By the time you read this, most of you will be finished nursing your Cinco de Mayo hangovers and are back to the grind. A few of the particularly dedicated may still be staggering slightly – tequila can be pretty rough on your system after all.
Cinco de Mayo, or the fifth of May, is the day commemorating the Battle of Puebla, when 4,000 Mexican troops emerged victorious against the French army more than twice its size on May 5, 1862.
So why do people, especially college students across the United States, celebrate this date, which is not even a Mexican national holiday? It’s an excuse to drink, of course.
After all, when downing Coronas and margaritas, how many college students actually think about the reason behind the celebration, other than the obligatory “Viva Mexico!” they may shout as a toast?
Well, to find out, this reporter attended a “Tres de Mayo” party (so named due to logistics, i.e. no one wanted to wait until Monday to party; we actually celebrated it on May 3) and attempted to find out.
Survey says, only three people actually knew what Cinco de Mayo was. A few offered up the common misconception of “Mexican Independence Day?” and most just looked at me rather blankly. Now, maybe I just hang around really dumb people, or maybe its indicative of a wider social unawareness; I suspect it’s the latter.
It’s not just Mexican culture we appropriate however. I was in downtown San Luis Obispo on St. Patrick’s Day having dinner with a couple of friends, and all around me was a sea of college students adorned in disgusting amounts of green, heading to the bars. (By the way, who ever decided it’d be a good idea to don a green felt hat in the shape of a shamrock?)
Saint Patrick’s Day, held on March 17, is celebrated primarily in Ireland to celebrate its patron saint . Saint Patrick! College students commemorate this Christian icon by downing Guinness beer and Bailey’s Irish Cream. If they really want to show their devotion, they might even drop the beer INTO the Irish Cream and call it an Irish Car Bomb! No better way to celebrate a saint than by referencing a tactic used by the Provisional Irish Republican Army during a long, bloody struggle against Britain after all!
The German festival, Oktoberfest, is a celebration to commemorate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen way back in 1810. Did any of you know that? I sure didn’t.
What I did know was that it was an opportunity to drink large amounts of imported beer and speak in funny German accents while watching movies such as “Beerfest.”
Again, without knowing any history behind a holiday, Americans have successfully popularized it, as long as the occasion called for alcohol and partying. (As of now, I haven’t heard of any American students celebrating Germany’s Repentance Day, or National Day of Mourning.)
There’s nothing wrong with alcohol and partying. The problem lies in the assumption that we are “celebrating” a cultural event, usually a holiday of minor significance, because it’s an excuse to party.
Americans, frequently accused of arrogance and ignorance toward other cultures, do nothing but help perpetuate this notion when our only understanding of a culture’s holidays is the type of alcohol used to celebrate them.
So next year, while toasting your friends with lime-topped Coronas, appreciate Cinco de Mayo for its historical significance to Mexico, not only for the half-priced drinks.
Rachel Glas is a journalism junior and a reporter for the Mustang Daily.