Black and Brown Liberation : Through Shared Oppression, Mexicans and Blacks in This Hemisphere Are Linked Historically. Cinco de Mayo Is a Perfect Time to Reflect on the Continuing Resistance to Domination.

The destiny of Africa’s scattered people has been decided in more countries than popular history has acknowledged. Mainstream history does not reveal how Africans benefited from France’s humil iating defeat at Puebla, Mexico, on May 5, 1862.

Cinco de Mayo is a fitting and spirited annual celebration that reminds us of Mexico’s heroic though short-lived victory over Napoleon III’s larger and better-armed forces.

There are two very good reasons why black people should also celebrate the French defeat at the hands of Mexican forces.

First, Napoleon supported the slave-holding Confederacy, and second, Benito Juarez, the president of Mexico, had given land to anti-colonial black Seminoles.

Napoleon had hoped that the Confederacy would quickly win the Civil War, retain slavery and supply French textile mills with cotton. Napoleon had been encouraged by the major Confederate victory over Union forces at Bull Run. He envisioned an alliance between himself and slave-holding Southerners that would guarantee raw material for French industry.

Napoleon was well on his way to satisfying this ambition when the defenders at Puebla, though outmanned and outgunned, interrupted his imperialist ambitions.

The defeat of Confederate ally Napoleon was a historic event that descendants of enslaved Africans and all others who uphold democracy should celebrate with enthusiasm.

Juarez had given land to a faction of the black Seminole freedom fighters who had carried on a long and courageous war of liberation against Spanish and American colonizers.

It was certainly in the interest of blacks on both sides of the Rio Grande that the Juarez government, which had befriended rebellious slaves and whose predecessor had outlawed slavery, survive Napoleon’s invasion.

It is interesting to note that Napoleon was urged to overthrow the Mexican government by the brother of Archduke Maximilian of Austria.

Maximilian’s involvement gives Africans even more cause to join with Latino neighbors in celebrating Cinco de Mayo.

Six years before Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Mexico, Maximilian married Carlotta, sister of King Leopold II of Belgium, a despot who was responsible for colonizing, mutilating and annihilating millions of Congolese in his drive for profits.

During this period Europe’s ruling elites were busy plotting the conquest of non-Western people, often cooperating with one another and occasionally competing.

At the infamous 1884-85 Berlin West Africa Conference, the European powers resolved some of their differences and divided Africa among themselves.

Through shared misfortune--conquest and slavery--the histories of Mexicans and blacks in this hemisphere are linked. Few, if any, oppressed people have overcome adversity without assistance from allies.

Indigenous and African people have been one another’s primary ally in many instances, since the beginning of the pillage, slavery and genocide initiated by Columbus in the Americas 500 years ago.

Present-day black and brown conflicts, whether at high school assemblies, on the streets of Venice, in the big yard at San Quentin or between equally disempowered Latino and black laborers in South Los Angeles, reward the same elites whose wealth and power are dependent upon divided and unorganized people of color.

Whether the flash point is Puebla or Chiapas, Cinco de Mayo is a perfect time to reflect upon and discuss the continuing resistance by Mexico’s people to domination. And, when appropriate, the complementary dynamics of the struggles for black and brown liberation.

Cinco de Mayo is not to be commercialized by opportunists or trivialized as a one-day superficial and lukewarm acknowledgment of Mexican culture.

When honest accounts of history are finally written into textbooks, African and Latino youth will be better able to affirm, deepen and project their long-established unity into the future.