Cinco de Mayo

It is not Mexico’s Independence Day. That’s Sept. 16. The Shout (grito) of Dolores came from a small town on Sept. 16, 1810, that began the Mexican War of Independence against Spain by a pronunciamiento from a Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo. 

Mexico’s state of Puebla celebrates Cinco de Mayo, the date when outnumbered Mexican soldiers won over French forces at the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Puebla”Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, but now observed north of the Rio Grande for the cause of democracy and freedom to mark the early years of the American Civil War.

When I first went to Chicago in 1965, the signage in the city was only in English. A decade later, Spanish was added. I spent one summer up and down California where the word “Chicano” entered my vocabulary. Filipinos joined Mexican workers and Cesar Chavez in organizing farm laborers particularly by the cabbages and the grapes.

In Helena, Montana in the late ’70s, I was surprised to find Hispanics in the city. I, of course, simply assumed that they came up north for the agricultural work until my traveling colleague told me that New Spain used to stretch from the Cordilleras del Sierra Madre to the Columbian Bitterfoot Mountains that traverse the U.S.-Canadian border. Many “Hispanics” west of the Mississippi and along the Missouri Rivers are native to the area, having shared fluids with the residents before European settlers rolled covered wagons westward.

In Texas, I watched public baile folklorico performances and mariachi bands, displayed with much pride by the MejicoTejas population. Commerce took it around the world to promote Mexican products and culture. Cinco de Mayo is widely known as Mexico’s face to the world, though nationally downplayed by Mexico other than the state of Puebla.

While in Texas as a student, I did not have much chance to cross the Rio Grande to Matamoros or Juarez, Mexicali or Tijuana, though the names were familiar to my ears. Later, while visiting Brownsville, a gringo colleague and I went across the border for lunch. It took me six hours to get back across the border as the guard tried to determine whether I was a legitimate green-card holder rather than a Filipino trying to slip through the border, a rather not uncommon occurrence, I was told. In a three-piece business suit, I unfortunately fitted the “profile.” Profiling is not a new practice.

In spite of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Alliance) that loosened up relationship between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the seasonal wetback traffic across the Rio to staff agricultural manual labor in the U.S. led to the construction of “the border fence” 670 miles long so far with 700 more to go, from Pacific Baja California to the Gulf of Mexico. The completed phase is a single layer fence and the second will be two layers, with increased frequency of border patrols. We exploit Mexico’s labor but will treat them as neighbors if they stay on their side of the border. Canada is a different story. Crossing is a breeze save for the Frenchies on each side who thinks they should be another country!

Mejicanos in the tri-country alliance are the exploited poor cousins. To be sure, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated in the major cities of Canada, and is now officially a state holiday in some States of the Union; the Chicano vote is a formidable force, voting Obama over Romney into a second term. Spanish in America’s signage is, however, still looked at by purists as threatening the Atlantic seaboard mindset of English-only US of A!

In the 21st century, to be monolingual is a liability. The advent of second languages in America is rapid; same around the world with English, as it remains the language of transportation and banking, commerce and trade. But more than just the practicality of fluency in two languages, the skill’s learning affect the brain cells considerably. And brain cells from we as a specie and individually have a lot to spare. The efficacy of language learning is not in translating a “foreign” language into one’s native tongue, as it is the ability to enter the symbol systems of one separate from the other.

Basically a phonetic language, English requires hearing sounds first. One watches body language, recognizes tones and intonations, before it encounters the written word. Use determines meaning. The same is true in Zhonghua but Chinese evolved highly abstracted characters turning pictographs into ideograms, deciphered and memorized in the learning. Hanyu Pinyin’s four-toned phonetic evolution has gained ground and new characters simplify the process. But to teach Chinese students oral English by having them read and memorize words is not very effective.

The United States’ appropriation of all the ethnic symbols, native as well as migrant, to its shores positions it not as the melting pot of integration where the traditions of the British Isles lord it over the upstarts but as a mosaic of varied hues of colors and tones denoting vive la difference. Cinco de Mayo is a vanguard to that end.