HispanicVista Columnists

The 5th of May is Cinco de Mayo
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

We Americans should offer many toasts for what happened on the 5th of May 1862, about 100-miles east of Mexico City after a night of torrential rains.

The contrarian French ignore May 5 but celebrate April 30, 1863 that commemorates a defeat of the French Foreign Legion by Mexicans at Camaron, Mexico (60 of 65 Legionnaires were killed this day by Mexican irregulars during an all-day battle).

The "war" started when the French, British and Spanish governments landed troops in Mexico in January, 1862, to collect private debts owed by the "Conservative" Mexican government of 1858. The "Liberal" Mexican government of 1862 refused to honor those debts.

The British and Spanish negotiated a deal with Mexico then left. The French remained. Why, because Louis Napoleon III had decided to destroy the American democracy that at that very moment was sundering itself in Civil War.

The United States was too busy to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europeans not to meddle in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, Napoleon decided to invade Mexico and use it as a base to supply the Confederacy with arms and munitions.

The French planned to take the exact route the conquering Americans took in 1847 from the port of Vera Cruz through Puebla into Mexico City. At least, that was the plan.

Around 4,000 aristocratic Spanish-blooded Creoles without a drop of Indian blood, cross-blooded Spanish and Indians AKA mestizos and pure-blooded Indians – Mexicans all -- huddled in the rain the night of May 4 praying their 50-year old rifles would work the next day against the French.

The French had not lost a battle in almost five decades since the Duke of Wellington beat them at Waterloo. Coincidentally, the very rifles the Mexicans carried were last used at Waterloo by the British. The machete-armed Indians brought hundreds of cattle with them and used them as weapons by stampeding the cattle through the French camp causing chaos among the rain-soaked French.

Texas-born Mexican general Ignacio Zaragoza ordered his cavalry commander (future President and dictator) Porfirio Diaz to move his light cavalry away from the French and Royalist Mexican troops at daylight. This, to show themselves then to turn and run giving the impression that they feared the beautifully and brightly ostrich-plumed French dragoons.

The French commander split his forces and ordered his infantry to charge the Mexicans head on up a muddy valley without the cavalry man/gun power that took off to pursue the cowardly Mexican horse soldiers.

Two Spanish-built forts blasted away at the French with cannon decades old. Four thousand Mexicans blistered the French with deadly musket fire from their positions above the valley floor. The French were slaughtered; they suffered 25 percent casualties.

The French cavalry limped back from a disastrous chase of Mexican horse soldiers who had turned and wiped them out. The French withdrew to Vera Cruz and sent for more soldiers.

More came and a year later they defeated the Mexicans at Puebla and marched on Mexico City. Nonetheless, despite losing their capital and much of the country the Mexicans didn’t surrender to the French. The government of Indian President Benito Juarez took to the road and "governed" while on the run. Mexicans took to the hills and started guerilla warfare that the French would never overcome.

As one surviving French Legionnaire wrote: "Send forty men alone, they will be massacred by the small bands of four to five hundred men who come out of nowhere and who are elusive, protected by the inhabitants of the towns and the countryside who keep them abreast of what we do."

More importantly, from the American perspective the Battle of Puebla kept the French at bay in Mexico for another year. By the time the French took Mexico City, the critical Mississippi River town of Vicksburg, Mississippi had fallen to the Federal forces of General U.S. Grant and forever cut the Confederacy in half.

Napoleon III’s grand scheme to kill the United States came to a grinding halt the 5th of May 1862. Its death came at the hands of Mexicans with 50-year-old rifles, cannon made from church bells and by Mexican soldiers and cavalry who had been fighting each other three and four years before. A cattle stampede orchestrated by Indians who spoke no Spanish and had no rifles helped make victory possible.

For the first time, Mexicans defeated a European army.

Certainly, freedom as we know it would take another 138-years to find a home in Mexico, but freedom it is.

As to the effect that the Battle of Puebla had on U.S. History, one need only know that the Confederate forces did not have enough cannon, cannon balls and black powder at Gettysburg.

During the first three days of July, 1863, 14 months after the Mexicans won their battle in Puebla, the Confederates carried the battle on the first and second of July. They lost on the third day when Federal forces turned back the famous charge of 10,000 Confederates under a-not-so-smart General Picket, a charge mistakenly ordered by General Robert E. Lee.

The Union was saved. The American government gave thanks to Mexicans by shipping captured Confederate arms/munitions to the Rio Grande and leaving them unguarded for Mexican "thieves" to steal at night.

General U.S. Grant sent Generals Phil Sheridan and George Armstrong Custer to the Rio Grande with thousands of American troops to remind the French that they would have to retire to Gay Paree. The American army also discharged soldiers in Texas with their rifles and "kits" so they could cross the Rio Grande and join the Mexican Army for $10 a month and some land. They formed the American Legion of Honor and fought expertly for Mexico.

The French gave up and left Mexico in 1867, five years after their defeat at Puebla and after five years of constant guerilla warfare against them. Cinco de Mayo was the start of an embarrassing twilight for the French Empire.

In the "Complete History of the French Foreign Legion," we find these appropriate words: "Mexico was not a success for French arms."

Viva Cinco de Mayo!