¡Celebre el eith de la victoria de Zaragoza yo!

Happy Cinco de Mayo. Do you know what Cinco de Mayo is all about? Many gringos assume that it’s “their Fourth of July.” Actually, Mexican Independence Day is September 16, 1810, that’s the day when a lowly priest rang his church bell calling for Mexicans to fight for their liberty from Spain. Their war for Independence lasted 10 years.

In 1861, Benito Juarez became president of Mexico. He inherited a financial mess. Mexico defaulted on their debts to European countries. France sent naval forces to demand payment. France’s Napoleon III, thought he’d take the opportunity to carve an empire out of Mexican.

During the French-Mexican War, a poorly supplied and outnumbered Mexican army defeated a French army attempting to capture a small town, or “puebla” in east-central Mexico. Winning the “Battle of Puebla” was a great moral victory for the Mexican government, proving their country's ability to defend its sovereignty against a major world power.

6,000 French troops attacked 2,000 rag-tag rebels. 500 French soldiers were killed, but Texas-born Mexican General Zaragoza lost only 100 men. On the fifth of May, 1862, the French retreated, although it was another six years until the French withdrew completely.

Pretty cool, huh? Reminds you of our own American Revolution. Except, France was our ally, but that was pre-Napoleon. And of course we attacked Mexico in the 1840’s and took half their country (California, Arizona, Colorado, etc.) I’m sure that war added to their debt and cut into their gross national product a little too.

Much has been said about “all the Mexicans” in Denison in the last 5-10 years. As a high school teacher, I certainly overhear a fair share of disparaging and ignorant, sometimes even racist remarks that kids make about the changing demographics of our area.

When I was growing up in Phoenix, I just assumed that anyone who wasn’t African-American was “White.” My best friend when I was five was a kid named Juaquin. Everybody thought he was Mexican, but actually his dad was a Maracopia Indian and his mom was Italian.

Bob Lopez, our barber used to get frustrated with the Mexican nationals who’d come north for work, but wouldn’t speak English. He said they knew how to speak it, they were just embarrassed by their accents. Sounds like stories I’ve heard around here from the old timers about speaking German before WWII.

One thing I learned teaching in Los Angeles, is that, like with my childhood friend Juaquin, you can’t assume you know someone’s ethnicity. Guatamalan and Cuban kids would actually make fun of Mexican kids because they spoke so slowly. I guess it’sort of like the difference between a Chicago accent and an Alabama one. El Salvadorans could be very offended if you thought they were Mexican.

Most of all, when you’re talking about the western half of the U.S. there’s a real question of did you cross the border, or did the border cross you? Some peoples families were here before here was “here.”

There’s no such thing as “Hispanic.” Seriously, it’s not a race or a nationality- the term was actually made up in the 1970s by the Census Bureau as an all-inclusive label to define people who’s family origins are in Mexico, the Caribbean or Central and South America. But let’s face it, most people you’d think of as Hispanic are even less Spanish than I am Irish- although many of them do at least speak Spanish. I have no idea how to say anything in Gaelic.

The term “Latino” comes from the Spanish “latinoamericano.” It’s supposed to refer to people who are from former Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America. But see, that doesn’t just cover South America, the Caribbean, and Mexico. It also means territory that the United States acquired from Mexico, like Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, California and Arizona. So therefore, having been born in Arizona, I am a Latino.

I think that the best thing to call people sir or ma’am or for that matter, call them by their first name. Better yet, call them “friend.” In my experience, folks of Mexican decent are warm, friendly, generous, hard working, fair, devoutly faithful Christians who value their families above all else. But of course, these may be overgeneralizations.

While I don’t really commemorate Zaragoza’s victory, I do think that today is not just an excuse to party. Although, I enjoy Mexican beer, Mexican food, Tejano music, and margaritas as much as the next Gingo.

By the way- Gringo is derived from “griego” which means “Greek,” suggesting a stranger or foreigner- as in someone confused by Spanish, who’s apt to give up and say “it’s all Greek to me.”

Of course it may have been derived from the Spanish pronunciation of a slang word meaning "fast spender,"

But it’s more likely that it came out of the Mexican War. The Yankee soldiers sang a marching song called “Green Grow the Rushes.” The Mexicans heard it and started calling the Yankees “Gringos” because of the repeating lyrics “Green Grow.”

FYI: “¡Celebre el eith de la victoria de Zaragoza yo!” translates to “Clebrate Zaragoza’s victory with me!”