| Quote: | |  | |
| win...
On a side note,
why do gringos celebrate 5 de Mayo??????? 
WTF? | |
| | |
I looked it up over the last few days and am now feeling sad because I'd posted it elsewhere (which you could see) yesterday.
Cinco de Mayo celebration commemorates the Mexican victory against the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862. The General in charge of the Mexican fighters was General Zaragosa, who happened to have been born in Texas.
Of course, folks from the southwestern areas of the US would be likely to celebrate this victory as Texas itself had only been a state for a short time and Arizona and New Mexico were only just US Territories on that date... meaning they'd all been part of Mexico itself not sooo long before.
So far as other Americans go, that Mexican victory meant that it disrupted the French from being able to supply that Confederate troops in our own Civil War which had been Napoleon's plan had they been able to establish a more firm (and earlier) base in Mexico.
Up til that battle, the French army had never been defeated so if they had won then also, the US and Mexico both would be very different places than they are today. I imagine much of the rest of the world would be very different also as Napoleon would have had even further access to resources than he did, it probably would have meant more victories all over the world for the French.
So, for those who pay attention to history - and how often there are links between US and Mexico (there were MANY Mexicans who joined the US military after Pearl Harbor for example), the reasons for Americans celebrating such a seemingly "nothing to do with us" holiday as Cinco de Mayo. It has "everything" to do with us as if the French had won, the South would likely have won as well.
Linear Mode
