Cinco de Mayo: One Big L.A. Party : Tacos, Toasts Raised to Mexico’s Victory Over French in 1862

At official ceremonies and family picnics, with formal toasts and tacos, Los Angeles on Sunday celebrated a 123-year-old Mexican military victory.

A weekend of Cinco de Mayo festivities was capped Sunday by a ceremony in the Parque de Mexico featuring the Mexican consul general, and by an outpouring of thousands of visitors to Olvera Street, a remnant of the time when Los Angeles was founded by colonists from Mexico.

Other celebrations, commemorating the Mexican defeat of an invading French army on May 5, 1862, were held at the Music Center and at city and county parks throughout the area. The common ingredients were booths offering Mexican-style food to the music of mariachi, Veracruzano and other traditional Mexican bands.

The tourist jam on Olvera Street spilled into adjoining Chinatown, clogging the streets with autos and pedestrians. On the narrow street itself, spectators trapped in the crowd were carried slowly forward to the stage.

Long lines formed outside restaurants. Tequila and beer flowed.

“This is such a big crowd this year, and business is very good,” said Rosie Manriquez, who sells pottery and figurines from a booth on the street. “I think it is about 30% to 35% more than usual.”

The turnout included Mexican-Americans, Mexicans and those without any Mexican blood.

“We’re here being traditional Mexicans,” said Jaime Guel of East Los Angeles, a security guard at Crocker Center who came to Olvera Street with a group of Mexican-American friends.

Proud of Victory

“This is the day we beat the hell out of the French, which is something to be proud of, like the United States beating the British in the American Revolution.”

August Meyer, a West Los Angeles law student recently arrived from Chicago, said laughingly that he and a group of friends made the trip “because we wished to explore the cultural diversity of Los Angeles.”

Then, he added on a more serious note, “Also to hang around, drink beer and have a good time.”

“It seemed like a good family outing, with our Mexican heritage,” said Alex Ornelas, who works in Mayor Tom Bradley’s office. He was immobilized in the Olvera Street throng with his wife and two teen-age daughters.

One daughter got a heritage lesson when she said the holiday celebrates Mexican independence. Her parents groaned. Despite the widespread impression left by the Cinco de Mayo festivities, it commemorates only a battle, not Mexican Independence, which is celebrated Sept. 16.

Heroes Honored

At the Parque de Mexico beside Lincoln Park, where there is a collection of statues and busts of heroes of Mexican history, Agustin Garcia Lopez, Mexican consul general in Los Angeles, and City Councilman Arthur Snyder placed floral wreaths at statues of Ignacio Zaragoza and Benito Juarez.

Zaragoza was the Mexican general who won the battle over the French at Puebla, and Juarez was the Mexican president who eventually defeated the government the French established, five years after the battle.

Mexican-Americans dressed as charros, or Mexican cowboys, carried a U.S. flag into the ceremony, while a group of four men and three women from the consul’s office marched with the Mexican flag, and another Mexican flag was raised on the park’s flagpole.

The ceremony is organized each year by the consulate and the Comite Mexicano Civico Patriotico, a Mexican-American group.

While the dignitaries followed the flag-raising with speeches, a crowd of several thousand gathered at the other end of the park to listen to ranchero singers and hold family picnics on the grass.