Location: CA, USA
I have some neighbors who regularly have a huge bash lasting all night long - it’s happened every Cinco de Mayo for nearly a decade.
This year - nothing.
The whole town is quiet. This used to be one of the noisiest days of the year. Is anyone else noticing this in their community?
Yeah, same. Previous years it was cars driving around with flags, posters for events, etc. This year I saw absolutely nothing. Feels a bit glum tbh.
I’m in California too. Every year I forget it’s Cinco and think “Damn, Mexicans are feeling super patriotic! There’s two meter Mexican flags attached to half the vehicles on the road today! Oh… it is the 5th of May isn’t it…” Not one this year.
I was in Mexico for Cinco last year and they didn’t seem to give a shit. I asked if anything special was going on and they just laughed and said no.
Mexican here. Cinco de Mayo commerates the Battle of Puebla. It’s widely celebrated in the United States and not celebrated here. It’s really more a Mexican-American thing.
There are 32 states down here and only one, Puebla itself, has the day off. As a resident of one of the other 31 states, it literally was a normal day at work for me.
Probably ICE and bad economy
It’s Monday.
You’re Monday.
Yep, people usually go pretty hard in Redwood City but not this year. It is Monday but even for a Monday it’s quiet.
Hey, I know this wasn’t the point of your comment, but I grew up in Redwood City! Nice to see it mentioned. That was a wonderful place to spend the 90s as a kid.
It’s still wonderful :)
Location: MI, USA. My city is insanely white. The second highest demographic being Black, at around 4%. I have never seen or heard any celebrating around here. But you can expect a 2hr wait at any Mexican restaurant.
ICE aside, ain’t nobody got money for dat.
Also California.
Yeah there wasn’t much. Only thing I heard about was a restaurant with marg deals and giving out small cute sombrero hats.
I heard some communities would boycott specific products, common in these celebrations, as they were instrumental in Trump’s campaign. Nevertheless, this is news to me since the celebrations themselves are basically mandatory for Mexicans.
But whats the history of cinco de mayo?
Cinco de Mayo commerates the Battle of Puebla. In the 1860s, the French took advantage of the United States being distracted by the Civil War and invaded México. The French were very pro-Confederate at the time. They planned to use México as a supply line to assist the Confederates. On 5 May, 1863, a rag tag group of Mexican soldiers defeated invading/occupying French troops in an embarrassing defeat. This stopped the French plans to support the Confederacy and fueled a Mexican insurgence to drive out the French and return them to Europe.
In the early 20th century, a group of Latinos in Texas (Mexicans, Guatamalans, Hondurans, etc) wanted to celebrate a “Latino pride” sort of day. Ironically, they chose Cinco de Mayo since it was an unknown, never celebrated holiday that wasn’t country X’s independence day. And it took off from there.
