1969 La Voz de Aztlan

              MORENA
MONDAY,  MAY 5,1969
Chicano-Black Student Supplement      Volume 1, Number 1
La Sentana de la Raza Bronte y •..
El Cinco de Mayo
Every fifth of May Puebla, the original "City of the
Angels" in the Western Hemisphere awakens to a
glorious day, a day which has won her the proud name
of "Puebla la heroica." For this is the commemoration
of the Batalla del Cinco de Mayo, May 5, 1862, when
Puebla repulsed a French attack. Around eleven in the
morning the school children of Puebla, decked out in
their uniformes de gala (dress uniforms) decorated with
identifying ribbons, march for four hours in a five mile
long parade through the center of the city. When the
parade reaches the zocalo (central plaza), the units of
the various schools march past the state and municipal
officials and salute them. The rest of the day is spent
in a grand fiesta with many of the citizens gaily dressed
in regional costumes, while bands play throughout the
city. There is dancing in the zocalo and other plazas.
At ten in the evening, the "combate de flores" (the
flower battle, an ancient Aztec tradition) takes place.
People throng to the zocalo and adjoining streets throwing flowers at each other and presenting bouquets to
friends and strangers alike. Later, there are many
glittering private parties to cap the festivities.
During the day, the Mexican Army stages a sham
battle on the Cerro de Guadalupe, atop which stands the
fort, now a historical museum, which was the core of
Puebla's defenses.
Throughout the Mexican Nation similar events take
place; and, in the ancient Aztec village of Penon (the
rock), in the suburbs of Mexico City, a classic play is
enacted with a cast of public officials, soldiers, and
musicians. Not only does the long drama follow closely
the historical events, but it contains long quotations from
the various diplomatic pronouncements and treaties which
preceeded and followed the battle.
One may well ask why all the festivities, and thereby
hangs a glorious and interesting tale of intrigue, adventure, derring-do, and heroic patriotism. From 1858
to 1861, Mexico was wracked by a sanguinary and destructive civil war, the Guerra de la Reforma or Guerra
de Tres Anos. The conflict was a showdown between
the Jacobin radicals who called themselves puros and
the ultraconservative religious elements. They were all
Catholics, but they disagreed violently on the relations
between Church and State, as well as on the nature of the
State itself. The Liberals (as the puros were officially
called), favored a federalized republic and rejected their
Indo-Spanish-Catholic culture in favor of the Anglo-
oriented-Protestant one of the United States. The Conservatives preferred a unitary republic on the French
model or a recreation of the Spanish monarchial state,
as well as the Europeonization of Mexican culture. To
bring about their ends, both sides courted foreign intervention: the Liberals that of the United States, the Conservatives that of France.
At the conclusion of the Guerra de la Reforma, which
the Liberals won with the aid of the United States, President Benito Juarez surveyed-the sorry state of his country, drained physically and emotionally and utterly
devastated by a fratricidal war. Small surprise, then,
that President Juarez declared a two-year moratorium
on the payment of Mexico's foreign debt. Although the
decision was dictated by absolute necessity, it was catastrophic, for it furnished a pretext for foreign intervention. The time was propitious, for the United States, itself embroiled in the bloody struggle between the Union
and Confederate forces, was in no position to enforce
the Monroe Doctrine which not only decried intervention
by non-American powers, but specifically banned the
further extension of the monarchical system inAmerica.
Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, had long dreamed
of a Catholic Latin American Empire which would counteract the Protestant Anglo-oriented United States. Also,
he was influenced by the dazzling vision of Mexican
riches dangled before his eyes by such Mexican exiles
as the ex-Liberal General Juan Almonte, the royalist
Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada, and the ambitious Jose
Manuel Hidalgo who had distinguished himself against
the American invaders at the Battle of Churubusco in
1847. He was also influenced by his bastard half-brother,
the Due de Morny, who was a partner of J. B. Jecker,
a Swiss banker who held Mexican  government bonds
worth fifteen million pesos.
Napoleon II prevailed on Britain and Spain to agree on
forcibly pressing their respective claims against Mexico
by means of a joint diplomatic mission backed by a powerful punitive expedition ... a form of international
intimidation of small powers by large ones commonly
referred to in diplomatic and military circles as "showing the flag." When indulged in between major powers,
it is known less euphemistically as "rattling the sword."
His plan was ratified officially in the London Convention
on October 31, 1861. By this agreement the contracting
parties pledged themselves to respect the territorial integrity of the Republic of Mexico. There were no provisions for changing Mexico's form of government.
On January 9, 1862, the tripartite envoys, Count Dubois
de Saligny, General Juan Prim, and Sir Charles Wyke
met at Vera Cruz to discusstheirclaims.lt soon became
clear that Spain and Britain's claims were just, whereas
France demanded the honoring of the Jecker bonds (the
Due de Morny was to get thirty per cent) and an additional twelve million pesos in cash. France wanted no questions asked. She was unwilling or unable to furnish
valid proof.
Nevertheless, President Juarez and his representatives treated the tripartite expedition with courtesy and
consideration. Not only did he allow them to occupy Vera
Cruz unopposed but, by the Treaty of La Doledad, allowed the foreign troops to move from the oppressive
heat of the disease-ridden "Hot Land" to the healthier
climate of the Mexican Plateau, near Puebla. The allies
agreed to retreat to Vera Cruz, should hostilities break
out.
France's exorbitant demands and the rudely inflexible
attitude of Dubois de Saligny, who was a stooge of the
Due de Morny, soon caused a personality clash between
the French envoy and General Prim. Sir Charles Wyke
sided with the Spanish general. Tempers reached the
breaking point, when the French landed General Almonte
and other Mexican imperial agents to engage in subversive activities under the protection of the flag of
France. At the urging of their representatives, Spain and
Britain recalled their expeditionary forces.
Napoleon III then ordered the Commander in Chief of
his invading army, General Charles F. Latrille, Count
of Laurencez, to take Mexico City and overthrow the
Government of Mexico. On this occasion, as in almost
every instance in the French Intervention in Mexico,
France forgot her vaunted devotion to honor. General
Laurencez violated the treaty of Soledad and marched
directly towards Puebla, where an army under General
Ignacio Zaragoza blocked the way to the capital.
Juarez's choice of General Zaragoza to repel the
French invasion was both surprising and intuitive. He
might have selected General Jose Lopez Uraga, for example, a trained soldier of great technical knowledge
and proven skill since 1947. He knew European military
strategy and had distinguished himself in action during
the War of Reform. General Zaragoza, ontheothei hand,
was a brilliant but untutored guerilla tactician from Coa-
huila. However, no one knew the military ability and
the limitations of the Mexican soldier better, or had
greater confidence in his heroic endurance and courage.
It is interesting that Zaragoza in addressing his unpaid,
underfed, poorly clothed and armed troops never spoke
of winning or dying heroically, as Antonio Lopez de
Santa Ana often had. Zaragoza spoke confidently only of
total triumph.
General Laurencez, on the contrary, had formed a poor
concept of the Mexican soldier. When the bedraggled men
of the Conservative guerilla leader, General Lorenzo
Marquez, straggled into his camp, the French general
noted they were barefooted, half-naked, and ill-armed.
Never having seen them in action, he concluded that
Mexico could  easily be  conquered with  six  thousand
French regulars. So contemptuous was he of Mexican
military ability, so sure that the Conservative and
deeply religious citizens of Puebla would betray the army
of the radical government of Juarez, that he decided on
a frontal attack of the two hills where General Zaragoza
had deployed his men, Cerro de Guadalupe and Cerro de
Loreto. Also, Lurencez could not know that the general
in his twenties who led the flanking attack for Zaragoza
was the military genius who would eventually destroy
the armies of Emperor Maximilian. His name was General Porfirio Diaz, and this was his first major command. Before the battle, General Laurencez wrote his
government: "We have over the Mexicans such a superiority of race, organization, discipline, morality, and
high ideals that even now, at the head of our valiant six
thousand soldiers, I am the master of Mexico." Famous
last words!
A popular American historian has briefly and fairly
acurately described the action that ensued:
"General Laurencez, commanding 6000 well-trained
and handsomely uniformed dragoons and foot soldiers,
was given orders to occupy Mexico City. On the path of
his march to the capital was Puebla, defended by 4000
Mexicans armed with i antiquated guns--many of which
had seen service at the battle of Waterloo fifty years
before, and had been bought _t a bargain by Mexico's
ambassador to London back in 1825. Commander of
Puebla's forces was Ignacio Zaragoza, an amateur
in tactical warfare, as were most of his officers, but a
seasoned warrior in guerrilla fighting. Laurencez, to
show his contempt for that ragtag army, called for a
charge up the middle of the Mexican defenses at Zara-
goza's most strongly fortified position. The charge
carried his cavalry through soggy ditches, over a
crumbling adobe wall, and up the steep slopes of the
Cerro de Guadalupe. But their drive petered out before
reaching its objective, and over one thousand Frenchmen
were left sprawled on the field, dead or dying. Laurencez
paid for his contempt. The Mexican army held, and then
Zaragoza led a counter-attack that drove Laurencez
back to Orizaba and, after a short reprieve, attacked
him again and drove the remnants of his army to the
coast. This was the first time French troops had
met defeat in nearly half a century, and it was handed
them not by a major power of Europe but by the penniless, war-torn republic of Mexico. This battle for
Puebla, fought on May 5, is yearly commemorated in
Mexico by a national holiday, and there is hardly a
Mexican village, town, or city that does not call its
main street Cinco de Mayo."
But the Cinco de Mayo did more than give Mexicans
their most glorious national holiday. A Mexican history   text   comments   on   its  significance  as  follows:
"The victory of the Mexican Army in the Battle of
Cinco de Mayo had far-reaching consequences, national
as well as international.
With regard to the national consequences, the belief
that the French were invincible in war was destroyed,
a belief the Conservative traitors themselves had used
to demoralize the defenders of the nation. Furthermore
the victory made the entire nation thrill with enthusiasm
and patriotism, thus encouraging the Mexican people to
continue their struggle against the invader without
flagging..By this victory, the Mexican Army also gained
an additional year in which to reinforce and reorganize
itself, forming new military cadres, in which almost
all the political elements of the nation were represented.
As regards the international consequences, the defeat
of the French had resounding effects in Europe, tarnishing
the brilliance of Napoleon Ill's prestige, enhancing the
honorable posture of the Spanish and British envoys,
destroying the slander spread there by the Conservatives that the Juarez government had no baekingl..
furthermore, this Mexican victory admirably prevented
an effective alliance between Napoleon and the Confederate
States in the Civil War of the United States, which could
possibly have changed the ending of that struggle. A
historian says that on the Cinco de Mayo Zaragoza
defended at Puebla the integrity of the Mexican Fatherland and the North American Federation." (C. Gonzalez
Blackaller and L. Guevara Ramirez, Sintesis de his-
toria de Mexico, p. 366).
Mexican Americans, then, have a double incentive to
cry proudly, "Viva el Cinco deMayo!" And other Americans, ragardless of national origins, have reason to
join them.
/. C. Canales
CHM. Department of History
•     Fresno State College