Cinco de Mayo, Los Angeles-Style: Fun, Food and a Lesson in History

Parts of Los Angeles were turned into a giant street party Sunday as thousands of revelers thronged to rock concerts, mariachi performances and colorful parades to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican battle of 1862 that turned back the invading French army and became a moral rallying point for Mexico’s ultimate liberation.

“The feeling is unity, pride and a little nostalgia,” Jesse Moreno shouted over the noise of the music he and his wife, Carmen, danced to in Lincoln Park.

While singing groups like Tierra and El Chicano entertained the crowd in the park with hot mixtures of rock, jazz and salsa, children ate tacos in front of the makeshift stage and their parents moved to the music.

On the fringes of the crowd, concession stands were heatedly selling beer, soda and carne asada, barbecued flank steak. “The name of the game is who’s better prepared,” said Frank Macias, a barbecuer for Our Lady Help of Christians School, speaking of the stiff competition among the concessionaires.

What’s the secret to good carne asada? “Beer,” Macias said. “Just before we cook it, we add a little beer.”

10 Deep at Parade

At the Cinco de Mayo parade in Huntington Park, a mile-long crowd of people stood 10 deep on both sides of Pacific Boulevard.

Mothers held their toddlers above the crowd, teen-agers clambered into trees and shopkeepers gawked from ladders propped against their shops as they strained to catch a glimpse of Latino television stars and outrageously outfitted clowns who shook the hands of the tiniest children.

Teens laughed at a team of doe-eyed camels, each of which carried a girl dressed in a spangled costume, and yelled “Hi Snoopy!” to the life-sized cartoon character as he waved from a horse-drawn stagecoach. Marching bands from Banning, Inglewood and many other high schools were decked out in full regalia, despite the 85-degree temperatures.

“Kiss me! I love you!” cried one teen-ager perched in a tree as a group of pretty Huntington Park High School cheerleaders slowly passed by on their float.

Twirling Drumsticks

“Bravo! Bravo!” roared two older men as the crowd-pleasing Long Beach Royal Syncopated Regiment Drum Corps twirled their drumsticks with lightning speed and rattled off a booming series of precision-timed drum rolls.

The stars turned out too. Rene Enriquez from “Hill Street Blues” grinned and blew kisses, Mabel King from “What’s Happening” shouted greetings, and KRLA’s popular disc jockey Manny Pacheco waved from the back seat of a 1957 Chevy.

“We drove all the way from Oxnard to see Freddy Fender and Ricardo Montalban and just everything,” said Mercedes Garcia, who works at Spanish-language radio station KOXR in Oxnard.

But in the hubbub of blue and orange helium balloons and sparkling floats, there was a more serious side.

For those of Mexican heritage in California, Garcia said, the 5th of May--not a major holiday in Mexico--is rivaled only by Mexican Independence Day on Sept. 16 as a source of pride.

On May 5 in 1862, a group of outnumbered and outgunned Mexican soldiers stunned Napoleon III’s invading French army at the city of Puebla, handing them a bruising defeat.

Although the victory was only a temporary setback for the French, who ousted the Mexican government a year later, the battle became a rallying point for Mexico’s ultimately successful fight for freedom from outside oppressors.

Among those of Mexican heritage, from schoolchildren to parents to seniors, the details of the battle are well known and recited with pride.

Alberto Mosqueda of Cudahy held his 10-month-old daughter, Viridiana, in his arms and explained: “Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza and a bunch of Mexican Indians beat the French Army, which was supposed to be the strongest army in the world. . . . But we won, and that makes us proud. Everybody in Mexico knows who Zaragoza is.”

“The French had 6,000 troops and the Mexicans had only 2,000 troops,” said Maribel Guzman, 13, a student at Our Lady of Victory School in Compton who said she was taught about the battle at school.

“It means a lot to Mexican-Americans,” Maribel said, “because the French tried to take their freedom, and practically ever since then Mexico has been free.”

‘A Cultural Event’

Others at Lincoln Park talked about the unique coloration that the holiday has taken on in Los Angeles.

“It’s more of a cultural event than a holiday,” said American-born Steve Pearlman, a mariachi violinist with a group called Los Toritos. “Actually, it’s celebrating a battle in a war that was lost. That’s not the important part.”

More important is the feeling of identity it gives Mexican-Americans. “It’s a focal point for the Latin community,” said Bart Torres, who was barbecuing flank steak at a concession booth. “It’s something we have in common besides just our ethnic background. It helps us keep in touch with our culture.”