I did not grow up observing Cinco de Mayo. Nobody in my Texas family did. It wasn’t a holiday in the way Christmas or Thanksgiving or even the Fourth of July was a holiday; it was a date on the calendar that occasionally meant something at school and otherwise didn’t.
In college it became an excuse to drink beer and margaritas, because we were college kids and we never actually needed an excuse, but Cinco de Mayo was a perfectly cromulent one. I don’t remember anyone, ever, in those years, saying anything about the Battle of Puebla. We weren’t celebrating Mexican history. We were celebrating Tuesday.
As an adult I started cooking something in the Mexican or Tex-Mex food realm on the day, mostly because it was a nice excuse and the produce was good in early May. Tacos some years, fajitas other years, enchiladas more often than not. It’s been a casual, slightly tongue-in-cheek thing: we know this isn’t a real Mexican holiday, we know what it actually is in this country, and we’re cooking what we cook anyway.
Several years ago I finally sat down and looked up the actual history, because I’m me and I look things up. What I found is a story that’s more interesting than the version most Americans know, and one that maps surprisingly well onto a different conversation I’ve been having for years about Tex-Mex.
What Cinco de Mayo Actually Is
It’s not Mexican Independence Day. (That’s September 16th. If you only remember one thing from this post, make it that.)
Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla, fought on May 5, 1862. The French Army, then the most feared military force in the world, was marching on Mexico City. A much smaller, much less well-equipped Mexican force met them at Puebla and won. The French eventually took Mexico City anyway, but the Battle of Puebla became a symbol of resistance against a vastly more powerful invader.
In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is mostly a regional holiday. Big in Puebla. Observed elsewhere in a low-key way. Not a major national event. Mexican Independence Day is the major national event, and it’s in September.
So how did Cinco de Mayo become a giant American thing?
Two reasons, in roughly this order.
First, the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s adopted Cinco de Mayo as a cultural pride moment. The story of a Mexican army defeating a European colonial power resonated with Mexican-Americans who were fighting their own battles for civil rights and cultural recognition in the United States. That’s a real and meaningful origin for the American observance, and it’s the part of the story that gets erased when we treat the holiday as purely a marketing invention.
Second, in the 1980s and 90s, beer companies (Corona especially, but Modelo and Tecate too) and the avocado growers’ association poured serious marketing money into making Cinco de Mayo a drinking and snacking holiday. They were extremely successful. By the time I was in college in the 90s, the holiday had become almost entirely about margaritas and chips and guacamole.
What we have now in the United States is a holiday that started as something real (a Mexican military victory, then a cultural pride movement) and got built into something else (a drinking holiday with chip-and-dip imagery) by people who saw a market opportunity. The original meaning isn’t gone, exactly, but you have to know to look for it.
Tex-Mex Went Through a Version of This
Here’s the parallel that’s been rattling around in my head ever since I learned all of that.
Tex-Mex, the cuisine, has been dismissed for most of its existence as fake Mexican food. Not real. Not authentic. A degraded version of the real thing. Diana Kennedy, the British food writer who spent decades documenting regional Mexican cooking and did honestly valuable work in the process, was famously dismissive of Tex-Mex. She called it a “bastardized” version of real Mexican food, lacking depth and authenticity. She wasn’t alone. The American food establishment spent the 80s and 90s breathlessly discovering “real Mexican food” and using that discovery as an excuse to look down on the cooking that Mexican-American families had been doing in Texas for generations.
But here’s the thing. Tejano cooking, the food tradition that Tex-Mex grew out of, goes back to the 1700s. It’s not a lesser form of Mexican cooking; it is its own cuisine, with its own history, developed by Mexican-American families cooking with what they had where they were. The yellow cheese and cumin and flour tortillas weren’t a betrayal of Mexican food. They were what happened when a group of people cooked their food in the landscape where they lived over a couple of hundred years. That’s how cuisines work everywhere. That’s what cuisines are.
It’s taken a long time, but Tex-Mex is finally getting recognized as its own legitimate cuisine. Lisa Fain (the Homesick Texan blog) has been doing the documenting work for years. Other writers and historians are filling in the picture. The conversation is shifting. But the dismissal lasted a long time, and it caused real damage.
While we’re talking about who gets credit for Mexican cooking in the American food world, I’d be doing this post wrong if I didn’t mention Rick Bayless. He’s spent decades studying regional Mexican cooking, knows what he’s doing in a Mexican kitchen, and has been a genuine ambassador for Mexican food in the United States. He’s also a white guy from Oklahoma who built a restaurant empire and a career on cooking from a culture not his own, and the question of whether that’s appreciation or appropriation has been a real and ongoing conversation. I still think his cookbooks are useful references for proper regional Mexican cooking. I also think the discomfort about who gets the platform and the money is legitimate. I hold both of those things every time I cook Mexican or Tex-Mex or New Mexico-Mex or any other version of that food.
What This Means For Tuesday
Cinco de Mayo is, in its current American form, kind of like Tex-Mex. An American adaptation of a Mexican original. Built into something different from what it started as. Dismissed by purists; embraced by everyone else.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing, necessarily. I think it’s just what it is. The holiday is American. The cuisine I’ll be cooking is American. Calling either one “Mexican” without qualification is wrong. Calling either one fake is also wrong. They’re real things; they’re just not the things people sometimes assume they are.
What I try to do, as a Texan, is be honest about what I’m cooking and what I’m observing. I’m not going to pretend my green chile chicken enchiladas are real Mexican food, because they aren’t. They’re Tex-Mex with a New Mexico twist. They have a real history and they’re a staple meal for me; the one that I make and take to friends when they’re sick or struggling or have a loss in the family. Everyone loves them. They’re not a degraded version of something more pure; they’re their own thing.
So this May 5th, when I make them again, I’m not pretending I’m honoring Mexican Independence Day or that I have any cultural claim to a Mexican holiday I didn’t grow up observing. I’m cooking dinner. I’ll make a pan of enchiladas, probably some pico, probably some guac. I’ll pour myself a glass of iced sun tea (we don’t drink tequila in this house often enough to keep it stocked; margaritas are a party occasion, not a Tuesday occasion). Zach will eat his weight in enchiladas. Remy will lobby for floor scraps and probably succeed at least once. Finn will appear briefly and then disappear. Callie will judge us all.
That’s my Cinco de Mayo. It’s not a big deal. It’s not supposed to be.
Tuesday’s post will have the actual recipe, including the vegetarian version I developed for my friend Renée that’s now in regular rotation at our house too. Thursday’s post will have the homemade margarita mix recipe for when you’re throwing a party and want to do it right. Friday is roundup as usual.
In the meantime, here’s what I’ll leave you with: cook what you cook. Be honest about what it is. Give credit to the people whose food traditions you’re drawing from. Don’t pretend a Tuesday is something it isn’t, and don’t apologize for cooking dinner. That’s about all the moral weight any of this should carry.
P.S. The Battle of Puebla involved roughly 4,500 Mexican soldiers defeating roughly 6,000 French troops who were considered the best army in the world at the time. It’s genuinely one of the great underdog military stories of the 19th century, and almost nobody in the United States knows it happened. If anybody asks you what Cinco de Mayo is and you want to drop some actual knowledge, that’s the knowledge.
P.P.S. I am told that in Puebla itself the holiday involves parades, historical reenactments, and large quantities of mole poblano. Which is real Mexican cooking, and which I am not going to attempt, because mole poblano is a labor of love that requires roughly thirty ingredients and an entire afternoon, and I respect it too much to half-do it on a Tuesday
P.P.P.S. If you absolutely must drink something on May 5th and you don’t want to give Corona’s marketing department any more of your money, I will note that there are excellent Mexican beers (Bohemia, Pacífico, Negra Modelo) and excellent Mexican-American craft brewers doing great work, and you can support all of them without contributing to the marketing budget that built the holiday in the first place. Or, you know, iced sun tea. I’m not the boss of you.
The absolute BEST enchiladas there are. Send me straight to confession for gluttony every time!