Cinco De Mayo History: Why Is It Celebrated In U.S. While Barely In Mexico?

Cinco De Mayo is one of the most popular holidays in the United States, and why not? An excuse to eat Mexican food, drink tequila and party to mariachis sounds pretty great. However, one of the curiosities of this holiday is the fact that it is in fact much more popular in the United States than in Mexico. The reason for this is that the origins of the holiday are actually more American than they are Mexican, as Mexicans in California first began the celebrations.

Cinco de Mayo is commonly and mistakenly believed to be a celebration of Mexican Independence: this celebration in fact takes place on September 15. In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862 when the Mexican army defeated the invading French. In the U.S., however, according to David E. Hayes-Bautista, Cinco de Mayo was first celebrated by Mexicans living in the United States who heard of the thrilling victory and used celebrations as a way of honoring their homeland.

According to Hayes-Bautista, "far away in California, Mexicans and other Hispanos read in the Spanish-language newspapers the details of the fortification of Puebla, and were aware that the French would return." However, it took a hundred years before the holiday really began to take off across the United States: TIME magazine reports that "Cinco de Mayo started to come into vogue in 1940s America during the rise of the Chicano movement."