May 05th, 2018

Feliz Cinco de Mayo:


“Cinco de Mayo” “is an annual celebration held on May 5. The date is observed to commemorate the Mexican Army’s unlikely victory over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza.”
“In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has taken on a significance beyond that in Mexico.” “More popularly celebrated in the United States than Mexico,” “the date has become associated with the celebration of Mexican-American culture. In Mexico, the commemoration of the battle continues to be mostly ceremonial, such as through military parades or battle reenactments.
“Cinco de Mayo is sometimes mistaken in the United States for Mexico's Independence Day—the most important national holiday in Mexico—which is celebrated on September 16, commemorating the Cry of Dolores that initiated the war of Mexican independence from Spain.”  - Wikipedia 

edited 5/16:
Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of the victory an army of Mexican peasants that kicked the asses of Emperor Maximillian's French Army, one of Europe's most effective.  Maximillian (an Austrian) was enthroned by Napolean lll of France as ruler of Mexico without the Mexican people's permission.  Mexico defaulted on international loans, and the French stayed in Mexico after other representatives of the international community left.  The French stayed to offset American policy in the region -- the Monroe Doctrine -- and for reasons of French imperialism.
Maximillian was eventually shot, executed, by the Mexican Army: a decent man, honorable, brave, romantic, and a bonehead (if I remember my history) to the very end.  Maximillian's mission was idiotic, brutal, cruel, that ended, resulted, in the deaths of thousands of innocents, but Emperor Maximillian was a relatively good man.     
​     - History.com/ Google