Every Cinco de Mayo in the United States the holiday has a reason: Mexico. It commemorates the triumph of the disadvantaged Mexican army against the French troops in the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when Emperor Napoleon III intended to take over the territory of the former Spanish colony and impose Maximilian of Austria as ruler. The troops commanded by General Ignacio Zaragoza won the battle, but not the war. Maximilian became emperor of Mexico until the country managed to regain its independence three years later.
It is a historical fact that has a strong anti-imperialist message embraced by Mexicans born or immigrants in the United States in the mid-20th century. Time passed, and different factors made this anniversary a bicultural festival, which today is also driven by market forces. Bloomberg published that that day beer sales exceeded 745 million dollars, and not just any Mexican beer. Also 68.5 million tons of avocado are sold to prepare guacamole.
This event of Mexican-Americans has not been devoid of controversy because political animosity around immigration has increased in recent years. Non-Latinos who join the celebration often do so by promoting stereotypes or mocking Mexican culture. In 2017, the festival was held at Baylor University (Texas). Cinco de Drinko, which students attended dressed as maids and construction workers. There are also several American television programs that have been highlighted by spread comments either misplaced representations. They put on a poncho, a hat and a daisy in hand to caricature Mexico. In this sense, we analyze the topic with the academic, writer and poet, Zyanya Mariana Mejía, master in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and doctor in Modern Literature from the Universidad Iberoamericana.
Ask. What is the true origin of the Cinco de Mayo holiday in the United States?
Answer. After the war, the Chicano movement influenced ‘Tin Tan’ and he influenced the movement. His pachuco suit is going to return to the United States as a Mexican identity. In the 60s, another very important Chicano movement took place, recorded in several comics, which will extend until the 70s. The memory of the Battle of Puebla as a very important holiday is linked to these movements that occur on the other side of the border, that is why in Mexico it is not relevant.
Q. How is the success of Corona beer in the United States linked to the positioning of the Cinco de Mayo holiday in the United States?
R. In the 1980s, the United States changed its economy. Globalization begins, reaching its peak in the nineties. This implies that the market begins to speak to a series of minorities and exalt them. A very interesting phenomenon occurred. I don’t have a book about it, but I have been able to see it in other expressions of pop culture. To displace African American communities, the Americans praised Hispanics. From an economic point of view, the most powerful group in the Latino community in the United States is the Mexican. All this has to do with the Cinco de Mayo holiday and its relevance.
Q. However, in recent years the Cinco de Mayo holiday has generated all kinds of antipathy towards Hispanics in the United States…
R. I am convinced that the symbolic has economic roots. Obama tried to include Mexicans, and I say this in quotes because he was the president who deported the most Mexicans. He didn’t do it in the speech, but he did in factual terms. Trump, for his part, did have a discursive line against it, but he expelled them to a lesser extent, although he symbolically eliminated Spanish from all official White House communication. The last Spanish language academy to be founded in America was in the United States because it is the second most spoken language in that country. If you consider that Hispanics reproduce more than Wasp (as the group of white Anglo-Saxons and upper class Protestants in the United States is known), and you add that many young Americans are living outside the country, in Mexico and throughout Latin America because they have a better quality of life here, those who stay are a population that does not like whites. The policy of persecution towards these minorities responds greatly to the fear of being culturally displaced, which is why they attack the symbols of Hispanicism.
Q. Are we talking about racism?
R. Culture Wasp, European culture and Western culture in general tend to value seriousness. We must remember that in the Middle Ages, laughing was something for idiotic and crazy children. Valuable people didn’t laugh. But what do you think, in Mexico we even laugh at death. We have very different ideas of what laughter or seriousness is. On the other hand, in the series Modern Familythe character of Sofía Vergara is the archetype of what Americans and culture think Wasp of the Latinos. The women have curves and are more intelligent than them, even though they don’t know how to speak English well and their relatives are drug traffickers. Creating this archetype in the media tells you that yes, they are racist, but they are being dominated by Hispanic culture.
The character of Sofía Vergara is the archetype of what Americans and culture think Wasp of the Latinos. The women have curves and are more intelligent than them, even though they don’t know how to speak English well and their relatives are drug traffickers. Creating this archetype in the media tells you that they are racist
Zyanya Mariana Mejía
Q. So, could the Cinco de Mayo holiday be read as a conquest of Mexican culture in the United States? Has it produced a bridge between both countries?
R. Not a bridge. With the arrival of López Obrador there is a recognition with flats, contradictions and chiaroscuros, of these Mexican minorities who have the desire to return to the country as ‘victors’. They did not become gringos, although they are no longer Mexican either. It is very curious. They are not assumed as Wasp, but they feel closer to Mexico. That’s why remittances increased, and holidays like Cinco de Mayo have become so relevant. However, you have the band facing gentrification in Mazatlán, or in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, it is already said: “If you want gentrification to end, put more chili in the sauce.” There is a need to recover an intensity that culture Wasp can’t stand it, and the Cinco de Mayo party is brutally intense. The Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, who came to live in Mexico, said that Mexican culture is very vital and hence its relationship with death. Maybe that has something to do with it too.
Q. Is associating the Cinco de Mayo holiday with drunkenness and dancing part of a false morality?
R. The Franciscans accused the Mexica of honoring poverty because they wer
e incapable of seeing the austerity of war. Goethe, when he was in Italy, said that the sensuality of the Italians delighted him and terrified him at the same time. I think this is the same logic as Americans. It’s not the first time it happens. Columbus wanted the naked bodies of the indigenous people, but accused them of being cannibals. Culture Wasp desires and fears Hispanic American culture. I am convinced that the Cinco de Mayo party, which is about bringing together Mexicans born in the United States or immigrants, is a way of saying ‘we are alive’ despite the dead that I left in the desert. The Mexican doesn’t care much about what he is celebrating because he knows that the party is transitory. If it is called September 15, Cinco de Mayo, Day of the Dead, it does not seem important to us, what is relevant is the ritual, this is eternal.
Q. Do festivities like Cinco de Mayo become ways to vindicate the hard blow of migration?
R. Confucius said that the health of a society lay in giving meaning to its rituals. For the Mexican, drinking and dancing is regenerating social ties, ties with the community, even solving what needs to be solved, which is why many celebrations end in lawsuits. The party is also associated with capitalism, the sale of beer and Mexican food, but our culture does not need to be expressed in the United States through a party. The most expensive restaurants in that country are Mexican. We have reached a level of notoriety that we no longer need an anniversary. Of all, the relationship between the United States and Mexico is very ambivalent. There is an idea of old culture that sees the new young person, who is economically stronger, but not better than you.
Q. What do you think of the thousands of Americans who are moving to Mexico?
R. Most of these digital nomads want to live in Mexico, but without Mexicans. Culture Wasp, especially the generation that came after the fall of the Berlin Wall, sees itself as the only power and the best, but they grew up and realized that their country’s economy is no longer the same. They move to Rome to live like they do in Brooklyn, but without it costing them like they do in Brooklyn. They are not interested in culture but rather in pursuing a standard of living that they can no longer have in the United States and that they believe they deserve. If they do not learn to live and respect the culture of Mexicans, there will be confrontation. People are stopping going to Roma or La Condesa because it doesn’t feel like Mexico anymore. There is a lot of fatigue.
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