mexico, trapped there by US immigration laws.

If NAFTA worked in the same way as the EU, there'd also be some heavy investment in infrastructure in Mexico. It's a choice the EU has made, and effectively we take over countries with money, not munitions; building, rather than breaking.

and e) everyone can remember when it is.

Not after the third Margarita they can't.

Anyone who thinks that immigration reform is the concern of only one ethnic heritage (or that immigrants, legal or otherwise, come to this country from only one part of the world) simply isn't paying attention.

Or hasn't been here long enough to understand the problem.

But seriously, folks, immigration's not an ethnic issue at all*, it's a simple case of osmotic pressure and the resultant migration across barriers.

Increased illegal immigration is the natural result of a deliberate policy of economic globalization. Immigration is a part of the way formerly independent economies have to level-set when they're connected so closely by trade agreements. Lowering barriers to trade is naturally going to result in increased flow of immigration across borders, and whether we want globalization or not, it's rather late to turn back and re-establish the barriers.

* Well, it's an ethnic issue for someone who has a particular grudge against a particular ethnos, and wants to use illegal immigration as a political issue. But fences will stop it as well as sand stops the rising tide, because it's driven by some very powerful economic forces.

Yeah, those goddamn Plymouth Rock-Jumping Puritans.

Nah, I blame it all on those damn liberal Natives, who just wouldn't enforce the immigration laws, and keep the riff-raff out.

However, the problem with simply cranking up enforcement is that every time we've tried it, the effects on legal, native, here-for-generations Americans with brown skin and Spanish surnames have been dire. That's why so many of the people who turn out for pro-immigrant marches are American citizens.

The idea that we can improve the negotiating position of American labor by clamping down harder on illegal immigrants sounds just as good, and works just as well, as the idea that we can eliminate the human propensity to take recreational drugs by making lots of drugs very, very illegal. In both cases, what actually happens is that the basic "problem" remains thoroughly in place, along with an extra-special bonus of more law-enforcement bureaucracy, more heavily-armed dingbats in government uniforms, more people in jail, and more injustice all around.

Bottom line: You're right, there's a problem. Your proposed solution, whenever implemented, creates more problems without solving the original problem.

That said, excepting the traffic problems, it seems like a fun enough time. If I wasn't having health/work problems, I'd probably be visiting the festival downtown this weekend.

No, I don't want all the brown people to leave. I want all the rich people to put me in their wills and then invest all of their viable organs in transplant banks. Immediately.

Truly open borders for workers, with similar wage laws and working conditions and environmental laws in every country, is what we ought to want. We ought to be working for higher wages for low-wage workers across the whole hemisphere, with decent conditions and environmental protections (get the WTO to stop making Third World producers dose their exports with methyl bromide, for example, and no more Bhopals).

They probably liked the salsas. IIUC, India used to have a lot of religious/social holidays, rather than a regular week-end one, and retains much of that custom, so I don't suppose people from India would find this celebration confusing.

Re: #24 ..." One Saturday, we saw the young anchor tell us, "Well, Cinco de Mayo fell on May 5th this year, and Peoria's Hispanic community is out in force to celebrate."

Probably should've said "...fell on Saturday...". One of my nearby small towns (possibly some members of the City Government do not have Hispanic surnames) decorates lamp-posts & has a Program in the park on the Saturday nearest the 5th of May, which seems to be the common practice -- it's not viewed as something to be literal about. (Unlike a religious event such as, say, the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist (I think it is), when families just quietly drift around the fence (posted "No Trespassing") and go swimming in the local flowing-water river.)

In other Cinco-related news, our Fox affiliate showed the Giants vs. the Phillies, and I got a kick out of the home team wearing "Gigantes" as the logo on their uniforms for the day.

Somebody/bodies will no doubt have written indignant letters to the newspapers complaining about the 'Gigantes' logo.

My Latin American history survey class* pointed out that this cultural bias was and is a huge problem in Latin America. Some of the current economic problems that lead to Mexico exporting immigrants to the US have this at their roots.

(Lest anyone get confused, I make no claims that the USA or anywhere else is perfect in this regard).

*taught by a Mexican woman who'd gotten her PhD in Oxford, resulting in an interesting mix of accents.

I've been told that his land-ownership reforms were a major part of the trigger for the invasion. Seems the (mostly upperclass white) landowners objected to the (mostly indio and meztizo) peasants actually being allowed to own the land they were working. (And the clause that said that 5 years of not-being-worked threw the land open to claims was like putting a match to a fuse.)

When people who are desperately poor consider being an illegal in the US preferable to being legal in whatever country they are from, then the country they are from needs to make changes somewhere. (It may be helpful to read Stan Robinson's rant about the IMF and the World Bank in Sixty Days and Counting.)

Yes, there are excellent reasons for red-blooded American patriots to stop trash-talking "immigrants" and celebrate the Battle of Puebla.

Funny how immigration is only an "issue" when it brings in groups of people other than our own ancestors. Of course, it was an "issue" when it brought some of my ancestors in, too: Bohemians, Irish, and Scots.

Yes, give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, unless they talk funny and have names we can't pronounce and eat different food and take all our jobs we don't really want but will still grouse about, yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah.

And I hope folks don't start with the "My ancestors came here legally" arguments if they don't distinguish between legal and illegal immigration in their own rants to begin with. Doubly so if their ancestors came here before there were any immigration laws at all imposed by people of European descent (who came here with no regard to what the indigenous people thought of their arrival).

Strangely, I used to love working the bar during St Patrick's Day. It was one of the few days in the year when people were just looking to have a good time, instead of concentrating on getting drunk/looking good/hooking up/whatever.