CINCO DE MAYO: WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT

"Las armas nacionales

se hán cubierto de gloria"
(The Nation's arms have
been covered in Glory)"

There's a commemorative bust of poor general Zaragoza at Hermosillo's Plaza Zaragoza. Every year, when Cinco de Mayo is around, the generous Government of the City renews the motto of the Battle of Puebla in golden-paint covered styrofoam letters. Each year, when I used to live there I went to visit the bust AND TORE OFF THE FUCKING SHIT OF AN ACCENT THAT FOR REASONS THAT ESCAPE MY INTELLIGENCE SOME STUPID IDIOTIC MOTHERFUCKERS ADDED TO THE WORD "HAN"!!!

Ignacio Zaragoza, evidently a nerd of his age (check out the glasses and hairdo), led a group of Mexicans to what would be known as the only battle The Mexican Army actually won against a foreign force in national territory.

The incredible feat of not being utterly devastated by invaders on the battlefield would happen only once, in Texas, in the shameful victory of The Alamo, where the army of Santa Anna fought a handful of gringos, cornered like rats in a lousy adobe house.

When I married a French woman I though "Cinco de Mayo is going to be aaaaawkwaaaard ♫". It's like if she had married a descendant of nobility and they had to celebrate La Prise de la Bastille together.

I, getting married forever to a French woman.

Interestingly, my wife turned Mexican immediately and change her colors; now her cheers go to us Mexicans and our many senseless, hopeless battles. Let me just tell you, dear readers, that that is very cute, and that makes of her not only the best secretary I've had, but also the best wife ever.

Did I already mention that she's French and sexy?

I bet you didn't know these facts

• Dude, you don't know shit about The Pastry War, do you?

A few decades before the Battle of Puebla, France and Mexico had been involved in the infamous "guerra de los pasteles" (Pastry War) The comical name of this war gave us, elementary school students, the impression of the opposing troops attacking each other with whipped cream pies, like in those goofy movies of yesteryear, and not with very real, hot, lead bullets or with sharp blades sunk inside everybody's intestines.

In reality this "pastry war" was a very tense naval conflict that was caused by some Mexicans treating very badly the French population of Mexico City. One time a group of Santa Anna's soldiers ate a bunch of pastries without paying for them and that was the last straw for the abused Frenchies. A French float obliterated San Juan de Ulúa and Veracruz until they forced the Mexicans to sign an I.O.U. An oldified and über-badass ex-president Guadalupe Fucking Victoria, first president of Mexico, was one of the diplomats involved in the matter, who, all Yoda-like, was in control of the situation at all times.

• You also didn't know that Benito Juarez is probably to blame for the French Intervention. But he's still cool, chill out, dudes.
  

Benito Juarez, the Motherfucker of the Americas, canceled the payments being made to France after the Pastry War. The War of Reform and the difficulties facing his term forced him to cut the spending budget and to cancel all foreign payments temporarily. England and Spain were cool, but France is no Payday Loans store, ladies: France was ready to fight the Mexicans and their debty manners.

• Fuck nay, you did not know that Napoleon III was a goddamn mega-crazy Confederate racist, like those guys in Alabama who have no teeth and play the banjo and marry their kin, but French and handsome.

The English and the Spaniards withdrew their ships; they had decided to play it cool and let the no-longer-paying Mexicans save a little money. The French stayed, but not because they wanted their million pesos, fuck no. Napoleon III wanted Mexico as a colony because he planned to support the Confederates (the bad guys) in the U.S. Civil War. He wanted the South to win. If Juarez, Porfirio Díaz and the bunch of undisciplined, angry Mexicans had not had posed resistance, Barack Obama would not be president today, because the Confederates were not planning on abolishing slavery in the USA, not even as a joke.

• You did not know how many Frenchmen were defeated by Zaragoza's.

There were more or less some six-thousand Frenchmen in the Battle of Puebla. Zaragoza had roughly the same number of men, but Porfirio Díaz had another five thousand, and who knows how many more soldiers and civilians participated during the whole conflict using guerrilla tactics. Napoleon III did not learn the lesson that we Mexicans fight dirty.

• Just like in the "Niños Héroes" ordeal, we all think that "Mexico won". I'm sorry dipshits, we didn't. You didn't know either which country in Latin America has the worst, most sucky army ever.

The Battle of Puebla looks like an isolated victory, but the war was very long, and to consider that we're such bad-asses because of Cinco de Mayo is a little bid depressing because, at the end of the French Intervention, Benito Juarez was exiled in the USA, half of Mexico welcomed the French with open arms and we had the Second Empire (with Maximilian of Habsburg). Another lost war for our sad country. At least we're not Paraguay, the worst soldiers in History: they lost two thirds of their adult population during the Triple-Alliance War in the 19th century, and the slaughter continued with The War of the Chaco and the civil wars.

• You definitely didn't know that Zaragoza did not buy in glorious battle, but amidst vomit, diarrhea and fever.

General Ignacio Zaragoza died only four months after the Battle of Puebla. He died of tiphoid fever, a kind of salmonella poisoning caused by ingesting contaminated food or water. What a nerdy way to kick it. Zaragoza left this world while Alice Lidell listened to a story that would become Alice in Wonderland; while Mrs. Lumière gave birth to the first of the fathers of cinema and during the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War.

• At least the French weren't left intact. What a measly consolation!

General (and Count) Lorencez, Zaragoza's rival caught himself the yellow fucking fever in Mexico! He went back to France and then died after a long, miserable convalescence. Also, because he got distracted in Mexico's war, Royal Shithead Napoleon III lost Austria in the Seven Weeks War against Germany. What an idiot. To be a cousin of Napoleon Bonaparte didn't count for shit.

I hope you have learned something. Read it to your children, ladies, so they know more about this date, which gringos think commemorates the Independence of Mexico. Bunch of ignorant shits.

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