La Batalla de Puebla - 5 de Mayo

This past Cinco de Mayo, my friends and I decided to have a fiesta titled "La Batalla" in Polanco. I hope those that attended the fiesta enjoyed the cinco de mayo celebration. Unfortunately, many chilangos really do not like to celebrate this holiday. Maybe the commercialization of the holiday in the United States is a turn off for them.

But for Mexican-Americans like myself, Cinco de Mayo played an integral part of our childhood and upbringing, and because of this some of us continue to cling on to it.

In most Los Angeles public school systems, especially in East Los Angeles, where I grew up, Cinco de Mayo plays a huge role. As a child, Cinco de Mayos were full of rehearsed dances, outdoor carnivals and historical reenactments. The school efforts behind the holiday really helped to cultivate and reinforce ethnic pride in the community.

So for someone like myself, Cinco de Mayo is more than just a six pack of
coronas and a sombrero, it is actually a very distinctive Mexican American
tradition, where our identity as Chicanos is embraced by a U.S.
institution, in my case, Robert F. Kennedy elementary school in City
Terrace, East Los Angeles.

For me, those institutional efforts represent the essence of multiculturalism. In fact, as a kindergarden student, I once announced our classroom's dance and skit to a crowded playground of parents and children in costumes. No one can ever take away those innocent memories of seeing my Korean American teacher selling "fruta fresca" and my elementary school colleagues dressed in elaborate colonial-style attire. Even though East Los Angeles lacks the colonial architecture of places like Coyoacan, Puebla or Guanajuato, the Cinco de Mayo holiday and celebration was a close substitute, especially for the children of illegal immigrants living a life off screen in a city obsessed with reproductions of far away sets and locations.

Cinco de Mayo in East LA is priceless.

Hence my fiesta last Friday.

For all we know, I am just a Chicano conquistador imposing my view on Mexican history on the residents of Mexico City. One party at a time.