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Fiesta

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
May 5, 2009
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At the blackboard: I will not write about Cinco de Mayo. I will not to write about Drinko de Mayo. I will not write about Stinko de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo is dead! Long live Cinco de Mayo!As with most things Mexicans there is a myriad of dichotomies - depending on the angle from which you choose to view it - that have crystallized around Cinco de Mayo. It's a Mexican holiday most popular outside of Mexico. It's a holiday that celebrates a victorious battle in a war that was lost. It's a holiday that joins the holidays of other assimilated ethnicities (Oktoberfest, St. Patrick's Day) while Mexicans remain as "outsider" as they were since Mexico gave away the Southwest states after a U.S.-instigated war.

Let's review the facts. In 1862 Texas-born Mexican general Ignacio Zaragoza defeated the powerful French Army outside Puebla, near Mexico City. The French eventually won and installed a monarch to collect the debt Mexico owed. Mexican oligarchs threw out the French but developed a hard-core addiction to French architecture, fashion and pastries.

Here are the festivities around town: Ground Zero is Olvera Street. Hipster Ground Zero is the Echoplex. I'm impressed that YouTube's main page included a link to Los Cenzontles. And here's a site that brags it's "Your City. Your Guide." assuming Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day.

Thanks for indulging my refusal to write about Cinco de Mayo. I've learned my lesson.

Photo: Balloons outside a party store on Whittier Blvd. in East L.A.

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