Cinco de Mayo 2005

Posted on May 5, 2005 in Festivals

Today marks an important milestone in American freedom, when an army of Americans defeated an army of European invaders and their quislings at the Battle of Puebla, Mexico. I mark Mexicans as Americans just like I mark Canadians and everyone who lives on the two continents or on Carribean Islands as Americans. My fellow countrymen and countrywomen sometimes forget that the United States is not the only nation on these continents. They forget that other people on this side of the world have made contributions to world culture and liberty. Our educational system has failed to enlarge our minds, to see the world as a wholeness. We should be taught gratitude for the achievements of others as well as a sense that we, too, have contributed.

So today, let us take our hats off to our fellow Americans who live in Mexico. Let us thank them for having the courage to resist European recolonialization while this nation was divided between those who wanted to keep slavery and those who wanted to preserve the country so that we would not be easy pickings for European imperialists. On this day, Mexicans showed that America could not be taken back. They demonstrated that they wanted the right to self-determination. It’s a right that our own government — which has become steadily more imperialist as the years have passed — should honor. When we forget Cinco de Mayo we forget American freedom and give forces which undermine Liberty a chance to take back what they had wrongly possessed in the first place.

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