NO, CINCO DE MAYO IS NOT MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY; IT' WAS THE BEGINNING OF A MEXICAN SENSE OF NATION

By Juan Montoya

on May 5, 150 years ago, a ragtag, hodge-podge contingent composed troops from regional forces under the command of a 33-year-old Goliad, Texas-born general, an ambitious colonel from Zacatecas, a caudillo from San Pedro, Texas, conservative armies from Zacatecas and lowly peasant soldiers from throughout Mexico fought as one against a foreign invader.

There, on the mountains of Puebla and the plains below, they encountered the formidable forces of Napoleon the III's French empire composed of seasoned French troops and African zoauves.

The French Gen. Charles Ferdinand Latrille Lorencez thought it was going to be a cakewalk (as in the Guerra de los Pasteles a few years before), and leisurely sent his troops to attack the defenders atop the cerro armed with ladders and supported by French artillery, the best available at the time.

Instead of a decisive battle that would open the doors to the road to Mexico City and occupation of the country, the French would be defeated in their attempts that day.

Surprisingly, the Mexicans under commander of the Army of the West Ignacio Zaragoza (of Goliad, Texas), the frontal army of Gen. Negrete (of Puebla), the cavalry under Col. Porfirio Diaz (of Oaxaca) and a band of irregulars led by Gen. Juan Cortina (of San Pedro, the Rio Grande Valley, Texas), united with other regional armed groups to defeat the invading army.

"Las armas nacionales se han cubierto de gloria," Zaragoza started his message to Mexican President Benito Juarez.

"Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence day," said Professor Bernandro Manuel Ibarrola Zamora as he began his presentation before students and other guests at the UTB-TSC Education and Business Complex Thursday. "But why has it gotten to the point that many people think so?"

And so Ibarrola began a discourse where – for the space of a little over an hour – he traced the origins of the battle and its aftermath. The Mexican nation, bred in failed revolutions, empire and regional fragmentation was ill prepared to fight a war against the leading army of the day after it landed in Veracruz along with a Spanish and English fleet to demand payments from the Mexican government after Juarez declared a moratorium on foreign debt following the victory of his Liberal army over the Conservatives in the disastrous Three-Years War, or War of Reform.

"Mexico was not a nation, as we know it," he said. "It was more of an archipelago of small regions each controlled by their own caciques with little allegiance to the central government. All other nations recognized its weakness."

And so, Napoleon, wishing to establish a bulwark against U.S. hegemony in the Americas, sent his troops under the guise of collecting a debt and set out to install an emperor who would foil the wishes of the U.S. expansionists.

But the defeat of the 6,600 troops under Gen. Latrille by Zaragoza's 5,000 troops was not thought to be a great victory. Rather, it turned out to be more of a holding action for the eventual defeat of the Mexican defenders of Puebla almost a year later in May 16, 1863.

But as Ibarrola, a professor in Spain and at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) explained, the battle signified a turning point in the history of Mexico. For the first time – after failed revolutions and prolonged civil war against their own countrymen – Mexican soldiers from different regions fought together against a foreign invader...and, to the world's surprise, won.

"That was really, the meaning of the Battle at Puebla on Cinco de Mayo," he said after his lecture. "It was the first time that the different regional forces thought of themselves as a nation fighting against a common enemy. It all came together on the cerro and plains of Puebla after five hours of battle. That was the real significance of Cinco de Mayo."